3 — I m 3 ■^~~ 72 2 3 ^^^ X ^^^ m Q m^m^ 5 O 3 ^nn > ^^HM r— 3 5 3) ^^^ > 1 ^^^ X 1 ^^^^ -< J — -n > 1 O 1 (— ^ 7 ^^^^ mm OFCAURMUA masBE V SECOND GALLERY OP LITERARY PORTRAITS. BT GEORGE GILFILLAN. ti' ScconB !£!iition. EDINBURGH: JAMES HOGG. LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE t 6 JOHN MILTON. in which it is held ought to be a count of indictment against an age foolish enough to entertain it — although it be an avocation rendered illustrious by other names besides that of Milton, the names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buchanan, Parr, Johnson, and Arnold — and although the day is coming when the titles of captain, or colonel, or knight-at-arms — yea, and those of king, Raiser, and emperor, will look mean and contemptible compared to that of a village schoolmaster who is worthy of his trade. Schoolmaster as he was, and afterwards Latin secretary to Cromwell, Milton found time to do and to write much in the course of the eighteen or twenty years which elapsed between his return to England and the Kestoration. He found time for writing several treatises on divorce, for publishing his celebi'ated tractate on education, and his still more celebrated discourse on the liberty of unlicensed printing, for collecting his minor poems in Latin and English, and for defending, in various treatises, the execution of Charles I. and the Government of Cromwell, be- sides commencing an English History, an English Gi'ammar, and a Latin Dictionary. Meanwhile, his first wife, who had born him three daughters, died in childbed. Meanv/hile, too, a disease of the eyes, contracted by intense study, began gradually to eclipse the most intellectual orbs then glowing upon earth. Milton has uttered more than one noble complaint over his com- pleted blindness. We could conceive him to have penned an expostulation to the advancing shadow, equally sublime and equally vain, for it was God's pleasure that this great spirit should, like himself, dwell for a season in the thick darkness. And scarcely had the last glimmer of light been extinguished, than, as if the coming calamities had been stayed and spellbound hitherto by the calm look of the magician, in one torrent they came upon his head ; but, although it was a Niagara that fell, it fell like Niagara upon a I'ock. In an evil hour, as it seemed at the time at least, for Britain, for Milton, for the progress of the human race, the restored Charles arrived. The consequences were disastrous to Milton. His name was proscribed, his books bui-ned, himself obliged to abscond, and it was what some would call a miracle that this blinded Samson was not led forth to give his enemies sport, at the place of common execution, and that the most godlike head in the world did not roll off from the bloody block. But " man is immortal till his work be done." We speak of accidents and possibilities; but, in reality, and looking at the matter upon the true side of it, Milton could no more have perished then than he could a century before. His future works were as certain, and inevitable, and due at their day, as " sum- mer and winter, as seed-time and harvest." Even after the heat of persecution had abated, and his life was, by sufferance, secure — it was never more — the prospects of Mil- JOHN MILTON. 7 ton were aught but cheering. He was poor, he was blind, he was solitary — his second wife dead; his daughters, it would appear, were not the most congenial of companions; his country was en- slaved; the hopes of the Church and of the world seemed blasted; — one might have expected that disappointment, regret, and vexa- tion would have completed their work. Probably his enemies expected so too. Probably they said, " We'll neglect him, and see if that does not break his heart — we'll brinsr down on his head the silence of a world, which was wont to ring with his name." They did not know their man. They knew not that here was one of the immortal coursers, who fed on no vulvar or earthly food. He " had meat to eat that the world knew not of." It was the greatest crisis in the history of the individual man. Napoleon survived the loss of his empire; and men call him great, because he survived it. Sir AYalter Scott not only survived the loss of his fortune, but he struggled manfully amid the sympathy of the civilised species to repair it. But Milton, amidst the loss of friends, fortune, fame, sight, safety, domestic comfort, long cherished hopes, not only survived, but stood firm as a god above the ruins of a world; and not only stood firm, but built, alone and unaided, to himself an everlasting monument. Whole cen- turies of every-day life seemed condensed in those few years in which he was constructing his work ; and is it too daring a con- ception — that of the Great Spirit watching fi-om on high its progress, and saying of it, as he did of his own creation, when finished, "It is very good?" But, indeed, his own work it was. For, strong as this hero felt himself in his matured learning — in his genius, so highly cul- tured, yet still so fresh and young — in his old experience, he did not venture to put his hand to the task till, with strong crying and tears, he had asked the inspiration and guidance of a higher power. Nor were these denied him. As Noah into the ark of old, the Lord " shut" Milton in within the darkened tabernacle of his own spirit, and that tabernacle being filled Avith light from heaven, " Paradise Lost" arose, the joint Avork of human genius and of divine illumination. We have seen the first edition of this marvellous poem — a small, humble duodecimo, in ten books, which Avas the original number ; but to us it seemed rich all over, as a summer's sunset, Avith glory. Every one has heard, probably, of the price, the goodly price, at Avhich it Avas prized and bought — five pounds, with a contingency of fifteen more in case of sale. For two years before it seems to have slumbered in manuscript, and very likely Avas the Avhile carried round the trade, seeking for one hardy enough to pubUah it. It appeared in 1667, but Avas a long time of rising to its just place in public estimation. The public pre- ferred Waller's insipid commonplaces, and Dryden's ranting 8 JOHN MILTON. plays, to the divine blank verse of Milton. Waller himself spoke of it as a long, dull poem in blank verse ; if its length could not be considered a merit, it had no other. The case is not singular. Two of the greatest poems in English of this century are Words- worth's "Excursion" and Bailey's " Festus." Both were for years treated with neglect, although we are certain tliat both will survive the " Course of Time" and the "Pickwick Papers." Between his masterpiece and his death, little occurred except the publication of some minor, but noble, productions, including "Paradise Regained," " Samson Agonistes," "A system of Logic," " A Treatise of True Religion," and a collection of his familiar epistles in Latin. At last, in November, 1674, at the age of sixty-six, under an exhaustion of the vital powers, Milton ex- pired, and that spirit, which was " only a little lower than the angels," went away to mingle with his starry kindred. It is with a certain severe satisfaction that we contemplate the death of a man like Milton. We feel that tears and lamentations are here unbecoming, and would mar the solemn sweetness of the scene. With serenity, nay joy, we witness this majestic man-child caught up to God and his throne, soaring away from the many shadows which surrounded him on earth, into that bright element of eternity, in which he seemed already naturalised. Who seeks to weep, as he sees the river, rich with the spoils of its long wandering, and become a broad mirror for the heavens, at length sinking in the bosom of the deep ? Were we permitted to behold a star re-absorbed into its source, melted down in the Infinite, would it not generate a delight, graver, indeed, but as real, as had we stood by its creation ? and although there were no shout- ing, as on its natal morn, might there not be silence — the silence of joyous wonder among the sons of God? Thus died Milton, the prince of modern men, accepting death as gently and silently as the sky receives into its arms the waning moon. We are re- minded of a description in " Hyperion," of the death of Goethe: " His majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring morning. Calm like a god, the old man sat, and, with a smile, seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped from his dying fingers. ' Open the shutters, and let in more light,' were his last words. Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write in the air, and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man was gone." The next portion of our task is, to speak of the constituents of Milton's mind. Many critics have spoken of him as one who possessed only two or three faculties in a supreme and almost supernatural degree. They speak of his imagination and intel- lect as if they were his all. Now, Milton, as well as Goethe or JOHN MILTON. Shakspere, seems to us a many-sided man. He was complete in all powers and accomplishments, almost as his own Adam. He had every faculty, both of body and of mind, well developed and finely harmonised. He had philosophic sagacity, and could, upon occasion, reason as acutely as Thomas Aquinas. He had broad grasp as well as subtle discrimination, and some of his treatises nearly exhaust the topics of which they treat. He had, in vast measure, understanding, the power which comprehends ; memory, the power which retains; imagination, the power which com- bines and reproduces; will, the power which moves; and elo- quence, the power which communicates.' He had, besides, the subordinate talents of wit, sarcasm, invective, rhetoric, and logic; €v?n the characters of the sophist and the buffoon he could adopt at pleasure. In what species of literature did he not shine ? In the epie, in the drama, in the pastoral, in the ode, in the elegy, in the masque, in the sonnet, in the epistle, in the song, in the satire, in the argument, in the essay, in the religious discussion, in the history, and in the etymological treatise, he was equally a master. He added more than the versatility of Voltaire to more than the sublimity of Homer. While Voltaire skips from topic to topic with the agility of an elated monkey, Milton's versatility reminds you of the great Scripture image, " The mountains leaping like rams, and the hills like lambs." And if it be asked, what was it that gave him that august air of unity, which has made many overlook his multiform nature ? we answer, it was the subordina- tion of all his varied powers to a religious purpose, such as we find in no other uninspired man; and it was, again, that glare of awful grandeur which shone around him in all his motions, and made even his least efforts, even his failures, and almost his blunders, great. As St Peter's in Rome seems one, because it unites, condenses, and rounds in all the minutioa and details of its fabric into a dome, so lofty and proud that it seems a copy of the sky to which it points — to imitate as well as to adore — so Milton gathers in all the spoils of time, and all the faculties of man, and offers them as in one sacrifice, and on one vast altar to Heaven. In attempting a climactic arrangement of his poetical works, we may trace his whole life over again, as in a calm under- current; not that, in point of chronological order, his works form a complete scale of the man; inasmuch as " Paradise Lost," in which his genius culminated, preceded " Samson Agonistes" — still some of the epochs of his life are distinctly marked by the advancing stages of his writings. Lowest in the scale, then, are usually ranked his Latin poems, which, with many beauties, are rather imitations and echoes of the classical poets than the native utterances of his mind; it is in them, as in many modern Latin and Greek poems, where the strange dress, the graceful veil, the 10 JOHN MILTON. coy, half-perceived meaning, as with the beauty of some females, give a factitious interest to very ordinary and commonplace thoughts. Half the merit of the classics themselves springs fi'om the difficulty we have in understanding them, and, if we wish effectually to disguise nonsense, let us roll it up in Greek or Latin verse, and it may lie there unsuspected for centuries toge- ther. Milton could not write nonsense, to be sure, even ia Latin, but his usual power and majesty here well-nigh forsake him ; and in hexameters and pentameters he walks like a Tits.n in irons, and in irons which are too narrow for his limbs. \7e may rank next, as next lowest in popular estimation, his sonnets. We are not sure, however, but that popular estimation has under- rated those productions. Dr Johnson certainly did. When asked once his opinion of Milton's sonnets, he said, " Milton could hew out a Colossus from a rock, but he could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." Literally, of course, he could not do either the one or the other; but, had he been a sculptor, we be- lieve that the slightest stroke of his chisel would, as well cs his most elaborate work, have evinced the master. Hosrarth's cenius appeared as really in those sketches which he used to draw on his thumb-nail, as in his " Rake's Progress," or " Marriage a la Mode." So Milton's sonnets are sonnets which Milton, and none but Milton, could have written. We see, in very small compass, his most peculiar qualities: his gravity, his severe and simple grandeur, his chaste and chary expression, his holy purpose, and the lofty and solitary character of his soul. His mind might be compared to a mountain river, which, having fii'st torn its way through high rocks, then polishes the pebbles over which it rolls at their base : — " 'Tis the same wind unbinds the Alpine snow, And comforts violets on their lowly beds." We confess, however, that we are not much in love with the structure of the sonnet. Its principle, which is to include into fourteen lines one thought or sentiment, seems too artificial, and savours too much of the style of taste from which have sprung anagi'ams and acrostics, and the like ingenious follies. When a large thought is successfully squeezed into it, it reminds us irre- sistibly of a big head v/hich has worked and wriggled its way into a narrow nightcap; and when a small thought is infused into it, it becomes almost invisible. We come next to that delightful class of Milton's poems, which we call pastorals, namely, " Ai'cades," " L'Allegro," and " II Penseroso." They breathe the sweetest spirit of English land- scape. They are composed of every-day life, but of every-day life shown under a certain soft ideal sti-angeness, like a picture or a prospect, through which you look by inverting your head. JOHN MILTON. 1 1 Your wonder i;?, how he can thus elevate the tame beauties of English scenery, which are so tiny that they might be fitly tenanted by Lilliputians, and through which men stalk like monstrous giants. "L' Allegro" is an enumeration of agreeable images and objects, pictured each by a single touch, and set to a light easy measure, which might accompany the blithe song of the milkmaid and the sharp whetting of the mower's scythe. " II Penseroso" is essentially the same scenery, shown as if in soft and pensive moonlight. Both, need we say, are exquisitely beautiful; but we think the object would have been better gained, could two poets, of diflerent temperaments, have, in the manner of Virgil's shepherds, exchanged their strains of joy aud pensive- ness in alternate verses, or if Milton had personated both in this way. As the poems are, it is too obviously one mind describing its own peculiar sources of gratification in different moods. A modern poet might now, if he had genius enough, effect what we mean, by describing a contest between Horace and Dante, or Moore and Byron — the one singing the pleasures of pleasure, the other the darker delights which mingle even with misery, like strange, scattered, bewildered flowers growing on the haggard rocks of hell. An acute critic in an Edinburgh periodical has undertaken the defence of " The Town" versus " The Country," as the source of poetry — has called us, among others, to account for preferring the latter to the former — and has ventured to assert that, ca'teris j)arihus, a poet residing in the town will describe rural scenery better than one living constantly in the country, and adduces Milton in proof. We admit, indeed, that there will be more freshness in the feeling of the Cockney, let loose upon the country in spring, be he poet or porter, just as there will be more fresh- ness in the feeHng of the countryman entering London for the first time, and gaping with unbounded wonder at every sign, and shop, and shopkeeper he sees. But we maintain, that those always write best on any subject who are best acquainted with it, who know it in all its shades and phases; and that such minute and personal knowledge can only be obtained by long residence in, or by frequent visits to, the country. We cannot conceive, with this writer, that the country is best seen in the town, any more than that the town is best seen in the country. Ben Nevis is not visible from Edinburgh, any more than Edinburgh from Ben Nevis. We can never compare the bit of blue sky seen from a corner of Goosedubs, Glasgow, with the " dread magnificence of heaven" broadly bending over Ben Lomond; nor the puddles running down the Wellgate of Dundee, after a night of rain, with the red torrents from the hills, wliich meet at the sweet village of Corarie. And even the rainbow, when you see it at the end of a dirty street, loses caste, though not colour, and can 12 JOHN MILTON. hardly pass for a relation to that arch of God, which seems erected by the hands of angels, for the passage of the Divine footsteps between the ridges which confine the valley of Glencoe. And, among our greatest descriptive poets, how many have resided in the country, either all their lives, or at least in their youth ! Think of Virgil and Mantua, of Thomson and Ednam, of Burns and Mossgiel, of Shelley and Marlowe, of Byron and Lochnagar, of Coleridge and Nether StoAvey, of Wilson and Elleray, of Scott and Abbotsford, of Wordsworth and Rydal Mount, and of Milton and Horton, where, assuredly, his finest rural pieces were com- posed; and say Avith Cowper, the Cowper of Olney, as we have said with him already — " God made the country, and man made the town." We pass to two pieces, which, though belonging to different styles of poetry, class themselves together by two circumstances — their similar length, and their surpassing excellence — the one being an elegy, and the other a hymn. The elegy is " Lycidas" — the hymn is on the " Nativity of Christ." As to " Lycidas," what can Ave say ? Conceive the finest and purest graces of the Pagan mythology culled and mingled, Avith modest yet daring hand, among the roses of Sharon and the lilies of the valley — con- ceive the Avaters of Castalia sprinkled on the floAvers Avhich groAv in the garden of God — and you have a faint conception of Avhat "Lycidas" means to do. Stern but short-sighted critics have objected to this as an unhalloAved junction. Milton kncAv better than Dr Johnson. He felt that, in the millennial field of poetry, thcAvolf and the lamb might lie down together; that everything at least that Avas beautiful might enter here. The Pagan mytho- logy possessed this pass-Avoi'd, and Avas admitted; and here truth and beauty accordingly met, and embraced each other. A museum, he felt, had not the severe laAvs of a temple. There, Avhatever was curious, interesting, or rare, might be admitted. Pan's pipe might lean upon the foot of the true Cross — Apollo's fiute and David's lyre stand side by side — and the thunderbolts of Jove rest peacefully near the fiery chariot of Elijah. Out of the Hebrew Scriptures, his " Hymn" is (besides his OAvn " Hymn of our First Parents," and Coleridge's " Hymn to Mont Blanc") the only one Ave remember Avorthy of the name. When you compare the ordinary SAvarm of church hymns to this, you begin to doubt Avhether the piety Avhich j^rompted the one, and that which prompted the other, Avere of the same quality — Avhether they agreed in anything but the name. We have here no trash, as profane as it is fulsome, about "sweet Jesus! dear Jesus !" — no efl^usions of pious sentimentalism, like certain herbs, too SAveet to be Avholesome; but a strain which might have been sung by the angelic host on the plains of Bethlel.em, and re- hearsed by the shepherds in the ears of the Infant God, Like a JOHN MILTON. 1 .J belated member of that deputation of sages who came from the East to the manger at Bethlehem, does he spread out his trea- sures, and they are richer than frankincense, sweeter than myrrh, and more precious than gold. With awful reverence and joy, he turns aside to behold this great sight — the Eternal God dwelling in an infant ! Here the fault (if fault it be) with which •' Lycidas" has been charged is sternly avoided. From the stable he repulses the heathen deities, feeling that the ground is too holy. And yet, methinks, Apollo would have desired to stay — would have lino-ered to the last moment — to hear execrations so sublime: — " The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arch'd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine, Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspu-es the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. He feels from Judah's land The dreadful Infant's hand : The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne. Nor all the gods beside Dare longer now abide, Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine : Our Babe, to show his Godhead true. Can, in his swaddling bands, control the damned crew." " Samson Agonistes" is, perhaps, the least poetical, but cer- tainly by no means the least characteristic of his works. In style and imagery, it is bare as a skeleton, but you see it to be the skeleton of a Samson. It is the purest piece of literary sculp- ture in any language. It stands before you, like a statue, blood- less and blind. There can be no doubt that Milton chose Samson as a subject from the resemblance in their destinies. Samson, like himself, was made blind in the cause of his country; and through him, as through a new channel, does Milton pour out his old complaint, but more here in anger than in sorrow. It had required — as the Nile has seven mouths — so many vents to a grief so great and absolute as his. Consolation Samson has little, save in the prospect of vengeance, for the prospect of the resur- rection-body had not fully dawned on his soul. He is, in short, a hard and Hebrew shape of Milton. Indeed, the poem might have been written by one who had been born blind, from its spar- ing natural imagery. He seems to spurn that bright and flowery world which has been shut against him, and to create, within his darkened tabernacle, a scenery and a companionship of his own, distinct as the scenery and the companionship of dreams. It is, consequently, a naked and gloomy poem ; and as its hero triumphs in death, so it seems to fall upon and crush its reader into pros- 14 JOHN MILTON. trate wonder, ratliei* than to create warm and willing admiration. You believe it to be a powerful poem, and you tremble as you believe. What a contrast in " Comus," the growth and bloom rather than the work of his youth ! It bears the relation to the other Avorks of Milton, that " Romeo and Juliet" does to the other works of Shakspere. We can conceive it the effluence of his first love. He here lets his genius run riot with him — " in the colours of the rainbow live, and play i' the plighted clouds." It is rather a dream than a drama — such a dream as might have been passing across the fine features of the young Milton, as he lay asleep in Italy. It is an exercise of fancy, more than of ima- gination. And if our i-eaders wish us, ere going farther, to dis- tinguish fancy from imagination, we would do so briefly, as fol- lows: — They are not, we maintain, essentially different, but the same power under difierent aspects, attitudes, and circumstances. Have they ever contemplated the fire at even-tide? then must they have noticed how the flame, after warming and completely impregnating the fuel, breaks out above it into various fantastic freaks, motions, and figures, as if, having performed its work, it were disposed to play and luxuriate a little, if not for its own de- lectation, for the amusement of the spectator. Behold in the evening experiences of the fire the entire history of the mind of genius. There is first the germ, or spark, or living principle, called thought, or intuition, or inspiration. That fiery particle, coming into contact with a theme, a story, with the facts of his- tory, or the abstractions of intellect, begins to assimilate them to itself, to influence them with its own heat, or to brighten them into its own light. That is the imaginative, or shall we call it the transfiguring process, by which dead matter is changed into quick flame — by which an old fabulous Scottish chronicle be- comes the tragedy of " Macbeth" — or by which some lascivious tale in an Italian novel is changed into the woidd-famous and terribly-true story of " Othello, the Moor of Venice." But, after this is done, does the imaginative power always stop here ? No ; in the mere exuberance of its strength — in the wantonness of its triumph — it will often, like the fire on the hearth, throw out gushes of superfluous but beautiful flame; in other words, images, " quips, cranks, and wreathed smiles" — and thus and here we find that glorious excrescence or luxury which we call fancy. Fancy is that crown of rays round the sun which is seen in the valley of Chamouni, but not on the summit of Mont Blanc, where a stern and stripped stillness proclaims collected and severe power. It is the dancing spray of the waterfall, not the calm, uncrested, voluminous might of the river; or it may be compared to those blossoms on the apple-tree, which that tree pours forth in the exuberance of its spring vigour, but which never produce fruit. JOHN MILTON. 15 Or imagination is the war-horse pawing for the battle — fancy, the Avar-horse curvetting and neighing on the mead. From such notions of imagination and fancy, there follow, we think, the fol- lowing conclusions: — First, that true fancy is rather an excess of a power than a power itself. Secondly, that it is generally youthful, and ready to vanish away with the energy and excite- ment of youth. Thirdly, that it is incident to, though not inse- parable from, the highest genius — abounding in Milton, Shak- spere, and Shelley — not to be found, however, in Homer, Dante, or Wordsworth. Fourthly, that the want of it generally arises from severity of purpose, comparative coldness of temperament, or the acquired prevalence of self-control. And, fifthly, that a counterfeit of it exists, chiefly to be known by this, that its images are not representative of great or true thoughts ; that they are not original; and that, therefore, their profusion rather augurs a mechanical power of memory than a native excess of imagination. In " Comus" we find imagination, and imagination with a high purpose ; but more than in any of JMilton's works do we find this imagination at play, reminding us of a man whose day's work is done, and who spends his remaining strength in some light and lawful game. Our highest praise of " Comus" is, that, when re- membering and repeating its lines, we have sometimes paused to consider whether they were or were not Shakspere's. They have all his mingled sweetness and strength, his careless grace or grandeur, his beauty as unconscious of itself as we could conceive a fair woman in some world where there was not even a river, or lake, or drop of water to mirror her charms. In this poem, to apply his own language, we have the " stripling cherub," all ^ bloom, and grace, and liveliness; in the "Paradise Lost," we have the " giant angel," the emblem of power and valour, and whose very beauty is grave and terrible like his strength. " Paradise Regained" stands next in the catalogue. No poem has suffered more from comparison than this. Milton's preference of it to " Paradise Lost" has generally been quoted as an instance of the adage, that authors are the worst judges of their own works ; that, like some mothers, they prefer their deformed and sickly offspring. We should think, however, that, even were the work much worse than it is, Milton's liking for it might have been accounted for on the principle that authors are often fondest of their last production: like the immortal Archbishop of Granada, whom Gil Bias so mortally oflended by hinting that his sermons were beginning to smell of his apoplectic fit, instead of, as a wise flatterer would have done, stretching out his praises till they threatened to crack against the horizon. But, in truth, Milton was not so much mistaken as people suppose. There are men wlio at all times, and there are moods in which all men, prefer the 23d Psalm to the 18th, the first Epistle of John to the Apo- \Q JOHN MILTON. calypse ; so there are moods in which we like the " Paradise Re- o-ained," with its profound quiet — with its Scriptural simplicity with its insulated passages of unsurpassed power and grandeur with its total want of elFort — and with its modest avoidance of the mysterious agonies of the crucifixion, which Milton felt was a subject too sublime even for his lyre — to the more laboured and crowded splendours of the *' Paradise Lost." The one is a giant tossing mountains to heaven in trial of strength, and with mani- fest toil ; the other is a giant gently putting his foot on a rock, and leaving a mark inimitable, indelible, visible to all after time. If the one I'emind you of the tumultuous glories and organ-tem- pests in the Eevelation, the other reminds you of that silence which was in heaven for the space of half an hour. The principal defect of this poem is the new and contemptible light in which it discovers the Devil. The Satan of the " Para- dise Lost" had many of the elements of the heroic, and, even when starting from his toad-shape, he recovers his grandeur instantly by his stature reaching the sky. But the Satan of the " Para- dise Eegained" is a mean, low, crawling worm — a little and limping fiend. He never looks the Saviour full in the face, but keeps nibbling at his heels. And although in this Milton has expressed the actual history of intellect and courage, when sepa- rated from virtue, happiness, and hope, and degraded into the servile vassals of an infernal will, yet it is not so pleasing for us to contemplate the completed as it is the begun ruin. Around the former some rays of beauty continue to linger ; the latter is desolation turned into despicable use. The Satan of the " Para- dise Lost" — the high, the haughty, the consciously second only to the Most High — becomes, in the " Paradise Regained," at best, a , clever conjurer, whose tricks are constantly baffled, and might, as they are here described, we think, be baffled by an inferior wisdom to that of incarnate Omnipotence. We pass to the greatest work of IMilton's genius ; and here we feel as if, in using the word art or genius, we were guilty of pro- fanation; for so long have we been accustomed to think and speak of the " Paradise Lost," that it seems to us to rank with the great works of nature themselves. We think of it as of Enoch or Elijah, when just rising out of the sphere of earth's attraction, and catching a brighter radiance tlian any that earth owns upon their ascending forms. And there are works of genius which seem standing and stretching up towards the measure and the stature of the works of God, and to which these seem to nod in responsive sympathy. For, as the poet says — " Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone ; And morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids ; JOHN MILTON. 17 O'er England's abbeys bends the sky As on its friends with kindred eye ; For out of thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air, And nature jrladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat." Such a work is that of " Paradise Lost," where earth and heaven appear contending for the mastery (where, as over the morning star, tlje night and the dawning seem engaged iii contest as to the possession of a thing so magniticent), because in it, and in fine proportions, gloom and glory — the gloom of hell and the glory of heaven — have met and embraced each other. " Paradise Lost" has sometimes been called the most perfect of human productions — it ought to be called the most ambitious. It is the Tower of Babel, the top of which did not, indeed, reach unto heaven, but did certainly surpass all the other structures then upon earth. It stands alone, unequalled — Mans Mountain. Even to higher intelligences it may appear wonderful, and strange as to us those likenesses of the stars and of man which are to be found in flowers and animals. In the language of Pope, they may " Admire such wisdom in an earthly shape, And show a Milton as men show an ape." But in proportion, perhaps, as this work rises above the works of man, and hangs aloft like a half-born celestial product, it loses a portion of its interest with " human mortals." It is not, on the one hand, a book like the Bible, commanding belief as well as admiration; it is not, on the other hand, a popular and poetical manual, like the "Pilgrim's Progress," commending itself to the hearts of all who have hearts to feel its meaning; nor is it a work valuable to a party, as having enshrined and transfigured some party notion, which, like a gipsy in the wild, had been wander- ing undistinguished, till a sudden slip of sunshine had bathed him in transient glory. It is the written-out, illuminated creed of a solitary, independent, daring, yet devout man, which all ages have agreed to admire in Milton's poem. And hence the admiration awarded has been rather general than particular— rather that of the whole than of the parts— rather that of stupi- fied and silent amazement than of keen, warm, and anxious en- thusiasm — rather the feeling of those who look hopelessly upon a cloud, or a star, or a glowing west, than of those who look on some great, yet imitable perfection, in the arts of painting, statuary, or poesy. We must be permitted a word about the hero of this poem, about its picture of hell, about its pictures of paradise and heaven, o 18 JOHN MILTON. about tlie representation of Adara and Eve, about its subordinate machinery of angels and devils, and about its place and compa- rative merits when put beside the other masterpieces of the human mind. Its hero is undoubtedly, as Dryden long ago asserted, Satan, if the most interesting character in the book deserves the name of hero ; if, for example, Fergus Maclvor, and not Waver- ley, is the hero of that tale; if of Ivanhoe, not that insipid per- sonage himself, but Richard the lion-hearted, be the real hero. Wherever Satan appears, he becomes the centre of the scene. Round him, as he lies on the fiery gulf, floating many a rood, the flames seem to do obeisance, even as their reS billows break upon his sides. When he rises up into his proper stature, the surrounding hosts of hell cling to him, like leaves to a tree. When he disturbs- the old deep of Chaos, its Anarchs, Orcus, Hades, Demogorgon own a superior. When he stands on Ni- phates, and bespeaks that sun which was once his footstool, Creation becomes silent to listen to the di*ead soliloquy. AVhen he enters Eden, a shi\ter of horror shakes all its roses, and makes the waters of the four rivers to tremble.- Even in heaven, the Mountain of the Congregation on the sides of the north, where he sits, almost mates with the throne of the Eternal. Mounted* on the night as on a black charger, carrying all hell in his breast, and the trail of heaven's glory on his brow — his eyes eclipsed guns — his cheeks furrowed not by the traces of tears but of thunder — his wings tAvo black forests — his heart a mount of mill- stone — armed to the teeth — doubly armed by pride, fury, and despair — lonely as death — hungry as the grave — intrenched in immortality — defiant against eveiy difficulty and danger, does he pass before us, the most tremendous conception in the compass of poetry — the sublimest creation of the mind of man. There is but one other which approaches it at a distance — that of Lucifer, in Dante, who appears with three faces: — " Under each shot forth Two mighty wings, enormous, as became A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw Outstretch'd on the wide sea. No plumes had they, ' But were in texture like a bat, and these He flapped i' the air, that from them issued still Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth Was frozen. At six eyes he wept ; the tears Adown three chins, distill'd with bloody foam ! At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ'd, Bruised as with ponderous engine. Judas is he that hath his head within, And plies the feet without; of the other two, The one is Brutus : lo ! how he doth writhe, And speaks not. The other Cassius, that appears So large of limb." JOHN MILTON. 19 Notliing can be more frightfullj picturesque than tliis de- scription, but it is perhaps too grotesque to be sublime; and the thought of the Devil being a vast windmill, and creating ice by the action of his wings, is ludicrous. Burns, in one of his letters, expresses a resolve to buy a pocket-copy of Milton, and study that noble character, Satan. We cannot join in this opinion entirely, although very charac- teristic of the author of the "Address to the De'il;" but we would advise our readers, if they wish to see the loftiest genius passing into the highest art — if they wish to see combined in one stupendous figure every species of beauty, deformity, terror, darkness, light, calm, convulsion — the essence of man, devil, and angel, collected into a something distinct from each, and absolutely unique — all the elements in nature ransacked, and all the characters in history analysed, in order to deck that brow with terror — to fill that eye with fire — to clothe that neck with thunder — to harden that heart into stone — to give to that port its pride, and to that wing its swiftness — and that glory so terri- ble to those nostrils, snorting with hatred to God and scorn to man — to buy, beg, or borrow a copy of Milton, and study the character of Satan, not, like Burns, for its worth, but for the very grandeur of its worthlessness. An Italian painter drew a representation of Lucifer so vivid and glowing, that it left the can- vass, and came into the painter's soul: in other words, haunted his mind by night and day — became palpalale to his eye, even when he was absent from the picture — produced at last a frenzy, which ended in death. "We might wonder that a similar effect was not produced upon Milton's mind, from the long presence of his own terrific creation (to be thinking of the Devil for six or ten years together, looks like a Satanic possession), were it not that we remember that his mind was more than equal to confront its own workmanship. Satan was not a spasm, but a calm, deliberate production of Milton's mind; he was greater, therefore, tlian Satan, and was enabled, besides, through his habitual religion, to subdue and master his tone of feeling in reference to him. Milton's Hell is the most fantastic piece of fancy, based on the broadest superstructure of imagination. It presents such a scene as though SAvitzerland were set on fire — such an uneven colossal region, full of bogs, caves, hollow valleys, broad lakes, and towering Alps, has Milton's genius cut out from chaos, and wrapped in devouring flames, leaving, indeed, here and there a snowy mountain or a frozen lake for a variety in the horror. This wnlderness of death • is the platform which imagination raises and peoples with the fallen tiirones, dominations, prince- doms, virtues, and powers. On it, the same power, in its playful, fanciful mood, piles up the pandemonian palace, sug- gests the trick by which the giant fiends reduce their stature. 20 JOHN MILTON. shrinking into imps, and seats at the gates of hell the monstrous forms of sin and death. These have often been objected to, as if they were unsuccessful and abortional efforts of imagination; whereas they are the curvettings and magniticent nonsense of that power after its proper work — the creation of hell — has been performed. The great merit of Milton's hell, especially as compared to Dante's, is the union of a general sublime indistinct- ness, with a clear, statuesque marking-out from, or painting on, the gloom of individual forms. From a sublime idea of hell, he descends to severely-selected particular forms and features. Dante, on the contrary (although literally descending), in reality ascends, on endless lost spirits, as on steps, to that dreadful whole which he calls the Inferno; and in tlie strange, inverted climax lies much of the power of the poem. Milton is the syn- theist, Dante the analyst of hell — the one here practises the tran- scendental, the other the ascendental method. The one describes hell like an angel, passing through it in haste, and with time only to behold its leading outlines and figures; the other, like a pilgrim, compelled with slow and painful steps to thread all its highways and byways of pain and punishment. Milton has pictured to us the young flames and unpeopled wastes of hell as well as of earth. Ey Dante's time, it is overflowing with inha- bitants, and teeming Avith sad incidents. The hell of each has its root as much in the heart as in the imagination — it is to each a reservoir, into which he pours his ire and disappointment; but as Milton's sadness was of a milder type than Dante's, so his hell is less savage and more sublime. He gazes reverently, and from a distance, on the awful scene; whereas the fierce Floren- tine enters into its heart, goes down on his knees to watch more narrowly the degradations of the down-trodden damned — nay, applies a microscope to their quivering flesh and fire- shrivelled skin: nor did Ugolino, over the skull, go to his task with a more terrible and tingling gusto. In Milton's Paradise, no less than in his Pandemonium, we find the giant character of his genius. It is no snug garden-plot — it is no tame, though wide, landscape; no English hall, with garden and pai'k — it is a large undulating country, as bold as beautiful; and as in hell he made Switzerland run fire, in Paradise he makes Britain flow with milk and honey. As the one was a wilderness of death, this is a wilderness of sweets. There are roses in it, but there are also forests. There are soft vales, but there are also mountains. There are rippling, dancing streams; but there is also a large, grave river running south. There are birds singing on the branches: but there is also Behe- moth I'cposing below. There is the lamb; but there is the lion too, even in his innocence awful. There is a bower in the midst; but there is a wall vast and high around. There are our happy JOUN MILTON. 21 parents within; but tliere are hosts of angels without. There is perfect happiness; but there is also, walking in the garden, and running amid the trees, a low whisper, prophesying of change, and casting a nameless gloom over all the region. Such is the Paradise of Milton. It is not that of Macaulay, whose description of it in " Byron," vivid as it is, gives us the idea rather of a beautiful, holy, and guarded sjM, than of a great space, forming a broad nuptial crown to the young world. In his Heaven, Milton finds still fuller field for the sei'ious as well as sportive exercise of his unbounded imagination. He gives us the conception of a region immeasurably large. Many earths are massed together to form one continent surrounding the throne of God — a continent, not of cloud, or airy light, but of fixed, solid land, with steadfast towering mountains, and soft slumbrous vales ; to which Pollok, in his copy of it, has added, finely, wastes and wildernesses — retreats, even there, for solitary meditation; and it is a beautiful thought, that of there being hermits even in heaven. Afar, like a cloud, rises, the centre and pinnacle of the region, the throne of Jehovah, now bathed in intolerable light, and now shaded by profound darkness. Thus far imagination, sternly and soberly, accomplishes her work. But then she de- scribes the cave, whence, by turns, light and darkness issue — the artillery employed by the rebel angels — their punning speeches to each other — their tearing up mountains — the opening and closing of their wounds : she runs wild; nor is her wildness beautiful; it is the play ratlier of false than of true fancy — rather a recollection of the " Arabian Nights," than the carol and spring of a great original faculty. The councils of the Godhead are proverbial for feebleness and prolixity. Milton's hand trembles as it takes down the syllables from the Divine lips; and he returns with eager haste to the consult on the midnight Mount of the Con- gregation. But the coming forth of the Messiah to destroy his foes is the most sublime passage in the poem. It is a " torrent rapture" of fire. Its words do not run, but rush, as if hurrying from the chariot of the Son. They seem driven, even as the fiends are driven, before him. Suggested partly by Hesiod's " AYar of the Giants," and partly by Achilles coming forth upon the Trojans, it is superior to both — indeed, to anything in the compass of poetry. As the IMessiah, in his progress, snatched up his fallen foes, and drove them before him like leaves on the blast, Milton, in the Avhirlwind of his inspiration, snatches up words, allusions, images, from Homer, Hesiod, and the Book of God, and bears them, in terror and in triumph, on. As soon call a tornado the plagiai'ist of the boughs, rai'ters, houses, and woods "wliich it tours up, and carries forward in the fury of its power, as Milton, in a mood like this. To quote any part of it, were as wise 03 to preserve a little of the air of a hurricane. We must read 22 JOHN MILTON. it at a sitting; nay, we cannot; for, though sitting as we commence it, we will he standing up — feet, hair, and soul — ere we are done. And would, we cry aloud, that the same pen of living fire had described for us that second and suhlimer rising of the Son of Man, when he shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels; which must now remain undescribed, till every eye shall see it, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of it. Even so. Amen. The difficulty which met Milton in his portrait of our first parents was, obviously, to make them perfect, without being un- natural' — to make them sinless, and yet distinguish them from angels — to show them liuman, yet unl'allen; to make, in short, a new thing on the earth, a man and a woman, beautiful beyond desire, simple beyond disguise, graceful without consciousness, naked without shame, innocent but not insipid, lofty but not proud : uniting in themselves the qualities of childhood, man- hood, and womanhood, as if, in one season, spring, summer, and autumn could be ima2;ined. This was the task Milton had to accomplish ; and, at his bidding, there arose the love- liest creatures of the human imagination, such as poet's eye never, before or since, imaged in the rainbow or the moon- shine, or saw in the light of dreams; than fairies more graceful, than the cherubim and the seraphim themselves more beautiful. It is the very image of God set in clay; and, in proportion to the baseness of the material, are the costliness and the masterdom of the work. " Oh, man! over all," we exclaim, "be thou blessed for ever. And thou, his sister and spouse, his softer self, man's moon and miniature, may every flower be thy lover, every bird thy morning and evening songstress; may the day be but thy sunny mantle, and the stars of night seem but gems in thy flow- ing hair ! " JMilton's Adam is himself, as he was in his young manhood, ere yet the cares of life had ploughed his forehead or quenched his serene eyes. Eve, again, is Milton's lifelong dream of what woman was, and yet may be — a dream, from which he again and again awoke, weeping, because the bright vision had passed away, and a cold reality alone remained. You see, in her every lineament, that he was one who, from the loftiness of his ideal, had been disappointed in woman. In the words, frequently repeated as a specimen of a hull — " Adam, the goodliest man of men, since born His sons — the fairest of her daughters Eve " — he has unwittingly described the process by which his mind created them. Adam is the goodliest of his sons, because he is formed from them, by combining their better qualities; and thus are the children the parents of their father. Eve is the fairest of JOHN MILTON. 23 her daughters; for it \vouM require the collected essence of all their excellences to form such another Eve. How beautiful the following words of Thomas Aird ! " Lo ! now the general father and mother ! What a broad, ripe, serene, and gracious composure of love about them ! ! could but that mother of us all be per- mitted to make a pilgrimage over the earth, to see her many sons and daughters ! How kindly would the kings and queens of the world entreat her in their palaces ! How affectionately would her outcast children of the wilderness give her honey and milk, and wash her feet! No thought of the many woes she brought upon us ! No reproaches ! Nothing but love ! So generous is the great soul of this world!" Milton's management of his angels and devils proves as much as anything in the poem the versatility of his genius, the delicacy of his discrimination of character, that Shaksperean quality in him which has been so much overlooked. To break up the genei-al angel or devil element into so many finely-individualised forms — to fit the language to the character of each— to do this, in spite of the dignified and somewhat unwieldy character of his style — to avoid insipidity of excellence in his seraphs, and insi- pidity of horror in his fiends — to keep them erect and undwindled, whether in the presence of Satan on the one side, or of Messiah on the other — was a problem requiring skill as well as daring, dramatic as well as epic powers. No mere mannerist could have succeeded in it. Yet, what vivid portraits has he drawn of Michael, Raphael (how like, in their difference from each other, as well as in their names, to the two great Italian painters!), Ab- diel, Uriel, Beelzebub, Moloch, Belial, Mammon— all perfectly distinct— all speaking a leviathan language, which in all, how- ever, is modified by the character of each, and in none sinks into mannerism. If Milton had not been the greatest of epic poets, he might have been the second of dramatists. Macaulay has admirably shown hoiv, or rather that Shakspere has preserved the distinction between similar characters, such as Hotspur and Falconbridge; and conceded even to Madame d'Arblay a portion of the same power, in depicting several individuals, all young, all clever, all clergymen, all in love, and yet all unlike each other. But Milton has performed a much more difficult achievement. He has represented five devils, all fallen, all eloquent, all in tor- ment, hate, and hell, and yet all so distinct that you could with difficulty interchange a line of the utterances of each. None but Satan, the incarnation of egotism, could have said — " Wliat matter where, if I be still the same 1 " None but Moloch— the rash and desperate— could thus abrupt- ly have broken silence — " My sentence is for open war." 24 JOHN MILTON. None but Belial — the subtle, far-revolving fiend — could have spoken of " Those thoughts that wander through eternity." None but Mammon, the down-looking demon, would ever, al- luding to the subterranean riches of hell, have asked the ques- tion — " What can heaven show more?" Or who but Beelzebub, the Metternich of Pandemonium, would have commenced his oration with such grave, terrific irony as — " Thrones, and imperial powers, offspring of heaven, Ethereal virtues, or these titles now Must we renounce, and, changing style, be call'd Princes of hell ? " Shakspere could have done a similar feat, by creating five men, all husbands, all black, and all jealous of their white wives; or else, five human fiends, all white, all Italian, and all eager to throw salt and gunpq^der on the rising flame of jealousy, and yet each distinct from our present Othello and lago; and this vShakspere might have done, and done with ease, though he did it not. Perhaps, to settle the place and comparative merit of the " Paradise Lost," is an attempt which appears more difficult than it really is. Milton himself may have, and has, a considerable number of competitors, and, in our judgment, two superiors — Shakspere and Dante. His work can be compared properly to but two others — the " Iliad" and the " Divina Comedia." These are the first three among the productions of imaginative genius. Like Ben Nevis, Ben Macdhui, and Cairntoul, still contesting, it is said, the sovereignty of Scotland's hills (now rising above, and now sinking below, each other, like three waves of the sea), seem those surpassing masterpieces. We cannot, in our limits, even enter into a field so wide as the discussion of all the grounds on which we prefer the English poem. It is not because it is of later date than both, and yet as original as either. Time should never be taken into account when we speak of an immortal work; what matters it whether it was written in the morning, in the evening, or at noon? It is not that it was written amid danger and darkness — who knows how Homer fared as he rhapsodised the "Iliad?" or who knows not that Dante found in his poem the escape of immeasurable sorrovv^ ? It is not (Warton notwith- standing) that it has borrowed so much from Scripture: such glorious spangles we are ready to shear off, and deduct, in our estimate of the poem's greatness. It is not that it bears unequi- JOHN MILTON. 25 vocal traces of a higher path of genius, or that it is more highly or equally finished. But it is that, begun with a nobler purpose, and all but equal powers, it has called down, therefore, a mightier inspiration. Homer's spur to write or rhapsodise w\as that which sends the war-horse upon the spears; and the glory of the " Iliad" is that of a garment rolled in blood. In Dante, the sting is that of personal anguish, and the acme of his poem is in the depth of hell — a hell which he has replenished with his foes. Milton, in fact, as well as in figure, wrote his work to vindicate the " ways of God to men ;" and this purpose never relinquished — penetrat- ing the whole poem straight as a ray passing through an unre- fracting medium, gathering around it every severe magnificence and beauty, attracting from on high, from the very altar of celes- tial incense, burning coals of inspiration — becomes at last the poem's inaccessible and immortal crown. Let us glance for a moment, ere we close, at what was even finer than Milton's transcendent genius — his character. His life was a great epic itself; Byron's life was a tragi-comedy; Sheri- dan's was a brilliant farce; Shelley's w^as a wild, mad, stormy tragedy, like one of Nat Lee's; Keats's life was a sad, brief, beau- tiful lyric; Moore's has been a love-song; Coleridge's was a " Midsummer Night's Dream;" Schiller's was a hai'sh, diflicult, wailing, but ultimately victorious war ode, like one of Pindar's ; Goethe's was a brilliant, somewhat melodramatic, but finished novel; Tasso's was an elegy; but Milton, and Milton alone, acted as well as wrote an epic complete in all its parts — high, grave, sustained, majestic. His life Avas a self-denied life. " Susceptible," says one, " as Burke, to the attractions of histori- cal prescription, of royalty, of chivalry, of an ancient church, in- stalled in cathedrals and illustrated by old martyrdoms — he threw himself, the flower of elegance, on the side of the reeking con- venticle — the side of humanity, unlearned and unadorned." It was a life of labour and toil; labour and toil unrewarded, save by the secret sunshine of his own breast, filltd with the conscious- ness of divine approbation, and hearing from afar the voice of universal future fame. It was a life of purity. Even in liis youth, and in the countries of the south, he seems to have re- mained entirely unsullied. Although no anchorite, he was tem- perate to a degree, saying, with John Elliot, " Wine is a noble, generous liquor, and we should be thankful lor it, but water was made before it." Kapid in his meals, he was never weary of the refreshment of music; his lavourite instrument, as might have been expected, being the organ. It was a life not perfect: there were spots on liis fame, acerbities of temper, harslmesses of lan- guage, which proved him human, and grappled him witli difii- culty to earth, like a vast balloon ere it takes its bound upwards. It was in some measure a complete life, not a tantalising fragment, 26 JOHN MILTON. nor separated segment; but it evolved as gradually and certainly as a piece of solemn music. It was the life of a patriot, faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he; and Abdiel, that dreadless angel, is just Milton transferred to the skies. It vras, above all, the life of a Christian — ^yes, the life of a Christian, although the Evangelical Alliance would now shut its door in his face. It was a life of prayer, of faith, of meek dependence, of per- petual communing with Heaven. Milton's piety was not a hollow form, not a traditional cant, not a bigotry, not the remains merely of youthful impression, as of a fall received in childhood; it was founded on personal inquiry; it was at once sincere and en- lightened, strict and liberal; it was practical, and pressed on his every action and word, like the shadow of an unseen presence. Hence was his soul cheered in sorrow and blindness, the more as he lived in daily, hourly expectation of him whom he called " the shortly-expected King," who, rending the heavens, was to, and shall yet, give him a house from heaven, where they that look out at the windows are not darkened. Thus faintly have we pictured John Milton. Forgive us, mighty shade ! wherever thou art, mingling in whatever choir of adoi'ing spirits, or engaged in whatever exalted ministerial ser- vice above, or whether present now among those " millions of spiritual creatures which walk the earth;" forgive us the feeble- ness, for the sake of the sincerity, of the offering; and reject it not from that cloud of incense which, with enlarging volume and deepening fragrance, is ascending to thy name from every coun- try and in every language ! We say, with enlarging volume, for the fame of Milton must not only continue, but extend. And perhaps the day may come, when, after the sun of British empire is set, and Great Britain has become as Babylon, and as Tyre, and even after its language has ceased to be a living tongue, the works of Milton and of Shakspere shall alone preserve it; for these belong to no coun- try, and to no age, but to all countries, and all ages — to all ages of time, to all cycles of eternity. Some books may survive the last burning, and be preserved in celestial archives, as specimens and memorials of extinguished woidds; and, if such there be, surely one of them must be the " Paradise Lost." In tine, we tell not our readers to imitate Milton's genius — that may be too high a thing for them ; but to imitate his life — the patriotism, the sincerity, the manliness, the purity, and the piety of his character. When considering him, and the other men of his day, we are tempted to say, " There were giants in those days," while we have fallen on the days of little men ; nay, to cry out with her of old, " I saw gods ascending from the earth, and one of them is like to an old man whose face is covered with a mantle." In these days of rapid and universal change, what need for a LOUD BYRON. 27 spirit so pure, so Avise, so sincere, and so gifted, as his! and who will not join in the language of AVordsworth : — " Milton ! thou sbouldst be living at this hour. England bath need of thee. She is a fen Of stagnant waters. We are selfish men. Thy soul was like a star ; and dwelt apart; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on itself did lay." LORD BYRON. An objection may meet us on the threshold of this, as well as on that of our previous paper. It may seem that to attempt a new estimate of a character so thoroughly scrutinised and so widely appreciated as Byron's, is an attempt alike hopeless and pre- sumptuous. And if we did approach it with the desire of finding or saying anything absolutely new, we should feel the full force of the objection. But this is far from being our ambition. We have decided to sketch Lord Byron's genius for the following reasons : — First, a very minute is never a very wide, a very par- ticular is seldom a very just, scrutiny or estimate. Second, the criticism of single works pouring from the press, however acute and admirable, is not equivalent to a review of those works taken as a whole. A judgment pronounced upon the first, second, or third storeys of a building, as they successively arise, does not forestall the opinion of one who can overlook the completed struc- ture. Of Byron's several writings we have every variety of separate critiques — good, bad, and indifferent ; of his genius, as animating his whole works, we have little criticism, either indif- ferent, bad, or good. Third, the tumult which all Byron's pro- ductions instantly excited — the space they cleared and burnt out for themselves, falling like bombshells among the crowd — the strong passions they awakened in their readers, through that in- tense personality which marked them all — rendered cool appre- ciation at the time impossible. They came upon the public like powerful sermons on an excited audience, sweeping criticism away before them, blotting out principles of art from the memory of the severest judges, whose hearts they stormed, whose passions they inflamed — at the same time that they sometimes revolted their tastes, and sometimes insulted their understandings. At night there was intoxication — in the morning calm reflection came. 28 LORD BYRON. But, in tbe meantime, the poet was away; his song had become immortal, and the threatened ai-rows were quietly returned to the quiver again. Then, Byron's life and story formed a running commentai'y upon his works, which tended at once to excite and to bewilder his readers. His works have now illustrated editions: they did not require this while he lived. Besides, his romantic history, partially disclosed, and, therefore, more effective in its interest — his earlj^, hapless love — his first unfortunate publica- tion his Grecian travels — his resistless rush into fame — his miserable marriage — his amours — the glorious backgroundswhich he chose for his tragic attitudes, Switzerland and Italy — his pei-sonal beauty — his very lameness — the odd and yet unludicrous compound which he formed of Vulcan and Venus, of Apollo and Satyr, of favourite and football of destiny — the mysterious spec- tacle he presented of a most miserable man, composed of all the materials which make others happy— the quaint mixture of all opposites in his character, irreconcileable till in the ruin of death the cloak of mystery which he now carefully threw over, and now pettishly withdrew from, his own character — the impossibi- lity of either thoroughly hating, or loving, or laughing at him, — the unique and many-sided puzzle which he thus made had the effect of maddening the public and of mystifying his critics. Hal is charged by FalstafF with giving him medicines to make him love him. Byron gave men medicines to educe toward him- self a mixture of all possible feelings — anger, envy, admiration, love, pity, blame, horror, and, above all, wonder as to what could be the conceivable issue of a life so high and so low — so earthly and so unearthly — so spiritual and so sensual — so melancholy and so mirthful, as he was notoriously leading. This was the perpetual stimulus to the readers of his works — this the face and fio-ure filling the margins of all his pages. This now is over. That strano-e life is lived — that knot too hard and twisted for man is away elsewhere to be solved — that heart, so differently reported of by different operators, has undergone the stern analysis of death. His works have now emerged from that fluctuating shadow of himself which seemed to haunt and guard them all; and we can now judge of them, though not apart from his personal his- tory, yet undistracted by its perpetual protrusion. Next, Byron was the victim of two opposite currents in the public feeling — one unduly exalting, and the other unduly depressing, his name, both of which have now so far subsided, that we can judge of him out of the immediate or overbearing influence of either. And in fine, as intimated already, no attempt has been made since his death, either to collect the scattered flowers of former fuo-itive criticism, to be bound in one chaplet round his pale and noble brow, or to vv^reathe for it fresh and independent laurels. Moore's life is a long apology for his memory, such as a partial LORT> BYUOX. '29 friend might be expected to make to a public then partial, and unwilling to be convicted of misplaced idolatrj'. Macaulay's critique is an elegant fasciculus of all the fine things which, it had occurred to him, might be said on such a theme— exhibits, be- sides, the coarse current of Byron's life caught in crystal and tinged with couleur de rose, like a foul winter stream shining in ice and evening sunshine — and has many beautiful remarks about his poems; but neither abounds in original views, nor gives, what its author could so admirably have given, a collection of common opinions on his entire genius and works, forming a full-length portrait, ideally like, vigorously distinct, and set, in his own brilliant imagery and language, as in a frame of gold. Our endeavour at present is to make some small contribution towards a future likeness of Byron. And whatever may be the effect of our remarks upon the public, and however they may or may not fail in starting from slumber the "coming man" who shall criticise Byron as Thomas Carlyle has criticised Jean Paul, and Wilson, Burns : this, at least, shall be ours — we shall have expressed our honest convictions — uttered an idea that has long lain upon our minds— and repaid, in part, a debt of gratitude which we owe to Byron, as men owe to some terrible teacher, who has at once roused and tortured their minds; as men owe to the thunder-peal which has awakened them, sweltering, at the hour when it behoved them to start on some journey of life and death. We propose to methodise our paper under the following out- lines:— We would, first, inquire into Byron's purpose. Secondly, into the relation in which he has stood to his age, and the influ- ence he has exerted over it. Thirdly, into the leading features of his artistic execution. Fourthly, speak of the materials on which his genius fed. Fifthly, glance at the more characteristic of his works. And, sixthly, try to settle his rank as a poet. We would first ask at Byron the simple question, " What do you mean?" A simple question truly, but significant as well, and not always very easy to answer. It is always, however, our duty to ask it; and we have, in general, a right surely to expect a reply. If a man come and make us a speech, we are entitled to understand his language as well as to see his object. If a man administer to us a reproof, or salute us with a sudden blow, we have a double right to turn round and ask, " Why ?" Nay, ifa man come professing to utter an oracular deliverance, even in this case we expect some glimmer of definite meaning and object ; and, if glimmer there be none, we are justified in concluding that neither has there been any oracle. "Oracles speak:" oracles should also shine. Now, in Byron's case, we have a man coming forward to utter speeches, to administer reprooi's, to smite the public on both cheeks— in the attitude of an accuser, impeaching man— of a blasphemer, attacking God— of a prophet— expressing 30 LORD BYRON. himself, moreover, with the clearness and the certainty of pro- found and dogmatic conviction ; and we have thus more than a threefold right to inquire, What is your drift, what would you have us to believe, or what to do? Now here, precisely, we think, is Byron's fatal defect. He has no such clear, distinct, and overpowering object, as were worthy of securing, or as has secured, the complete concentration of his splendid powers. His object! What is it? Not to preach the duty of universal despair; or to inculcate the propriety of an "act of universal, simultaneous suicide;" else, why did he not, first, set the example himself, and from " Leucadia's rock," or Etna's crater, precipitate himself, as a signal for the species to follow ? and why, second, did he profess such trust in schemes of political amelioration, and die in the act of leading on a revolutionary war ? Not to teach, nor yet to impugn, any system of religion: for, if one thing be more certain about him than another, it is, that he had no settled convictions on such subjects at all, and was only beginning to entertain a desire toward forming them when the "great teacher," Death, arrived. Nor was his purpose merely to display his own powers and passions in imposing aspects. Much of this desire, indeed, mingled with his ambition, but lie was not altogether a vain attitudiniser. There is sterling truth in his taste and style of writing — there is sincerity in his anguish — and his little pieces, particularly, are the mere wringings of his heart. Who can doubt that his brow, the index of the soul, darkened as he wrote that fearful curse, the burden of which is " Forgiveness?" The paper on which was written his farewell to Lady Byron is still extant, and it is all blurred and blotted with his tears. His poem, entitled " The Dream," is as sincere as if it had been penned in blood. And was he not sincere in sleep, when he ground his teeth to pieces in gnashing them ? But his sincerity was not of that profound, constant, and consistent kind which deserves the stronger name of earnestness. It did not answer to the best description in poetry of the progress of such a spirit, which goes on — " Like to the Pontick sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps right on To the Propontick and the Hellespont." ^ It was a sincerity such as the falsest and the most hollow of men must express when stung to the quick ; for hath not he, as well as a Jew, " eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Is he not fed with the same food, and hurt by the same weapons ? If you prick him, does he not bleed ? If you tickle him, does he not laugh ? If you poison him, does he not die ? And if you wrong him, does he not revenge?" Purpose, there- fore, in its genuine simplicity, and quiet, deep fixity, was awant- LORD BYRON. 31 iniT in Byron's cliaracter. And this greatly accounts for tlio wreck which he became; and for that misery — a misery which was wonderful, passing the wo of man — which sat down upon his spirit. Many accounts have been given of his grief. Macaulay says that he was a spoiled child. Shelley declares — " The thought that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methought, his eagle spirit blind By gazing at its own exceeding light." But the plain prose and English of it lay in his union of intensity of power with the want of intensity of purpose. He was neither one thing nor yet another. Life with him Avas neither, on the one hand, an earnest, single-eyed eifort, nor was it, could it be, a mere display. He believed, and trembled as he believed, that it was a serious thing to die, but did not sufficiently, if at all, feel that it was as " serious a thing to live." He would not struggle: he must shine ; but could not be content with mere shining without struggle. And hence, ill at ease with himself, aimless and hope- less, " like the Cyclops — mad with blindness," he turned to bay against society — man — and his Maker. And hence, amid all that he has said to the world — and said so eloquently, and said so mournfully, and said amid such wide, and silent, and profound attention — he has told it little save his own sad story. We pass, secondly, to speak of the relation in which he stood to his age. The relations in which a man stands to his age are perhaps threefold. He is either before it or behind it, or exactly on a level with it. He is either its forerunner; or he is dragged as a captive at its chariot- wheels ; or he walks calmly, and step for step, along with it. We behold in Milton the man before his age — not, indeed, in point of moral grandeur or mental power; fox-, remember, his age was the age of the Puritans, the age of Hampden, Selden, Howe, Vane, and of Cromwell, who was a greater wi'iter than Milton himself — only it was with the sword that he wrote — and whose deeds were quite commensurate with Milton's words. But, in point of liberality of sentiment and width of view, the poet strode across entire centuries. We see in Southey the man behind his age, who, indeed, in his youth, took a rash and rapid race in advance, but returned like a beaten dog, cowed, abashed, with downcast head, and tail between his legs, and remained, for the rest of his life, aloof from the great movements of society. AVe behold in Brougham one whom once the age was proud to claim as its child and champion, the ex- press "image of its bustling, restless, versatile, and onward cha- racter, and of whom we still at least say, with a sigh, he might have been the man of his time. In which of these relations, is it asked, did Byron stand to his age ? We are forced to answer, Tn none of them. He was not before his age in anything 32 LOUD BYRON. — in opinion, or in feeling. He was not, in all of many things, disgracefnlly behind it; nor did he move with equal and measured step in its procession. He stood to the age in a most awkward and uncertain attitude. He sneered at its advancement, and he lent money, and ultimately lost his life, in attempting to promote it. He spoke with uniform contempt of, and imitated as uniformly, the masterpieces of its literature. He abused Wordsworth in public, and in private " rolled him as a sweet morsel under his tongue;" or rather, if you believe himself, took him as a drastic dose, to purify his bilious and unhappy nature, by the stron2;est contrasted element that he could find. He often reviled and ridiculed revealed religion, and yet read the Bible more faithfully and statedly than most professed Christians — ^made up in superstition what he wanted in faith — had a devout hori'or at beginning his poems, undertaking his journeys, or paring his nails on a Friday — and, had he lived, would probably have ended, like his own Giaour, as " brother Byron," with hair shirt and ii'on-spiked girdle, in some Achaian or Armenian convent. He habitually trampled on, and seems sometimes to have really despised, the opinion of the public; and yet, in some points, felt it so keenly, that, says Ebenezer Elliot, " he would have gone into hysterics had a tailor laughed at him." And although, when the "Edinburgh Review" sought to crush him like a worm, he rose from the heel a fiery, flying serpent ; yet, to the assaults of the meaner creatures of the press, he was pervious all over, and allowed minnikin arrows, which were beneath his laughter, to rouse his rage. Absurd and ludicrous the spectacle of this Laocoon, covered from head to foot with the snakes of supernal vengeance, bearing their burden with deep agonised silence, and yet starting and shrieking upon the application of a thorn, which the hand of some puny passing malignant had thrust into his foot. In one respect, we grant that Byi-on was the spirit of the age; he was the representative of its wants, its weakness, its 'discontents, its dark unrest — but not of its aspirations, its widen- ing charity, and its hopeful tendencies. His voice was the deep vague moan of the world's dream — his writhing anguish, the last struggle of its troubled slumber: it has since awaked, or is awakening, and, " as a dream when one awakeneth," it is des- pising, too much despising, his image. He stood high, yet help- less, above our transition period, and all the helpless and the hopeless rallied round to constitute him first magistrate over a city in flames — supreme ruler in a blasted and ruined realm. In one thing he was certainly a prophet; namely, a prophet of evil. As misery Avas the secret sting of all his inspiration, it be- came the invariable matter of all his song. In some of his poems, you have misery contemplating ; in others, misery weeping aloud ; in others, misery revolving and reproducing the past; in others. LORD BYRON. 33 misery bursting tlie confines of the -workl, as if in search of a wider hell than that in which it felt itself environed ; in others, misery stopping to turn and rend its real or imaginary foes; and in others, misery breaking out into hollow, hopeless, and heartless laughter. (What a terrible thing is the laitgli of the imhappy ! It is the very " echo to the seat w'here sorrow is throned.") But in all, you have misery: and whether he re- turns the old thunder in a voice of kindred power and majesty, or sings an evening song with the grasshopper at his feet — smiles the smile of bitterness, or sheds the bui-ning tears of anger — his voice still speaks of desolation, mourning, and wo; the vocabulary of grief labours under the demands of his melancholy genius; and never, never more, till this scene of tears and sighs be ended, shall Ave meet with a more authentic and profound ex- pounder of the wretchedness of man. And as such we deem him to have done good service; first, because he who approaches to- ward the bottom of human wo, proves that it is not altogether bottomless, liowever deep; because, if human grief spring from human greatness, in unveiling the grief he is illustrating the grandeur of man ; and because the writings of Byron have saved us, in this country, what in France has been so pernicious, "the literature of desperation : " they are a literature of despera- tion in themselves; they condense into one volume what in France has been diluted throughout many, and, consequently, our country has drained off at one draught, and survived the experiment, the poison which our neighbours have been sipping for years to their deadly harm. Thus, on the whole, we regard Byron neither as, in any sense, a creator, nor wholly as a creature of his period; but rather as a stranger entangled in the passing stream of its crowd, imper- fectly adjusted to its customs, indifferently reconciled to its laws — among men, but not of them — a man of the tvorki, but not a man of the age; and who has rather fallen furiously through it — spurning its heights, and seeking its depths — than left on it any deep or definite impression. Some men are buried and straight- way forgotten — shovelled out of memory as soon as shovelled into the tomb. Others are buried, and from their graves, through the hands of ministering love, arise fragrant flowers and verdant branches, and thus are they, in a subordinate sense, " raised in glory." Others, again, lie down in the dust, and though no blossom or bough marks the spot, and though the timid shun it at evening-tides as a spot unblessed — yet, forgotten it can never be, for tliere lies the record of a great guilty life extinct, and the crown of crime sits silent and shadowy on the tombstone. This is Byron's memorial in the age. But, as even on Nero's tomb "some hand unseen strewed flowers," and as " nothing dies but something mourns," let us lay a frail garland upon the sepulchre D 34 LORD BTKOW. of a ruin — itself a desolation — and say requiescat in pace, as we hurry on. We come, thirdly, to speak of the leading features of his artistic execution, and the materials which his genius used. And here there are less mingled feelings to embarrass the critical con- templator. Strong, direct intellect, descriptive force, and per- sonal passion, seem the main elements of Byron's poetical power. He sees clearly, he selects judiciously for effect from among the points he does see, and he paints them with a pencil dipped in his own fiery heart. He was the last representative of the English chai'acter of mind. His lordly independence and high-spirited- ness; his fearless avowal of his prejudices, however narrow, and passions, hov/ever coarse; his constant clearness and decision of tone and of style; his manly vigour and directness; his strong imreasoning instinctive sense; his abhorrence of mysticism; and his frequent caprices — all savoured of that literature which had reared D)yden, Pope, and Johnson; and every peculiarity of the English school seems to have clustered in and around him, as its last splendid specimen. Since then our higher litera- ture is rapidly charging with the German element. Byron was ultimus Romanorum — the last, and with the exception of Shakspere and Hilton, the greatest lyurehj English poet. His manner had generally all the clearness and precision of sculpture; indeed his clearness serves often to disguise his depth. As ob- scurity sometimes gives an air of mystic profundity and solemn grandeur to a shallow puddle, so, on the other hand, we have seen pools among the mountains, whose pellucidity made them appear less profound, and where every small shining pebble was a bright liar as to the real depth of the waters; such pools are many of the poems of Byron, and, we may add, of Campbell. His dominion over the darker passions is one of the most ob- vious features in his poetic character. He rode in a chariot draw^n, if we may use the figure, by those horses described in the visions of tlie Apocalypse,, "whose heads were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brim- stone." And supreme is his management of these dreadful coursers. Wherever human nature is fiercest and gloomiest — wherever furnace- bosoms have been heated seven times hotter by the unrestrained passions and the torrid suns of the east and the south — wherever man verges toward the animal or the fiend — wherever misanthropes have folded their arms, and taken their desperate attitude — wherever stands "the bed of sin, delirious with its dread" — wherever devours " the worm that cannot sleep, and never dies" — there the melancholy muse of Byron finds its subjects and its haunts. Driven from a home in his country, he seeks it in the mansions of all unhappy hearts, which open gloomily, and admit him as their tenant and their bard. To LOUD BYROX. 35 escape from one's self is the desire of many, of all, the miserable — the desire of the drunkard, of the opium-eater, of those who plunge into the vortex of any dissipation, who indulge in any de- licious dream ; but it is the singularity of Byron that he uniformly escapes from himself into something worse and more miserable. His being transmigrates into a darker and more demoniac shape; he becomes an epicure even in wretchedness; he has supped full of common miseries, and must create and exhaust imaginary horrors. Wiiat infinite pity that a being so gifted, and that might have been so noble, should find it necessary perpetually to evade himself! Hence his writings abound, more than those of other authors, with lines and phrases which seem to concentrate all misery within them — with texts for misanthropes, and mottoes for the mouths of suicides. " Years all winters" — what a gasp is that, and how characteristic of him to whose soul summer had not come, and spring had for ever faded ! The charge of affec- tation has often been brought against Byron's proclamations of personal wo. But no one, we believe, was ever a constant and consistent hypocrite in such a matter as misery; and we think we can argue his sincerity, not merely from his personal declara- tions, but from this fact, that all the characters into whom he shoots his soul are unhappy. Tasso writhing in the dungeon, Dante prophesying evil, not to speak of imaginary heroes, such as Conrad, Alp, the Giaour, and Childe Harold, betray in Avhat direction ran the master current of his soul; and as the bells and bubbles upon the dark pool form an accurate measurement of its depth, so his mirth, in its wildness, recklessness, and utter want of genuine gaiety, tells sad tales about the state of a heart which neither on earth nor in heaven could find aught to cheer or com- fort it. Besides those intensely English qualities which we have enu- merated as Byron's, there sprung out from him, and mainly through the spur of wo, a higher power than appeared originally to belong to his nature. After all his faculties seemed fully developed, and after critics and craniologists had formed their unalterable estimate of them, he began, as if miraculously, to grow into a loftier shape and stature, and compelled these same sapient judges, slowly and reluctantly, to amend their conclu- sions. In his " Cain," his " Heaven and Earth," and his " Vision of Judgment," he exhibited the highest form of the faculty divine — the true afilatus of the bard. He seemed to rise consciously into his own region; and, certainly, for gloomy grandeur and deep, desolate beauty, these productions surpass all the writings of the period. Now, for the lir.st lime, men saw the Pandemonian palace of his soul fully lit, and they trembled at its ghastly splendour. Yet, curious it is to remark that those were precisely the poems which the public at first received most coldly. Those 36 LORD BYRON. who shouted applause when he issued the two first elegant, but comparatively shallow, cantos of " Childe Harold," which were the reflection of other minds, shrank from him when he displayed the terrible riches of his own. We need only mention the materials on which Byron's genius fed — and, indeed, we must substitute the singular term — for his material was not manifold, but one: it was the history of his own heart that his genius reproduced in all his poems. His poetry was the mirror of himself. In considering, fourthly, the more characteristic of his works, we may divide them into his juvenile productions, his popular, and his proscribed works. His juvenile productions testified to nothing but the power of his passions, the strength of his ambi- tion, and the uncertainty of his aims. His " Hours of Idleness" was, in one respect, the happiest hit he ever made: it was fortu- nate enough to attract abuse from the highest critical authority in the empire, and thereby stirred his pride, and effectually roused his faculties. It required a scorching heat to hatch a Byron ! In his " English Bards" he proved himself rather a pugilist than a poet. It is the work of a man of Belial, " flown with insolence and ivine." His popular productions were principally written when he was still a favourite son of society, the idol of drawing- rooms, and the admired, as well as observed, of all observers. " Childe Hai'old" is a transcription of the serious and jnihlishable part of his journal, as he travelled in Greece, Spain, and Italy. "' The Giaour" is a powerful half-length picture of himself. " The Bride of Abydos" is a tender and somewhat maudlin memory of Greece. " The Corsair" was the work of one fort- night, and seems to have brought one period of his life, as well as of his popularity, to a glittering point. In all this class of his poems we see him rather revolving the memory of past, than encountering the reality of present, misery. You have pen- sive sentiment rather than quick and fresh anguish. But his war with society was now about to begin in right earnest; and in prophetic anticipation of this, he wrote his "Parisina" and his " Siege of Corinth." These were the first great drops of the thunder-storm he was soon to pour down upon the world ; and the second of them, in its heat and frenzied haste, proclaims a troubled and distracted state of mind. In referring his medical advisers to it as a proof of his mental insanity, he rather blun- dered; for, although it wants the incoherence, it has the fury of madness. It is the most rapid and furious race he ever ran to escape from himself. Then came his open breach with English society, his separation from his lady, and his growling retreat to his Italian den. But ere yet he plunged into that pool, where the degradation of his genius, and where its power were perfect, he must turn round, and close in wilder, loftier measures the sad LORD BYRON. 37 song of " Cliilde Harold," which in life's summer he had begun ; and strange it was to mark, in those two last cantos, not only their deepened power and earnestness, but their multiplied sorrow. He seemed to have gone away to Addison's " jMountain of Miseries," and exchanged one burden for a worse — sorrow for despair. He had fallen so low, that suicide had lost its charms : and when one falls beneath the suicide point, his misery is perfect ; for his quarrel then is not with life but with beinc/. Yet how hor- ribly beautiful his conversation with the dust of empires — Avith the gigantic skeleton of Rome — with the ocean, which meets him like that simulacrum of the Sea which haunted the madness of Caligula — Avith all the mighty miserable in the past — with those spirits which he summons from the "vasty deep" — or with those ill-favoured ones "who walk the shadow of the vale of death." He speaks to them as their equal and kindred spirit. " Hell from beneath is moved to meet him at his coming: they speak, and say unto him. Art thou become like unto us?" As another potentate, do those "Anarchs old" — Orcus, Hades, and the " dreaded Name of Demogorgon" — admit him into their company, and make him free of the privileges of their dreary realm. Having thus taken a last proud farewell of society, with all its forms and conventionalities, he turned him to the task of pouring out his envenomed and disappointed spirit in works which society v/as as certain to proscribe as it was to peruse; and there fol- lowed that marvellous series of poems to which we have already referred as his most peculiar and powerful productions — most powerful, because most sincere. And yet the public proved how false and worthless its former estimate of Byron's genius had been, by denouncing those, his best writings, not merely for their wickedness, but for their artistic execution. It is humiliating to revert to the reviews and newspapers of that period, and to read the language in which they speak of " Cain," " Sardanapalus," and the " Vision of Judgment," uniformly treating them as miserable fallings-off from his former self — beneath even the standard of his " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." " Cain" we regard not only as Byron's noblest production, but as one of the finest poems in this or any language. It is such a work as Milton, had he been miserable, Avould liave written. Tliere is nothing in " Paradise Lost" superior to Cain's flight with Lucifer through the stars, and nothing in Shakspci'c superior to his con- versations with his wife Adah. We speak simply of its merits as a work of art — its object is worthy of all condemnation: that is, to paint a more soured and savage Manfred, engaged in a contro- versy, not merely with himself, but with tlie system of which he is one diseased and desperate member ; in the unequal strife overwhelmed, and, as if the crush of Omnipotence were not enough, bringing down after him, in his fall, the weight of a 38 LORD BYRON. brother's blood; and the object of the fable is not, as it ought to have been, to show the madness of all selfish struggle against the laws of the universe, but to more than intimate the poet's belief, that the laws which occasion such a struggle are cruel and unjust. There is an unfair distribution of misery and guilt in the story. The misery principally accrues to Cain; but a large proportion of the guilt is caught, as by a whirlwind, and flies up in the face of his Maker. The great crime of the poem is not that its hero utters blasphemies, but that you shut it with a doubt whether these blasphemies be not true. Milton wrote his gi'cat poem to "justify the ways of God to man;" Byron's object seems to be, to justify the ways of man to God — even his wildest and most desperate doings. The pleading is eloquent, but hopeless. It is the bubble on the ridge of the cataract praying not to be carried over and hurried on. Equally vain it is to struggle against those austere and awful laws by which moments of sin expand into centuries of punishment. Yet this was Byron's own life- long struggle, and one which, like men who fight their battles o'er again in sleep, he renewed again and again in every dream of his imagmation. " The Vision of Judgment," unquestionably the best abused, is also one of the best, and by no means the most profane, of his productions. It sprung from the savage disgust produced in his mind by Southey's " double-distilled" cant, in that poem of his on the death of George III. — which, reversing the usual case, now lives suspended by a tow-line from its caricature. All other hatred — that of Johnson — that of Burke — that of Juvenal — that of all, save Junius — is tame and maudlin compared to the wrath of Byron exj^ressed in this poem. Scorn often has the effect of cooling and carrying off" rage — but here " the ground burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire." His very contempt is molten ; his tears of laughter, as well as of misery, fall in burning showers. In what single lines has he concentrated the mingled essence of the coolest contempt, and the hottest indignation I " A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn. A worse king never left a realm undone." " When the gorgeous coffin was laid low, It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold The rottenness of eighty years in gold." " ' Passion ! ' replied the phantom dim, ' I loved my country and I hated him.' " There spoke the authentic shade of Junius, or at least a spirit worthy of contending with liim for the honour of being the " Best Hater" upon record. And yet, mixed with the strokes of ribaldry, are touches of a grandeur which he has rarelv elsewhere aproached. His poetry LORD BYRON. 39 always rises above itself, when painting the faded splendour wan — the steadfast gloom — the hapless magnanimity of the jn-ince of darkness. With perfect ease he seems to enter into the soul, and fill up the measure and stature of the awful personage. It were unpardonable, even in a rapid review, to omit all notice of " Don Juan," which, if it bring our notion of the man to its lowest point, exalts our idea of the poet.- Its great charm is its conversational ease. How coolly and calmly he bestrides his Pegasus even when he is at the gallop. With what exquisitely quiet and quick transitions does he pass from humour to pathos, and make you laugh and cry at once, as you do in dreams. It is less a man writing, than a man resigning his soul to his readei*. To use Scott's beautiful figure — " The stanzas fall off as easily as the leaves from the autumnal tree." You stand under a shower of withered gold. And, in spite of the endless touches of wit, the general impression is most melancholy; and not Rasselas, nor Timon, casts so deep a shadow on the thoughtful reader as the " very tragical mirth" of Don Juan. In settling, lastly, his rank as a poet, we may simply say, that he must be placed, on the whole, beneath and apart from the first class of poets, such as Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakspere, and Goethe. Often, indeed, he seems to rush into their company, and to stand among them, like a daring boy amid his seniors, measuring himself proudly with their superior stature. And, possibly, had he lived, he might have ultimately taken his place amongst them, for it was in his power to have done this. But life was denied him. The wild steed of his passions — like his own " Mazeppa" — carried him furiously into the wilderness, and dashed him down into premature death. And he now must take his place as one at the very head of the second rank of poets, and arrested when he was towering up toward the first. His name has been frequently but injudiciously coupled with that of Shelley. This has arisen principally from their acciden- tal position. They found themselves together one stormy night in the streets, having botli been thrust out, though for very difier.- ent reasons, by the strong arm from their homes. In that cold, desolate, moonless night, they chanced to meet — they entered into conversation — they even tried, by drawing near each other, to administer a little kindly warmth and encouragement. Men, seeing them imperfectly in the lamp-light, classed them together as two dissolute and disorderly blackguards. And, alas, when the morning came that might have accurately discriminated them, both were Ibund lying dead in the streets. In point of purpose, temperament, tendency of intellect, poetical creed, feelings, sen- timents, habits, and character, no two men could be more dis- similar. We remember a pilgrimage we made some years ago to Loch- 40 LORD BYRON. nagar. As we ascended, a mist came down over the hill, like a veil dropped by some jealous beauty over her own fair face. At length the summit was reached, though the prospect was denied us. It was a proud and thrilling moment. What though dark- ness was all around ? It was the venj atmosphere that suited the scene. It was " dark Lochnagar." And only think how fine it was to climb up and clasp its cairn — to lift a stone from it, to be in after-time a memorial of our journey — to sing tlie song which made it glorious and dear, in its own proud drawing-room, Avith those great fog-curtains floating ai'ound — to pass along the brink of its precipices — to snatch a fearful joy, as we leant over, and hung down, and saw from beneath the gleam of eternal snow shining up from its hollows, and columns, or i-ather perpendicular seas of mist, streaming up upon the wind " Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, Where every wave breaks on a living shore, Heap'd with the damn'd, like pebbles" — tinged, too, here and there, on their tops, by gleams of sunshine, the farewell beams of the dying day. It was the highest moment we ever experienced. We had stood upon many hills — in sun- shine and in shade, in mist and in thunder — but never had be- fore, nor hope to have again, such a feeling of the grandeur of this lower universe — such a sense of horrible sublimity. Nay, we question if there be a mountain in the empire, which, though seen in similar circumstances, could awaken the same emotions in our minds. It is not its loftiness, though that be great — nor its bold outline, nor its savage loneliness, nor its mist-loving pre- cipices, but the associations which crown its crags with a " pecu- liar diadem" — its identification with the image of a poet, who, amid all his fearful errors, had, perhaps more than any of the age's bards, the power of investing all his career — yea, to every corner which his fierce foot ever touched, or which his genius ever sung — with profound and melancholy interest. We saw the name Byron written in the cloud-characters above us. We saw his genius sadly smiling in those gleams of stray sunshine which gilded the darkness they could not dispel. We found an emblem of his passions in that flying rack, and of his character in those lowering precipices. We seemed to hear the wail of his restless spirit in the wild sob of the wind, fainting and struggling up under its burden of darkness. Nay, we could fancy that this hill was designed as an eternal monument to his name, and to image all those peculiarities which make that name for ever illustrious. Not the loftiest of his country's poets, he is the most sharply and terribly defined. In magnitude and round completeness, he yields to many; in jagged, abi'upt, and passionate projection of his own shadow over the world of literature, to none. The LORD BYRON. 41 Genius of convulsion, a dire attraction, dwells around him, which leads many to hang over, and some to leap down, his jn-ecipices. Volcanic as he is, the coldness of wintry selfishness too often col- lects in the hollows of his verse. He loves, too, the cloud and the thick darkness, and comes " veiling all the lightnings of his song in sorrow." So, like Byron beside Scott and Wordsworth, does Lochnagar stand in the presence of his neighbour giants, Ben Macdhui, and Ben-y-boord, less lofty, but more fiercely eloquent in its jagged outline, reminding us of the via of the forked lightning, which it seems dumbly to mimic, projecting its clifls like quenched batteries against earth and heaven, with the cold of snow in its heart, and Avith a coronet of mist round its gloomy brow. No poet, since Homer and Ida, has thus everlastingly shot his genius into the heart of one great mountain, identifying him- self and his song with it. Not Horace with Sovacte — not Words- worth with HelvcUyn — not Coleridge with Mont Blanc — not Wilson with the Black Mount — not even Scott with the Eildons — all these are still common property, but Lochnagar is Byron's own — no poet will ever venture to sing it again. In its dread circle none durst walk but he. His allusions to it are not nume- rous, but its peaks stood often before his eye: a recollection of its grandeur served more to colour his line than the glaciers of the Alps, the cliffs of Jura, or the " thunder hills of fear," which he beard in Cliimari; even from the mountains of Greece he was carried back to Morven, and " Lochnagar, with Ida, looked o'er Troy." Hence the severe Dante-like, monumental, mountainous cast of his better poetry; for we firmly believe that the sceneiy of one's youth gives a permanent bias and colouring to the genius, the taste, and the style, i. e., if thei'e be an intellect to receive an impulse, or a taste to catch a tone. Many, it is true, bred ia cities, or amid common scenery, make up for the lack by early travel; so did Milton, Coleridge, and Wilson. But who may not gather, from the tame tone of Cowper's landscapes, that he had never enjoyed such opportunities ? And who, in Pollok's power- ful but gloomy poem, may not detect the raven hue which a sterile moorland scenery had left upon his mind. Have not, again, the glad landscape of the Howe of the Mearns, and the prospect from the surmounting Hill of Garvock, left a ])leasing trace upon the mild pages of Beattie's " jNIinstnd?" J)id not Coila colour the genial soul of its poet ? Has not the scenery of his " own romantic town" made much of the prose and poetry of Sir Walter Scott what it is? So, is it mere fancy which traces the stream of Byron's poetry, in its light and its darkness, its bitterness and its brilliance, to this smitten x'ock in the wilder- ness — to the cliffs of Lochnagar? 42 GEORGE CRABBE. To be the poet of the waste places of Creation — to adopt the oi'phans of the mighty mother — to wed her dowerless daughters — to find out the beauty which has been spilt in tiny drops in her more unlovely regions — to echo tlie low music which arises from even her stillest and most sterile spots — was the mission of Crabbe, as a descriptive poet. He preferred the Leahs to the Rachels of nature: and this he did not merely that his lot had cast him amid such scenes, and that early associations had taught him a pi'ofound interest in them, but apparently from native taste. He actually loved that beauty which stands shivering on the brink of barrenness — loved it for its timidity and its loneli- ness. Nay, he seemed to love barrenness itself; brooding over its dull page till there arose from it a strange lustre, which his eye distinctly sees, and which in part he makes visible to his readers. It was even as the darkness of cells has been sometimes peopled to the view of the solitary prisoner, and spiders seemed friends in the depths of his dungeon. We can fancy, in Crabbe's mind, a feeling of pity for those unloved spots, and those neglected glories. We can fancy him saying, " Let the gay and the aspiring mate with nature in her towering altitudes, and flatter her more favoured scenes; I will go after her into her secret retirements, bring out her bashful beauties, praise what none are willing to praise, and love what there are few to love." From his early circumstances, besides, there had stolen over his soul a shade of settled though subdued gloom. And for sympathy with this, he betook himself to the sterner and sadder aspects of nature, where he saw, or seemed to see, his own feelings reflected, as in a sea of melancholy faces, in dull skies, waste moorlands, the low beach, and the moaning of the waves upon it, as if weary of their eter- nal wanderings. Such, too, at moments, was the feeling of Burns, when he strode on the scaur of the Nith, and saw the waters red and turbid below ; or walked in a windy day by the side of a plantation, and heard the " sound of a going" upon the tops of the trees ; or when he exclaimed, with a calm simplicity of bitterness which is most affecting — " The leafless trees my fancy please: Their fate resembles mine." Oh ! where, indeed, can the unhappy repair, to escape from their own sorrows, or worse, from the unthinking glee or constitutional cheerfulness of others, more fitly than into the wastes and naked places of nature ? She will not then and there seem to insult them with her laughing luxuriance — her foliage fluttering, as if GEORGE CRABBE. 43 in vain display, with the glossy gilding of her flowers, or the sunny sparkle and song of her streamlets. But she will uplift a mightier and older voice. She will soothe them by a sterner ministry. She will teach them "old truths, abysmal truths, awful truths." She- will answer their sighs by the groans of the creation travelling in pain; suck up their tears in the sweat of her great agonies; reflect their tiny wrinkles in those deep stabs and scars on her forehead, which speak of struggle and contest; give back the gloom of their brows in the frowns of her forests, her mountain solitudes, and her waste midnight darkness; infuse something, too, of her own sublime expectancy into their spirits; and dismiss them from her society, it may be sadder, but cer- tainly wiser men. How admirably is nature suited to all moods of all men! In spring, she is gay with the light-hearted; in summer, gorgeous as its sun to those fiery spirits who seem made for a warmer day; in autumn, she spreads over all hearts a mel- low and unearthly joy; and even in winter — when her temple is deserted of the frivolous and the timid, who quit it along with the smile of the sun — she attracts her own few but faithful votaries, who love her in her naked sculpture, as well as in her glowing pictorial hues, and who enjoy her solemn communion none the less that they enjoy it by themselves. To use the words of a forgotten poet, addressing spring — " Thou op'st a storehouse for all hues of rcen. To hardihood thou, blustering from the north, RoH'st dark — hast sighs for them that would complain ; Sharp winds to clear the head of wit and worth ; And melody for those that follow mirth ; Clouds for the gloomy ; tears for those that weep ; Flowers blighted in tlie bud for those that birth Untimely sorrow o'er; and skies where sweep Fleets of a thousand sail for them that plough the deep." Crabbe, as a descriptive poet, differs from other modern masters of the art, alike in his selection of subjects, and in his mode of treat- ing the subjects he does select. Byron moves overmature with a fastidious and aristocratic step — touching only upon objects already interesting or ennobled, upon battle-fields, castellated ruins, Italian palaces, or Alpine peaks. This, at least, is true of his " Childe Harold," and his earlier pieces. In the later produc- tions of his pen, he goes to the opposite extreme, and alights, with a daring yet dainty foot, upon all shunned and forbidden things — reminds us of the raven in the Deluge, which found rest for the sole of her foot upon carcasses, where the dove durst not stand — rushes in where modesty and reserve alike have forbidden en- trance — and ventures, though still not like a lost archangel, to tread the burning marl of hell, the dim gulf of Hades, the shadowy ruins of the prc-Adamitic world, and the crystal pave- 44 GEORGE CRABBE. ment of heaven. Moore practises a principle of more delicate selection, resembling some nice fly whicli should alight only upon llowers, whether natural or artificial, if so that flowers they seemed to be; thus, from sunny bowers, and moonlit roses, and gardens, and blushing skies, and ladies' dresses, does the Bard of Erin extract his finest poetry. Shelley and Coleridge attach themselves almost exclusively to the great — understanding this term in a wide sense, as including much that is grotesque, and much that is homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates to a proper pitch of keeping with the rest. Their usual walk is swelling and buskined: their common talk is of great rivers, great forests, great seas, great continents; or else of comets, suns, constellations, and firmaments — as that of all half-mad, wholly miserable, and opium-fed genius is apt to be. Sir Walter Scott, who seldom grappled with the gloomier and grander features of his country's scenery (did he* ever describe Glencoe or Foyers, or the wildernesses around Ben Macdhui ?), had (need we say ?) the most exquisite eye for all picturesque and romantic aspects in sea, shore, or sky; and in the quick perception of this element of the picturesque lay his principal, if not only, descriptive power. Wordsworth, again, seems always to be standing above, though not stooping over, the objects he describes. He seldom looks up in wra2>t admiration of what is above him; the bending furze- bush and the lowly broom — the nest lying in tlie level clover- field — the tarn sinking away seemingly before his eye into darker depths — the pi"ospect from the mountain summit cast far beneath him; at highest, the star burning low upon the mountain's ridge, like an " uutended watchfire:" these are the objects Avliich he loves to describe, and these may stand as emblems of his lowly yet aspiring genius. Crabbe, on the other hand, goes down on his knees, that he may more accurately describe such objects as the marsh given over to desolation from immemorial time — the slush left by the sea, and revealing the dead body of the suicide — the bare crag and the stunted tree, diversifying the scenery of the saline ^^ilderness — -the house on the heatli, creaking in the storm, and telling strange stories of misery and crime — the jiine in some wintry w^ood, wliich had acted as the gallows of some miserable man — the gorse surrounding with yellow light the en- • A Clitic in a London periodical accused us of kicking at Sir Walter in this remark, and instanced the " Pirate" and " Old Mortality" as disproving it. He miglit with far more force have referred to the " Lord of the Isles," where he describes StafFa and Skje. But we distinctly said " seldom," not "never." As to "kicking," we are "seldom" in the habit of kicking any living creature, except such loathsome reptiles as are sometimes seen crawl- ing even in gardens, and whose stupid poison, although imbecile to hurt the passengers, is apt to pollute the ground, and to give the gardens, too, an evil report. But for us to abuse Sir Walter.' GEOKGE CRABBE. 45 campment of the gipsies — the few timid flowers, or " weeds of glorious feature," which adorn the brink of ocean — the snow put- ting out the fire of the pauper, or lying unmelted on his pillow of death — the web of the spider blinding the cottager's window — the wheel turned by the meagre hand of contented or cursing penury — the cards trembling in the grasp of the desperate de- bauchee — the day stocking forming the cap by night, and tlie garter at midnight — the dunghill becoming the accidental grave of the drunkai'd — the poorhouse of forty years ago, with its patched windows, its dirty environs, its moist and miserable walls, its in mates all snuiF, and selfishness, and sin — the receptacle of the outlawed members of Englisii society (liow difterent from " Poosie Nancy's !"), with its gin-gendered quarrels, its appalling blasphe- mies, its deep debauches, its ferocity without fun, its huddled murders, and its shrieks of disease dumb in tlie uproar around — the Bedlam of forty years ago, with its straw on end under the restlessness of the insane; its music of groans, and shrieks, and mutterings of still more melancholy meaning; its keepers cold and stern, as the snow-covered cliffs above the wintry cataract; its songs dying away in despairing gurgles down the miserable throat ; its cells liow devoid of monastic silence ; its " confusion worse confounded," of gibbering idiocy, monomania absorbed and absent from itself as well as from the world, and howling frenzy; its daylight saddened as it shines into the dim, vacant, or glaring eyes of those wretched men : and its moonbeams shedding a more congenial ray upon the solitude, or the sick-bed, or the death- bed of derangement — such familiar faces of want, guilt, and wo — of nakedness, sterility, and shame, does Crabbe delight in showing us; and is, in very truth, "nature's stei'nest painter, yet the best." In his mode of managing his descriptions, Crabbe is equally peculiar. Objects, in themselves counted com- monplace or disgusting, frequently become impressive, and even sublime, when surrounded by interesting circumstances — when shown in the moonlight of memory — when linked to strong passion — or when touched by the ray of imagination. Then, in Emerson's words, even the corpse is found to have added a solemn ornament to the house where it lay. But it is the pecu- liarity and the daring of this poet, that he often, not always, tries us with truth and nothing but truth, as if to bring the question to an issue — whether, in nature, absolute truth be not essential though severe poetry. On this (juestion, certainlj^ issue Avas never so fully joined before. In even Wordsworth's eye there is a misty glimmer of imagination, thi-ough wliicli all objects, low as well as high, are seen. Even his " five blue eggs" gleam upon him through a light which comes not from themselves — which comes, it may be, from the (ireat Bear, or Arcturus and his sons. And when he docs — as in some of his feebler verses — 46 GEORGE CRABBE. Strive to see out of this medium, he drops his mantle, loses hig Tision, and describes little better than would his own " Old Cum- berland Beggar." Shakspere in his witches' caldron, and Burns in " haly table," are shockingly circumstantial; but the element of imagination creeps in amid all the disgusting details, and the light that never was on sea or shore disdains not to rest on " eye of newt," " toe of frog," " baboon's blood," the garter that strangled the babe, the grey hairs sticking to the haft of the parricidal knife, and all the rest of the fell ingredients; Crabbe, on the other hand, would have described the five blue eggs, and, besides, the materials of the nest, and the kind of hedge where it was built, like a bird-nesting schoolboy; but he w^ould never have given the " gleam." He would as accurately as Hecate, Canidia, or Cuttysark, have made an inventory of the ingredients of the hell-broth, or of the curiosities on the " haly table," had they been presented to his eye: but could not have conceived them, nor would have slipped in that one flashing word, that single cross ray of imagination, which it required to elevate and startle them into high ideal life. And yet in reading his pictures of poorhouses, &c., we are compelled to say, " Well, that is poetry after all, for it is truth ; but it is poetry of comparatively a low order — it is the last gasp of the poetic spirit: and, moreover, perfect and matchless as it is in its kind, it is not worthy of the powers of its author, who can, and has, at other times risen into much loftier ground." We may illustrate still farther what we mean by comparing the different ways in which Crabbe and Foster (certainly a j^fose poet) deal with a library. Crabbe descinbes minutely and suc- cessfully the outer features of the volumes, their colours, clasps, the stubborn ridges of their bindings, the illustrations which adorn them, so well that you feel yourself among them, and they become sensible to touch almost as to sight. But there he stops, and sadly fails, we think, in bringing out the living and moral interest which gathers around a multitude of books, or even around a single volume. This Foster has amj^ly done. The speaking silence of a number of books, where, though it were the wide Bodleian or Vatican, not one whisper could be heard, and yet where, as in an antechamber, so many great spirits are wait- ing to deliver their messages — their churchyard stillness continu- ing even when their readers are moving to their pages, in joy or agony, as to the sound of martial instruments — their awaking, as from deep slumber, to speak with miraculous organ, like the shell which has only to be lifted, and " pleased it remembers its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs there" — their power of drawing tears, kindling blushes, awakening laughter, calming or quickening the motions of the life's blood, lulling to repose, or rousing to restlessness, often giving life to the soul, GEORGE CRABBE. 47 and sometimes giving death to tlie body — the meaning which radiates from their quiet countenances — the tale of shame or glory which their title-pages tell — the memories suggested by the character of their authors, and of the readers who have through- out successive centuries perused them — the thrilling thoughts excited by the sight of names and notes inscribed on their mar- gins or blank pages by hands long since mouldered in the dust, or by those dear to us as our life's blood, who had been snatched from our sides — the aspects of gaiety or of gloom connected with the bindings and the age of volumes — the effects of sunshine playing as if on a congregation of happy faces, making the duskiest shine, and the gloomiest be glad — or of shadow suffusing a sombre air over all — the joy of the proprietor of a large library, Avho feels that Nebuchadnezzar watching great Babylon, or Napo- leon reviewing his legions, Avill not stand comparison with him- self seated amid the broad maps, and rich prints, and numerous volumes which his wealth has enabled him to collect and his wisdom entitled him to enjo}'' — all such hieroglyphics of interest and meaning has Foster included and interpreted in one gloomy but noble meditation, and his introduction to Doddridge is the true " Poem on the Library." In Crabbe's descriptions the great want is of selection. He describes all that his eye sees with cold, stern, lingering accuracy — he marks down all the items of wretchedness, poverty, and vulorar sin — counts the racfs of the mendicant — and, as Hazlitt has it, desci'ibes a cottage like one Avho has entered it to distrain for rent. His copies, consequently, would be as displeasing as their originals, were it not that imagination is so much less vivid than eyesight, that we can endure in picture what we cannot in reality, and that our own minds, while reading, can cast that softening and ideal veil over disgusting objects which the poet himself has not sought, or has failed to do. Just as, in viewing even the actual scene, we might have seen it through tlie medium of imaginative illusion, so the same medium will more probably invest, and beautify, its transcript in the pages of the poet. As a moral poet and sketcher of men, Crabbe is characterised by a similar choice of subject and the same stern fidelity. The mingled yarn of man's everyday life — the plain homely virtues, or the robust and burly vices of Englishmen — the quiet tears which fall on humble beds — the passions which flame up in lowly bosoms — the amari aliquid, the deep and permanent bitterness which lies at the heart of the down-trodden English poor — the comedies and tragedies of the fireside — the lovers' (piarrels — the unhappy marriages — the vicissitudes of common fortunes — the <;arly deaths — the odd characters — the lingering superstitions — all the elements, in short, which make, up the simple annals of lowly or middling society, are the materials of this poet's song. Had he 48 GEOBGE CRABBE. been a Scottish clergyman, we should have said that he had ver- sified his Session-book; and certainly many curious chapters of human life might be derived from such a document, and much light cast upon the devious windings and desperate wickedness of the heart, as well as upon that inextinguishable instinct of good which resides in it. Crabbe, perhaps, has confined himself too exclusively to this circle of common things which he found lying around him. He has seldom burst its confines, and touched the loftier themes, and snatched the higher laurels which were also within his reach. He has contented himself with being a Lillo (with occasional touches of Shakspere) instead of something far greater. He has, however, in spite of this self-injustice, effected much. He has proved that a poet, who looks resolutely around him — who stays at home — who draws the realities which are near him, instead of the phantoms that are afar — who feels and records the passion and poetry of his daily life — may found a firm and enduring reputation. With the dubious exception of Cow- per, no one has made out this point so effectually as Crabbe. And in his mode of treating such themes, what strikes us first is his perfect coolness. Few poets have reached that calm of his "vvhich reminds us of Nature's own great quiet eye, looking down upon her monstrous births, her strange anomalies, and her more ungainly forms. Thus Crabbe sees the loathsome, and does not loathe — handles the horrible, and shudders not — feels with firm finger the palpitating pulse of the infanticide or the murderer — and snuffs a certain sweet odour in the evil savours of putrefying misery and crime. This delight, however, is not an inhuman, but entirely an artistic delight — perhaps, indeed, springing from the very strength and width of his sympathies. AVe admire as well as wonder at that almost asbestos quality of his mind, through which he retains his composure and critical circumspection so cool amid the conflagrations of passionate subjects, which might have burned others to ashes. Few, indeed, can walk through such fiery furnaces unscathed. But Crabbe — what an admii'able physician had he made to a lunatic asylum ! How severely would he have "sifted out" every grain of poetry from those tumultuous exposures of the human mind! "What clean breasts had he forced the patients to make ! What tales had he wrung out from them, to which Lewis' tales of terror were feeble and trite! How he would have commanded them, by his mild, steady, and piercing eye ! And yet how calm would his brain have remained, when others, even of a more prosaic mould, were reeling in sym- pathy with the surrounding delirium ! It were, indeed, worth while inquiring how much of this coolness resulted from Crabbe's early practice as a surgeon. That combination of w^arm inward sympathy and outward phlegm — of impulsive benevolence and mechanical activity — of heart all fire and manner all ice — which GEORGE CRABBE. 49 distinguishes his poetry, is very characteristic of the medical pro- fession. In correspondence with this, Crabbe generally leans to the darker side of things. This, perhaps, accounts for his favour in the sight of Byron, who saw his own eagle-eyed fiuy at man cor- roborated by Crabbe's stern and near-sighted vision. And it was accounted for partly by Crabbe's early profession, partly by his early circumstances, and partly by the clerical office he assumed. Nothing so tends lo sour us with mankind as a general refusal on their part to give us bread. How can a man love a race which seems combined to starve him ? This misanthropical influence Crabbe did not entirel}' escape. As a medical man, too, he had come in contact with little else than human miseries and diseases; and as a clergyman, he had occasion to see much sin and sorrow: and these, combining with the melancholy incidental to the poetic temperament, materially discoloured his view of life. He became a searcher of dark — of the darkest bosoms; and we see him sit- ting in the gloom of the hearts of thieves, murderers, and maniacs, and watching the remorse, rancour, fury, dull disgust, ungratified appetite, and ferocious or stupified despair, which are their in- mates. And even when he pictures livelier scenes and happier characters, there steals over them a shade of sadness, reflected from his favourite subjects, as a dark, sinister countenance in a room will throw a gloom over many happy and beautiful faces beside it. In his pictures of life, we find an unfrequent but true pathos. This is not often, however, of the proibundest or most heart- rending kind. The grief he paints is not that which refuses to be comforted — whose expressions, like Agamemnon's face, must be veiled — which dilates almost to despair, and complains almost to blasphemy — and which, when it looks to heaven, it is " With that frantic air, Which seems to ask if a God be there." Crabbe's, as exhibited in "Phoebe Dawson," and other of his tales, is gentle, submissive; and its pathetic effects are produced by the simple recital of circumstances which might and often have occurred. It reminds us of the pathos of " Rosamund Gray," that beautiful story of Lamb's, of which we once, we regret to say, presumptuously pronounced an unfavourable oi)inion, but which has since commended itself to our heart of hearts, and compelled that tribute in tears which we liad denied it in words. Ilazlitt is totally wrong when he says that Crabbe carves a tear to the life in marble, as if his pathos were hard and cold, lie it the statuary of wo — has it, consequently, no truth or power? Have the chiseled tears of the Niobe never awakened other tears, fresh and burning, from their fountain ? Horace's vis me 50 GEORGE CRABBE. fiere, is not always a true principle. As the wit, who laughs not himself, often excites most laughter in others, so the calm recital of an aifecting narrative acts as the meek rod of Moses applied to the rock, and is answered in gushing torrents. You close Crabbe's tale of grief, almost ashamed that you have left so quiet a thing pointed and starred with tears. His pages, while sometimes wet with pathos, are never moist with humour. His satire is often pointed with wit, and sometimes irritates into invective; but of that glad, genial, and bright-eyed things we call humour (how well named, in its oily softness and gen tie, 'glitter !) he has little or none. Compare, in order to see this, his " Borough" with the " Annals of the Parish." How dry, though powerful, the one; how saj^pu the other! How profound the one; how pawhi the other! Crabbe goes through his "Borough," like a scavenger with a rough, stark, and stifi' besom, sweeping up all the filth : Gait, like a knowing watchman of the old school — a cannn Charlie — keeping a sharp look-out, but not averse to a sly joke, and having an eye to the humours as well as misdemeanours of the streets. Even his wit is not of the finest grain. It deals too much in verbal quibbles, puns, and antithesis with their points broken off. His puns are neither good nor bad — the most fatal and anti-ideal description of a pun that can be given. His quibbles are good enough to have excited the laugh of his curate, or gardener; but he forgets that the public is not so indulgent. And though often treading in Pope's track, he wants entirely those touches of satire, at once the lightest and the most wither- ing, as if dropped from the fingers of a malignant fairy— those taint whispers of poetic perdition — those drops of concentrated bitterness — those fatal bodkin-stabs — and those invectives, glit- tering all over with the polish of profound malignity— which are Pope's glory as a writer, and his shame as a man. We have repeatedly expressed our opinion, that in Crabbe there lay a higher power than he often exerted. We find evi- dence of this in his " Hall of Justice" and his " Eustace Grey." In these he is fairly in earnest. No longer dozing by his parlour fire overthe " J\ewspaper,"or napping in a corner of his "Library," or peeping in through the windows of the " Workhouse," or re- cording the select scandal of the " Borough," he is away out into the wide and open fields of highest passion and imagination. What a tale that " Hall of Justice" hears — to be paralleled only in the "Thousand and One Nights of the Halls of Eblis!"— a tale of misery, rape, murder, and furious despair; told, too, in language of such lurid fire as has been seen to shine o'er the graves of the dead ! But, in " Eustace Grey," our author's genius reaches its climax. Never was madness — in its misery — its remorse — the dark companions, " the ill-favoured ones," who cling to it in its wild way and will not let it go, although it GEORGE CRABBE. 51 curse them with the eloquence of hell — the visions it sees the scenery it creates and carries about with it in dreadful keeping — and the language it uses, high, aspiring, but broken as the wing of a struck eagle — so strongly and meltingly revealed. And, yet, around the dismal tale there hangs the breath of beauty; and, like poor Lear, Sir Eustace goes about crowned with flowers — the flowers of earthly poetry — and of a hope which is not of the earth. And, at the close, we feel to the author all that strange gratitude which our souls are constituted to enter- tain to those who have most powerfully wrung and tortured them. Would that Crabbe had given us a century of such things. We would have preferred to the " Tales of the Hall" — " Tales of Greyling Hall," or more tidings from the " Hall of Justice." It had been a dark Decameron, and brought out more eflectually what the " Village Poorhouse," and the sketches of Elliott have since done — the passions, miseries, crushed aspirations, and latent poetry, which dwell in the hearts of the plundered poor; as well as the wretchedness which, more punctually than their veriest menial, waits often behind the chairs, and hands the silver dishes of the great. We will not dilate on his other works individually. In glanc- ing back upon them as a whole, we will endeavour to answer the following questions: 1st, What was Crabbe's object as a moral poet ? 2dly, How far is he original as an artist ? 3dly, What is his relative position to his great contemporaries? And, 4thly, what is likely to be his fate with posterity? 1st, His object The great distinction between man and man, and author and author, is purpose. It is the edge and point of character; it is the stamp on the subscription of genius; it is the direction on the letter of talent. Character without it is blunt and torpid. Talent without it is a letter, which, undirected, goes no whither. Genius without it is bullion — sluggish, splendid, uncirculating. Purpose yearns after and secures artistic culture. It gathers, as by a strong suction, all tilings which it needs into itself. Crabbe's artistic object is tolerably clear, and has been already indicated. His moral purpose is not quite so apparent. Is it to satirise, or is it to reform vice? Is it pity, or is it contemjit, that actuates his song ? What are his plans for elevating the lower classes in the scale of society ? lias he any, or does he believe in the pos- sibility of their permanent elevation? Such questions are more easily asked than answered. We must say that we have failed to And in him any one overmastering and earnest object, subju- gating everything to itself, and producing that unity in all his works which the trunk of a tree gives to its smallest, its remotest, to even its withered leaves. And yet, without apj)arent intention, Crabljc has done good moral service. He has shed mucli light upon the condition of the poor. He has spoken in the name and 52 GEORGE CRABBE. Stead of the poor dumb mouths that could not tell their own sor- rows or sufferings to the world, lie has opened the mine, which Ebenezer Elliott and others, going to work with a firmer and more resolute purpose, have dug to its depths. 2dl7, His originality. — This has been questioned by some critics. He has been called a version, in coarser paper and print, of Goldsmith, Pope, and Cowper. His pathos comes from Goldsmith — his wit and satire from Pope — and his minute and literal description from Cowper. If this were true, it were as complimentary to him as his warmest admirer could wish. To combine the characteristic excellences of three true poets is no easy matter. But Crabbe has not combined them. His pathos wants altogether the naivete of sentiment and curiosa felicitas of expression which distinguish Goldsmith's " Deserted Village." He has something of Pope's terseness, but little of his subtlety, finish, or brilliant malice. And the motion of Cowper's mind and style in description differs as much from Crabbe's as the playful leaps and gambols of a kitten from the measured, downright, and indomitable pace of a hound — the one is the easiest, the other the severest, of describers. Resemblances, indeed, of a minor kind are to be found; but still Crabbe is as distinct from Gold- smith, Cowper, and Pope, as Byron from Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Originality consists of two kinds — one, the power of inventing new materials; and the other, of dealing with old materials in a new way. We do not decide whether the first of these implies an act of absolute creation ; it implies all we can conceive in an act of creative power ; from elements bearing to the result the relation which the Alphabet does to the "Iliad" — genius brings forth its bright progeny, and we feel it to be new. In this case, you can no more anticipate the effect from the elements than you can, from the knowledge of the letters, anticipate the words which are to be compounded out of them. In the other kind of originality, the materials bear a larger px-oportion to the result — they form an appreciable quantity in our calculations of what it is to be. They are found for the poet, and all he has to do is, with skill and energy, to construct them. Take, for instance, Shakspere's " Tempest," and Coleridge's " Anciente IMarinere" — of what more creative art can we conceive than is exemplified in these? Of course, we have all had beforehand ideas similar to — a storm, a desert island, a witch, a magician, a mariner, a hermit, a wedding-guest; but these are only the Alphabet to the spirits of Shakspere and Coleridge. As the sun, from the in- visible air, draws up in an instant all pomps of cloudy forms — paradises brighter than Eden, mirrored in waters, which blush and tremble as their reflection falls wooingly upon them — moun- tains, which seem to bury their snowy or rosy summits in the GEORGE CRABBE. 53 very heaven of heavens — thi-one-shaped splendours, worth)' of angels to sit on them, flushing and fading in the west — seas of aerial blood and fire — momentary cloud-crowns and golden ave- nues, stretching away into the azure infinite beyond them; — so, from such stuff as dreams are made of, from tlie mere empty air, do those wondrous magicians build up their new worlds, where the laws of nature are repealed — where all things are changed without any being confused — where the earth is empty, and the sky is peopled — wliere material beings are invisible, and where spiritual beings become gross and palpable to sense— wliere the skies are opening to show riches — where the isle is full of noises — where beings proper to this sphere of dream are met so often that you cease to fear them, however odd or mon- strous — where magic has power to shut now the eyes of kings, and now the great bright eye of ocean— where, at the bidding of the poet, new, complete, beautiful mythologies, at one time sweep across the sea, and anon dance down from the purple and mystic sky — where all things have a charmed life, the listening ground, the populous air, the still or the vexed sea, the human or the imaginai-y beings — and where, as in deep dreams, the most marvellous incidents ai-e most easily credited, slide on most softly, and seem most native to the place, the circum- stances, and the time. " This is creation" we exclaim ; nor did Ferdinand seem to Miranda a fresher and braver creature than does to us each strange settler whom genius has planted upon its own favourite isle. Critics may, indeed, take these imaginary beings — such as Caliban and Ariel — and analyse them into their constituent parts; but there will be some one element which escapes them — laughing, as it leaps away, at their bafiled sa- gacity, and proclaiming the original power of its Creator: as in tlie chemical analysis of an aerolite, amid the mere earthy consti- tuents, there is something which declares its unearthly origin. Take creation as meaning, not so much Deity bringing some- thing out of nothing, as Jiliiii(j tlie void ivith Ids Spirit, and genius will seem a lower form of the same power. The other kind of originality is, we think, that of Crabbe. He takes, not makes, his materials, lie finds a good foundation — wood and stone in plenty — and he begins laboriously, success- fully, and after a plan of his own, to build. If in any of his works he approaches to the higher property, it is in " Eustace Grey," who moves here and there, on his wild wanderings, us if to the rubl>ing of Aladdin's lamp. Tliis prepares us for coming to the third question. What is Crabbe's relative position to his great contemporary poets ? He belongs to the second class. He is not a philosophic poet, like Wordsworth. He is not, like Shelley, a Vates, moving upon the uncertain but perpetual and furious wind of his inspiration. 54 GEORGE CRABBE. He is not, like Byron, a demoniac exceeding fierce, and dwelling among the tombs. He is not, like Keats, a sweet and melan- choly voice, a tune bodiless, bloodless — dying away upon the waste air, but for ever to be i-emembered as men remember a melody they have heard in youth. He is not, like Coleridge, all these almost by turns, and, besides, a sacred poet, singing at times strains so sublime and holy, that they might seem snatches of the song of Eden's cherubim, or caught in trance from the song of JNIoses and the Lamb. To this mystic brotherhood Crabbe must not be added. He ranks with a lower but' still lofty band — with Scott (as a poet), and Moore, and Hunt, and Campbell, and Rogers, and ]3owles, and James Montgomery, and Southey; and surely they nor he need be ashamed of each other, as they shine in one soft and peaceful cluster. We are often tempted, with Lord Jeffrey, to pity poor poste- rity on this score. How is it to manage with the immense number of excellent works which this age has bequeathed, and is bequeathing it ? How is it to economise its time so as to read a tithe of them ? And should it in mere self-defence proceed to decimate, with what principle shall the process be carried on, and who shall be appointed to preside over it? Critics of the twenty-second centuxy, be merciful as well as just. Pity the disjecta raembra of those we thought mighty poets. Respect and fulfil our prophecies of immortality. If ye must carp and cavil, do not, at least, in mercy, abridge. Spare us the j^rospect of this last insult, an abridged copy of the '' Pleasures of Hope," or "Don Juan," a new abridgment. If ye must operate in this M^ay, be it on " 2>Iadoc," or the " Course of Time." Generously leave room for " O'Connor's Child" in the poet's corner of a journal, or for " Eustace Grey" in the space of a crown-piece. Surely, living in the Millennium, and resting under your vines and fig-trees, you will have more time to read than we, in this bustling age, who move, live, eat, drink, sleep, and die, at railway speed. If not, we fear the case of many of our poets is hopeless, and that others, besides the author of " Silent Love," would be wise to enjoy their present laurels, for verily there are none else for them. Seriously, we hope that much of Crabbe's writing will every year become less and less readable, and less and less easily un- derstood ; till, in the milder day, men shall have difliculty in be- lieving that such physical, mental, and moral degradation, as he describes, ever existed in Britain; and till, in future Encyclo- pi3edias, his name be found recorded as a powerful but barbarous writer, writing in a barbarous age. The like may be the case with many, who have busied themselves more in recalling the past or picturing the present, than in anticipating the future. But there are, or have been, among us a few who have plunged GEORGE CRABBE. 55 beyond their own period, nay, beyond "all ages" — who have seen and shown us the coming eras: " As in a cradled Hercules you trace The lines of empire in bis infant face" — and whose voice must go down, in tones becoming more authori- tative as they last, and in volume becoming vaster as they roll, like mighty thunderings and many waters, through the minster of all future time; concerting in lower key Avith those more awful voices from within the veil which have already shaken earth, and which, uttered "once more," shall shake not earth only, but also heaven. High destiny! but not his whose portrait we have now drawn. "We have tried to draw his mental, but not his physical like- ness. And yet it has all along been blended with our thoughts, like the figure of one known from childhood — like the figure of our own beloved and long-lost father. AYe see the venerable old man, newly returned from a botanical excursion, laden Avitli flowers and weeds (for no one knew better than he that every weed is a flower — it is the secret of his poetry), with his high, narrow forehead, his grey locks, his glancing shoe-buckles, his clean dress somewhat ruifled in the woods, his mild countenance, his simple abstracted air. "We, too, become abstracted as we gaze, following in thought the outline of his history — his early struggles — his love — his adventures in London — his journal, where, on the brink of starvation, he wrote the aftecting words, " Sally for you" — his rescue by Burke — his taking orders — his return to his native place — his mounting the pulpit stairs, not caring what his old enemies thought of him or his sermon — his marriage — the entry, more melancholy by far than the other, made years after in reference to it, ^^ yet hupjnness ivas denied" — the publication of his different works — the various charges he occupied — his childlike surprise at getting so much money for the " Tales of the Hall" — his visit to Scotland — his mistaking the Highland chiefs for foreigners, and bespeaking them in bad French — his figure as he went, dogged by the caddie through tlie lanes of the auld town of Edinburgh, which he preferred in- finitely to the new — the " aul' fule" he made of himself in pur- suit of a second wife, &c, &c.; so absent do we become in think- ing over all this, that it disturbs his abstraction ; he starts, stares, asks us in to his parsonage, and we are about to accept the oifer, when we awake, and, lo! it is a dream. 56 JOHN FOSTER. There are two classes of character of whom the biography is likely to be peculiarly interesting. One includes those whose lives have been passed in the glare of publicity — who have bulked largely in public estimation, and who have mingled much with the leading characters of the age. The life of such in- cludes in it, in fact, a multitude of lives, and turns out to be, not a solitary picture, but an entire gallery of interesting por- traits. The other class comprises those of whom the world knows little, but is eager to know much — who, passing their lives in severe seclusion, have, nevertheless, given such assur- ance of their manhood as to excite in the public mind an intense curiosity to know more of their habits, feelings, and history. Such an one was John Foster. While his works were widely circulated, and produced a profound impression upon the think- ing minds of the country, himself was to the majority only a name. Few could tell what he was, or where he lived — what were the particulars of his outward history, or what had been the course of his mental training. He published little, he sel- dom appeared at public meetings, his name was never in the newspapers — when he wrote, it was generally in periodicals of li- mited circulation and sectarian character, and when he preached, it was to small audiences and in obscure villages. There thus hung about him a certain shade of mystery, shaping itself to the colossal estimate of his genius, which prevailed. He appeared a great man under hiding; and while some of his ardent ad- mirers found or forced their way into his grisly den, and ascer- tained the prominent features of his character and facts in his life, more were left in the darkness of mystification and conjec- ture. For twenty years, for instance, we ourselves have been enthusiasts in reference to this writer's genius, and yet, till re- cently, we never so much as saw his portrait. The veil has at length been removed. In the interesting volumes of Messrs Eyland and Sheppard we find, and prin- cipally in his own words, a full and faithful register of the lead- ing events in his life, and of the more interesting movements in his spiritual history. The book is arranged on a plan somewhat similar to that adopted in Carlyle's work on Cromwell. The biography constitutes an intermitting chain between the nume- rous letters, and is executed in a modest and intelligent manner. Besides his correspondence, there are large and valuable excerpts from his journals, and to the whole are appended interesting, though somewhat slight, notices of his character, from the pen of Mr Sheppard. JOHN FOSTER. 57 Throughout the whole of these volumes we have oeen impressed with the idea of a mind imperfectly reconciled and inditierently adjusted to the state of society of which it Avas a part — to the creed to which it had declared its adherence — to the very system of things which surrounded it. This is true of many indepen- dent and powerful spirits; but in Foster's mind the antagonism has this peculiarity — it is united to deep reverence and to sincere belief. It is not the fruit of any captious or malignant disposi- tion — it does not spring from any sinister motive. The guilty wish is never, with him, the parent of the gloomy thought. The tremendous doubts which oppress him have forced themselves into the sphere of his soul, and hang there as if sustained by the power of some dark enchantment. You see his mind labouring under an eclipse which will not pass away. In contemplation of the mysteries of earth and time, he stands helpless. Indeed, such gloomy cogitations formed so large a part of his mental scenery, and had so long rivetted his gaze, that you can almost conceive him disappointed had they suddenly disappeared. Like the pri- soner of Chillon, who, habituated to the gloom of his dungeon, and having made friends with his dismal companions, at last " re- gained his freedom with a sigh," Foster Avould have stared strangely, and almost unhappily, though it had been at the ap- parition of the " new heavens and the new earth" arising in room of the present, which his melancholy fancy had so dreadfully dis- coloured. The causes of this habitual gloom seem to have been complex. First, he was naturally a man of a morbid disposition. His mind fastened and clung to the dark side of every question — to the more rugged horn of each greatdilemma — to the shadows, and not to the lights, of every picture. To do this was with him an instinct, which, instead of repressing, he nursed into a savage luxury. Secondly, he was for a large portion of his life a soli- tary, struggling, and disappointed man — preaching to people who did not understand him, struggling with straitened circumstances, and unsustained, till middle-age, by the sympathy of any female friend. Had a man of his temperament met sooner with the breeze of general and generous appreciation; and, above all, had he found in youth such a kindred and congenial spirit as after- wards, in his accomplished and gifted wife, he had lived a much happier and more useful existence, and taken a kindlier, and, we trurit, a truer view of the world and of mankind. Thirdly, as an eloquent writer elsewhere observes, " Foster never gave Iiim- self a real scientific education, and although possessed of keen- est sagacity, never ro«e into the sphere of a great and a trained philosopher. He was to this what a brave bandit is to a regu- lar soldier. Scientific culture is sure to beget scientific calm. The philosopher is tauglit to take a wide, comprehensive, dispassionate, and rounded view of things, which never frets his heart, if it often F 58 JOHN rOSTEK. fails to satisfy his intellect. Foster's glimpses of truth, on the contrary, are intense and vivid, but comparatively nari'ow, and are tantalising in exact proportion to their vividness and inten- sity. He sees his points in a light so brilliant that it deepens the surrounding darkness. His minute mode of insight, too, contri- buted to his melancholy. He looks at objects so nai'rowly that, as to a microscope, they present nothing but naked and enlarged ugliness. His eye strips away all those fine illusions of distance which are, after all, as real as the nearer and narrower view. This is the curse which blasts him— to see too clearly, and the lens through which he looks becomes truly a " terrible crystal." Like Cassandra, he might well wail for his fatal gift. It is a dowi-y she got in wrath, and has faithfully transmitted to many besides Foster, who may with her exclaim — " ill to me the lot awarded, Thou evil Pythian god." From man, thus too utterly bare before him, he turns away, with a deep pensive joy, to Nature, feeling that she is true, were nothing else true — that she is beautiful, were all else deformed — that she stands innocent and erect, though her tenant has fallen — and, like a child in her mother's arms, does he repose, regain- ing old illusions, and recalling long-departed dreams of joy. There is something to us peculiarly tender and pathetic in Fos- ter's love of nature. It is not so much an admiration as it is a passionate and perpetual longing. It is not a worship, but a love. He throws his being into nature. It is as if he felt bis heart budding in the spring trees, his pulse beating high in the midnight tempest and in the ocean billow, his soul shooting up, like living fire, into Snowdon, as he gazes upon it; or we might al- most imagine him the divorced Spirit of some lovely scene, yearn- ing and panting after renewed communion, " gazing himself away" into the bosom of nature again, while the murmuring of streams, and the song of breezes, and the waving of pines, were singing, of these strange nuptials, the soft epithalamium. He en- gages in mystic converse with the creation. He seeks for mean- ings in her mighty countenance, which are not always revealed to him. He asks her aAvful and unanswered questions. He seems to cry out to the river, " What meanest thou, thou eloquent babbler? Wilt thou never speak plain — wilt thou never shape me any distinct utterance, from the vague and soft tumults of thine everlasting song?" — to the rocks and mountains, " Will ye never reveal those secrets of an elder day,*which are piled up in your massive walls; to your solemn hieroglyphics shall there never arrive the key?" but to add, in stern resignation, "Be it so, then ; retain your silence, or utter on your inarticulate sounds ; better these than the jargon, the laughter, and the blasphemies JOHN FOSTER. 59 of the reptile ami miscreant race of man; to you, my dumb kin- dred, I am nearer and dearer than to those that so speak." In forming, however, such a view of man and of life, Foster has committed, we think, an enormous error — the great mistake of his history. He has failed to see the beauty of life, its hope- ful tendencies, the dignity of that discipline which is ripening man fur a nobler destiny, the soul of goodness which underlies even the evils, the abuses, and the mistakes of the world, and the glory wdiich springs from human suffering, and shines through human tears. In all this he sees little else than unmitigated and unredeemed miseiy and guilt, and flies to the prospect of death for relief, as the opium-eater to his drug, or the drunkard to his dram-bottle. " I have yet," he says, toward the close of his life, " one luminary, the visage of death." And in the rising of that pale luminary, that ghostly sun, he expects a reply to all liis questionings, and a rest to all the w^anderings of his spirit. Surely he expected far too mucli from such a source. For, in the first place, since the "meaning" of the universe is infinite, can it be ex- plained all at once to a finite being? It is beyond even the might of Death to give to a mind infinite illumination, to which it has failed to give infinite capacity. It may, it must, greatly extend the view, and brighten the medium; but to suppose that it in- stantly makes all mysteries plain, were to leave little to do for the vast eternity beyond it. Besides, may not mystery continue to be an atmosphere fit for rearing certain future, as it is for rearing certain present, conditions of spiritual being? The caterpillar and the butterfly respire the same air. Certain plants, and those of a strong and hardy kind, grow best in the shade. To suppose that Death should explain every enigma is, in fact, to enthrone it in the room of Omnipotence. Tliirdly, unless first we be re- conciled to life, unless we learn to interpet its sublime hierogly- phics, to feel its divine beauty, to read its " open secret," to adore while we wonder at its darkest dispensations, what can death do for us? The man who, loathing, despising, reviling life, finding only desolation and barrenness in all its borders, turns away from under tlie vine and the fig-tree, and sits with lonely Jonali under his withered gourd, saying, " I do well to be angry, even unto death," is guilty of cowardice, if not of essential suicide: he may be a gifted, but is hardly a heroic man. " It is," says Schiller, " a serious tiling to die — it is a more serious thing to live." So it is a great and glorious thing to die; it is a thing greater, more glorious, godlike, to live a resigned, active, and " blessed," if not happy life. To use tlie language of Sartor Resartus, Foster has been in the everlasting no; he has been in the centre of indifi'erencc, but he has not reached the everlasting yea; he has not heard, or not received, its sweet and solemn evangel — he has tarried too long in the valley of the shadow of 60 JOHN FOSTER. death, and spent many needless hours in the dungeon of the giant Despair; and, worse, has dreamed, that to come forth from its threshold was to reach the Celestial City by a single step! Before proceeding to speak of Foster's merits, we have, in cor- roboration of these remarks, to advance against him one or two serious charges, made more in sorrow than in anger. AVe charge him, in the tirst place, with a sort of moral cowardice, which it is painful to observe in a man of such gigantic proportions. In his views of moral evil, there is more of the fascinated fear of the planet-struck than of the strong courage of the combatant. He looks at it rather than seeks to strike it down. Knowing that Omnipotence alone can prostrate it in its entireness — that Omni- science alone can explain its existence — he is not sufficiently alive to the facts that it is reducible, that every one may, in some de- gree, reduce it, that each smallest reduction proves that it is not infinite, and that the farther you reduce evil, the nearer you reach the solution of the great problems — why it is, and whence it rose. He seems sometimes to regard the efforts of men to re- move, or mitigate, moral, or even physical, evil, with as much contempt as he would the efforts of barbarians, with their cries and kettle-drums, to drive away an eclipse from off the face of the sun. His oicn attempts to abate evil are thus paralysed. He keeps, indeed, his post — he maintains the contest — but it is lan- guidly, and with frequent looks cast behind, toward a great re- serve of force which he expects to be brought, but which is slow to come, into action. It is the old story of the waggoner and Hercules. The road is miry, the wain is heavy, he is weary, how easy it were for the god to come down and perform the task! And because he will not yet, Foster becomes sullen, disappointed, and all but desperate. Let no one say that we are not fair judges of a mind so peculiar as his, that we know not what doubts and difficulties oppressed him, or how they affected his spirit. Every thinking mind is haunted, more or less, by precisely those ques- tions which Foster felt himself unable to solve. Luther felt them in the Warteburg, but bated on account of them not one jot of heart or hope. Evil there was in the world ; he was sent to make it less; that was all he knew, and that was quite sufficient for his resolute and robust spirit. Howard felt tliem in his " Circum- navigation of Charity," but, instead of speculating as to why pri- sons were needed at all, he went on and made them belter. Every missionary to the heathen feels such difficulties meeting him in their very darkest shape, and yetpeiseveres in his holy work, and if he can smite away but a finger from the black colossal statue of evil which stands up before him, is content. Should any deem that we misrepresent Foster's feelings and sentiments on this sub- ject, we refer them to his joui-nals and letters, and pai-ticularly to that most withering and unhappy letter addressed to Dr Harris. JOHN FOSTER. Gl TVe find not less distinct evidence of the same disease in his contributions to the " Eclectic," particularly in his review of " Chalmers's Astronomical Discourses" — in our opinion a very- forced, clumsy, and unsatisfactory critique. There, at the sup- position of snow existing in some of the other planets, he startles in terror, seeing in it a sign that evil has found its way there as well as here. He is so frightened at this little speck as almost to back out from the discoveries of modern astronomy altogether. Now, we think this a cowardice unworthy, yet characteristic, of Foster ; for, in the first place, what is there so terrific in snow, the pure, innocent, beautiful meteor, falling from heaven like the shed feathers of the celestial dove, or lying, a many-millioned mirror to the moonbeams? Should not, on the contrary, that far gleam be welcomed as a proof of unity among the heavenly bodies, as attesting the omnipresence of certain general laws, as a white signal from that stranger land, to tell us that a race of beings, not altogether unallied to us, are there, it may be, engaged in simi- lar struggles, and destined to similar triumphs, with ourselves? But, secondl}^ is snow necessarily the sign of a curse, or a certain indication of the existence of sin ? This, we think, springs from a theory universally held at one time by a certain school of theo- logians, which the researches of geology have exploded, and which Foster's powerful intellect ought, apart from these, to have taught him to reject, that every species of physical evil is the product of moral, that every slight inconvenience, as well as formidable mischief, may be traced to the same root. Such an absurd theory teaches its votaries to cower under the falling snow as under the curse of the Eternal — to find a new testimony to the existence of evil in the icicles — glorious ear-rings! — which each winter morn- ing hang under the eaves; and in every sound, from the earth- quake to the sneeze, to overhear the voice of Sin. No; this will never do. Step forth, John Foster, into that strange snow of Mars, and peradventure thou mayest find a braver Evan Dhu, kicking away a luxurious snowball from under the head of his retainer, or a gallant footman ofixiring himself up to the wolves in his mastei-'s stead, or a noble little band of explorers cutting their perilous passage to the summit of some wilder Wetterhorn — finer spectacles, be sure, than wert thou to see ever so many perfect, and perfectly insipid ladies and gentlemen, reclining in some lazy lubberland of perpetual sunshine. Step forth, batlie in the brac- ing cold of the clime, confront its stern winds, consider its laws of austere and awful progress, and come back a healthier, hap- pier, and better man. Had this speculation on snow been only a passing reverie, it had been unworthy any serious notic*. But, like tlie snow on the dusky and dark-red brow of Mars, it lies significant — a still settled index of much behind and beyond it. It involves in 62 JOHN FOSTER. it all the elements of Foster's quarrel with the system of things; for, as assuredly as in Byron's case, it was a quarrel; nor v/ere their grounds so dissimilar as might have been at first supposed. Neither knew the real meaning of that grand old fable of Pro- metheus, as shadowing forth the history of man, nay, forming a dim but colossal type of that higher mystery — tlie mystery of godliness — bearing to it such a resemblance as does a battlement of evening clouds to the mountains over which it stands, and whose shapes it mutely mimics — the glory of suffering, the beauty of sorrow, as teachers, friends, guides, were to them in a great measure veiled. Unphilosophically confounding physical and moral evil, of which the one seemed to them the monstrous body, tlie other the malignant soul, of some portentous and unearthly shape, they both bow before it — to the one it becomes a god, his only god, detested and adored; to the other, an object of melancholy wonder and powerless hatred. Indeed, so similar are the feelings of Foster to those entertained and expressed by the Byron school of sceptics, that, as a profound thinker* once remarked to us, the change of a single word will serve to identify them. Byron says, since so and so is the case, the Deity must be this and that ; Foster, and his foster-hairns say, if it were this and that, the Deity were so and so. But, secondly, Ave charge Foster with taking up an attitude of view and observation which rendered any just conception of tlie universe or its Author impossible, and which a^^no?-/ throws dis- credit upon any theoi'y of explanation propounded by liimseif. His attitude is that of one who confounds the shade over his own mind Avith the universe which it discolours, in Avhose eye (as in the well-known fable) the monster-fly swalloAvs up the sun, and who, because he is capable of asking the great question, imagines that, therefore, he is able, or entitled to receive, the infinite reply. INothing but such an infinite answer could appease such inquiries as Foster asks at the earth and the heavens. And because the earth spins round, and the skies shine on in silence, and no such reply as he craves will ascend from their deepest caverns, or come down from their loftiest summits, Foster is disappointed, the more in proportion to his love, just as the more you love any indivi- dual, the more you are chagrined if he will not answer you some curious question, but remains obstinately dumb. And though, as we have said, he is fond of questioning nature, and loves her solemn harmonies, he is no " Fine-ear" to catch that subtler speech, that fairy music, that " language within language," that angelic strain, which some few purged and prepared spirits, who can the " bird language fully tell, and that which roses say so well," hear, or seem to hear, in the rustle of the leaves awakened * Thomas De Quincey. JOHN FOSTER. 63 at midniglit from their dreams of God — in the great psalm of the autumn blasts — in the sweet self-talk of the lovesick summer ■waves — in the blue smile of the sky — nav, in the hush of evening, and the stammering sparkle of the stars. To these low and sil- very whispers, piercing the clash of all common and terrific sounds, like the calm " No " of Sliadrach, Meshach, and Abed- nego, heard amidst the idolatrous symphonies and cymbals on the plain of Dura, Foster's ear is deaf as Byron's. He is awai'e of their existence, indeed ; he listens to hear them, but they will not speak to him their profoundest tidings ; he hears only a great tu- mult, but knows not what it is — a tumult of grandeur, terror — sweet and despairing tones, endlessly intermingled — and dies, believing that God is love, but not feeling, with Tennyson, that " Every cloud that spreads above, And veileth love, itself is Love." What Foster demands is 2:)recisely that Avhich cannot here, per- haps never, be granted : it is a logical demonstration of the good- ness and wisdom of God: such a demonstration seems impossible : it supposes the possibility of a just doubt on such a subject; and yet, if this doubt do once enter the mind, no mere argument can ever expel it. It represents the question as to the character of Deity in the light of a dreadful game, which may [possibly go against him. It proves, after all, no more than this — that there is a very high probability that God is not a demon. On such bladders do some men try to swim through the ocean of the infi- nite mind. Far better to plunge into it at once, trusting impli- citly and fearlessly to those voices within the soul — to those whispers in nature — to those smiles on earth below and heaven above — to those indefinite but profound impressions, not to speak of those distinct declarations of God's AVord, which do not de- monstrate, but intuitively and irresistibly communicate, the tid- ings that "All is Avell!" " After all, we are in good hands," was the simple conclusive reply of a well-conditioned gentleman of our acquaintance to one who had, in a strain of morbid eloquen'ce, taken the darker side; conclusive, because it expressed what is the natural I'eeling of all untainted and unsophisticated minds, as well as the mature and ultimate result of the highest order of philosophic thinkers. But it is altogether impossible to reach this conclusion through that iaitliless process which Jolin Foster employs; as impossible, as l>y digging down thi'ough the darkness of earth to reach the sun and stars of the antipodes. It is otherwise that Sartor comes out at last into his clear, stern azure. It is otherwise that Goethe meant, it is understood, to lead Faust up into his Mount of Vi- sion and temple of worship. Our final charge, again, is that he takes too dark, morbid, and 64 JOHN FOSTER. monkisli a view of man and of society. From this, indeed, seem to spring his other errors. He who doubts of man can hardly fail to doubt of God. To believe in man, is an indispensable re- quisite to a proper conception of Deity. Of course we do not mean to deny the doctrine of human depravity; but we do think that Foster's views of man's nature, whether as exhibited in in- dividual character or in collective society, are far too stern and harsh. AVe Avould as soon judge of an assembly of living men and women from a book of anatomical sketches, as of the true character of the world from Foster's pictures. Earth is not the combination of hell and chaos which he represents it to be. Men are not the pigmy fiends, Lilliputians in intellect, Brobdignagians in crime, from whose society he shrinks in loathing, and the tie connecting himself with whom he would cut in sunder if he could. The past history of society is not that dance of death, that hideous procession of misery and guilt toward destruction,^ which paints itself on the gloomy retina of his eye. We protest, in the name of our fallen but human, perishing but princely, family against such libels as " Gulliver's Travels," and Foster's entire works. What a fierce, impotent scowl, too, he continually casts upon even the innocent amusements of the race — such as children's balls, social parties — begrudging, it would seem, even to doomed and predestinated criminals such consolations as their case Avould admit of. More cruel than the ancient crucifiers, he will grant no stupifying nor cheering draught to the expiring malefactor. How reluctant, too, he is to admit any moral merit (intellectual merit he is always ready to concede) to those who difter from him in creed, not, perhaps, more widely than he is found, after all, to diifer from the rest of the Christian world ! How he prowls, like a hyena, round the bedsides of dying sceptics, though repeatedly owning himself so far a sceptic, to drink in their last groans, and insult whether the calm or the horror of their closing hours; staking thus, in a measure, the holy cause of religion upon a wretched computation of dying beds, upon the ^jro.* and cons of the expressions of disease, delirium, and despair — a task fit enough for a contributor to the " Methodist Magazine," but un- worthy of a spirit like Foster's. And how slow to admit any d(e- gree of interest, or of poetry, or of grandeur, in those colossal faiths which have ruled for ages the great majority of mankind! — an absurdity as great as though one were to go about to deny the lustre of the serpent's eyes, because his breath was poison, or the beauty of the tiger's skin, because bis drink was blood. And, then, by what a safety-valve he does escape from the consequences of his fatalism, by supposing a general jail-delivery of criminals, who, by his own showing, are no more guilty than the avalanche which destroys the Alpine traveller, or the sandy column which whelms the wanderer in the desert ! JOHN FOSTER. 65 After all tliis, it may seem paradoxical to assert that we think Foster an amiable man. He was so, undoubtedly, if universal testimony can be credited ; but he was a slave, in the first place, to unsettled doubts, and, ultimately, to a partial and inconsistent system, as well as, throughout all his life, to a gloomy tempera- ment which clouded his native disposition. His genius reminds us of the moon, but of the moon turned into blood, forced, against her nature, into a lowering, portentous aspect — no longer the still, calm mistress of the night, but a meteor of wrath and fear, emitting at best a gloomy smile, and furnishing a light fit only to guide the footsteps of murderers. AVe turn, now,_gladly from these objections to remark some interesting peculiarities in Fos- ter's character and intellect, as evinced in his " Memoirs," " Cor- respondence," and articles in the " Eclectic Review." We notice, first, his generosity and width as a critic. Narrow as a moral judge, he is, as a critic of authors and books, entirely^ the reverse. He sympathises with all genuine excellence. This alone proves, we think, his superiority to Hall. Hull, we fear, had little admiration for other writers beyond a very few, either inferior to, or cognate with, himself. His treatment of Coleridge, for instance, would be insufferably insolent, were it not ludi- crously absurd. Having never taken the trouble to master the principles upon which Coleridge based his thought, or the lan- guage in which he expressed it, his verdict on him is as \yorth- less as a plain English scholar's were upon the metres of Pindar. To modern poetry, too, and all its miracles, he was notoriously indifferent. Byron he never read — an omission as contemptible as though he had not gone forth to see a comet which had made itself visible at noonday. Wordsworth and Southey he habitually maligned. Now, all this may seem very great to some of his fawning parasites, but seems superlatively unworthy of such a man as Hall. Foster, on the other hand, is a genial and a gene- rous praiser, of much beneath, much on a level, and much above his own mark. He has a kind word to say for poor Cottle, and his " Fall of Cambria." He is enthusiastic in his admiration of Hall, Chalmers, Fox, Grattan, Curran, Tooke, &c. Coleridge is the god of his idolatry, and bitterly does he deplore his miserable habits. Of a transcendent dramatic work (could it be " Cain"^ or the " Cenci?') he says, " I was never so fiercely carried off by Pegasus before — the fellow neighed as he ascended." All works he seems to have judged, not by an arbitrary canon of his own or of others' establishment, but by the impulse given to his own mind, the stir of respondent strength, whether in contradic- tion or consent, awakened within him, and the joy which they had the power to spread over his melancholy spirit, like sunshine sur- prising a sullen tarn into smiles. We notice in these volumes numerous evidences of Foster's 6G JOHN FOSTER. romantic tendencies. He was a lover of solitary and moonlight walks. " In Cliicliester there is still a chapel, where the well- worn bricks of the aisles exhibit the traces of his solitary pacings to and fro by moonlight." In all beautiful and majestic scenes he invariably lost himself, as men do in the mazes of a wood. Reverie was his principal luxury, and became his darling sin. In combating the romantic tendency in one of his essays, he is, in reality, fighting with himself; just as, strange to tell, the ob- jections he confutes in his famous sermon on missions reappear, from his own pen, in a letter to Harris, written years afterwards. Formerly we said, " Foster fighting with a fatalist, reminds us of the whole ocean into tempest tossed, to waft a feather, or to drown a fly." Alas, we now find that Foster and the fatalist were forms of the same mind, and that the fatalist remains last upon the field. So, having shrived himself of his original ro- mance by writing an essay against it, the old nature returned with double force than formerly, and was in him to his dying day. In connection with this, we notice the abundance and beauty of his natural imagery. No one has turned to more ac- count, in his writings, the charms of nature, and particularly the evanescent and ghostly glories of the night, the tints of moonlit flowers, the colours of midnight fields, the shadows of woods, the shapes of mountains resting against the stars, all the fine grada- tions of the coming on of evening, all the wandering voices of the darkness, speaking what in the day they seem to dare not do, and all those " solemn meditations," as peculiar to night as its celes- tial fires, were well known and inexpressibly dear to the soul of this lonely man. In his use of such images, we observe this peculiarity. Some men surround their minds with them uncon- sciouslf/, they go out to the fields without one thought of collect- ing images or illustrations, and yet come home laden with them, as with burs or other herbage, which we unwittingly gather in the woods, Foster goes out on express purpose to find them, as if he were a-nutting; looks at every object with this question. How can I employ you in the expression of truth ? and returns triumphant with a thousand analogies. This, we think, has somewhat affected the naturalness and freedom of his imagery. We should prefer had he allowed the beauties of nature to slide into his soul, and to blend with his thoughts — " Like some sweet beguiling melody ; So sweet, we know not we are listening to it." Another phase of this romantic tendency was his extreme attachment to the society of cultivated females, and the concep- tion he formed of the married life as the panacea of his ills. In such company he laid aside the monk, and became all gentleness and good-humour. It acted like a spell upon him, to soothe his JOHN FOSTER. 67 most unquiet feelings, and to lay for a season his darkest doubts. It roused, too, the faculties of his mind, and he never was half so eloquent, neither in his writings, nor in the pulpit, nor in the company of his co-mates in intellect — Anderson and Hall — as when, the evening shadows, or the first moonbeams, stealing into the room, he discoursed to " fascinating females," who could understand as well as listen, and feel as Avell as understand, of the " feelings and value of genius," or of topics dearer and nobler still, while it seemed, in his own beautiful words, " as if the soul of Eloisa pervaded all the air." Such moments he relished with the intensest gratification; they seemed to him foretastes of Paradise, and of the society of angels, and he might well say that they should never be " forgotten." Out of those " fascinating females," he selected one almost a duplicate of himself — equally intellectual, equally well-informed, equally pious, and equally oppressed with the tremendous darkness of this dark economy. It was like the marriage of two moonlit clouds in the silent sky! To this lady he addressed his first celebrated essays. From her society he expected much happiness. On the eve of the mar- riage, he met, he tells us, " the snowdrops and other signs and approaches of the spring, with a degree of interest which has never accompanied any former vernal equinox." And his ex- pectations seem to have been abundantly fulfilled. After many happy years of intercourse, and latterl}--, on her part, much severe suffering, she died, leaving him less to regret her loss than to grieve that their spirits had not entered together within that mighty veil which had so long tantalised and saddened both. " The living: are not envied of the dead." But how often are the dead envied of the living ! And no one ever felt this solemn envy more than Foster. We can conceive him kneeling in charnel-houses, and praying their ashes to break silence and speak out. We can conceive him crying aloud amid the midnight hills for some wandering spirit of the departed to render up the secret; and as friend after friend dropped away into the silent land, this impatient eagerness strengthened, and almost amounted to a feeling that those he loved were bound to come back and re- lieve his harrowing anxieties. And it shook liim with the very agony of desire when the wife of his bosom and of his soul — his shadow in the other sex, whose doubts, and fears, and desires on this subject were the counterpart of his own — departed first within the veil. AVe can image him on his widowed pillow praying for and straining his eyes for her re-appearance — less to see her beloved face once more than to hear some autlientic tidings of the sliadowy world. But she, too, was silent. She, too, had taken the dread oath of secrecy which all the dead must take; and he had to recur, in his disappointed loneliness, to the pros- pect of speedily joining her in that strange company, and of be- 68 JOHN FOSTER. coming, in his turn, as intelligent and as uncommunicative as she This supposition is the less extravagant, as we find from these memoirs that Foster was a firm believer in apparitions, and in all the other departments of what this enlightened age — which has discovered that the soul of man is a secretion of the brain, and that the snail is growing up by slow stages to the Shakspere (and we suppose the Shakspere to the Supreme God!) — calls ex- ploded superstitions. He grasped at every line, however frail, which linked him to the spiritual world. If he saw not visions, he dreamed dreams, felt presentiments, shuddered as he almost called up to his imagination the form of a ghost. This " folly of the wise," if a folly it be, he shared with many of the greatest minds of the age— with Napoleon, Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, who all felt that there vrere some things in heaven and earth moi-e than are dreamt of in our philosophies. In Foster these feelings did not amount to fears. They were rather strong yet shuddering desires to know the best or the worst which spiritual beings could tell, or intimate about that future state of existence of which he felt that Revelation had told him little, and Nature nothing at all. From the company of real solid sorrows, and of men A\diom he deemed " earthly, sensual, devilish," he turned eao-erly, yet pensively, to seek communion with the spirits of the departed; but even these sad companions were shy to him — they met him not in his solitary walks, and in all his wanderings he was " alone with the night." And yet, in spite of all these melancholy musings and romantic tendencies, Foster was a keen, stern, and sarcastic observerof men and manners — of society and political progress. In politics he was a "Radical and something more" — an independent thinker, despising all ties of party, and standing on every question like a fourth estate — one who could " sit upon the ground and tell strange stories of the deaths of kings," and who never in one in- stance sacrificed an atom of the right to an acre of the expedient It is worth while reading in this work his musings, as of a sepa- rate spirit, upon tlie public transactions of his day. In society, too, he sat an insulated being, whose silence was often more for- midable than his words. His face, even when he spoke not, shone a quiet mirror to the " thoughts and intents of the hearts" of those around hira, and he came away with their past as well as pre- sent history silently inscribed upon his mind. His conversa- tional sarcasm was tremendous. " Was not the Emperor Alex- ander a very pious man.?" " Very pious," he answei-ed : " I be- lieve he said grace ere he swallowed Poland." We could quote, if we durst, unpublished specimens still racier. Hall himself is said to have felt somewhat nervous in his presence when in this mood; and there is a floating rumour of a meeting between him JOHN FOSTER. 69 and Lord Brougham on some educational question, in which his lordship came off, and shabbily, second best. Foster's indolence has been often, but, we think, unjustly, con- demned. It ought rather to be deplored. Unfurnished with a regular training, yet furnished with an exquisitely sensitive taste, early " damned to the mines" of hopeless professional toil, trans- ferred thence to the drudgery of writing for bread — never gifted with a fluent language nor a rapid pen — what wonder that he found composition an ungracious task, or that he shrank from it with a growing and deepening disgust? Our surprise is that he wrote so much, and not that he wrote so little. Latterly, but for an overwhelming sense of duty, he would not have written at all. If we saw a giant, whose arms had been cut off, moving in impo- tent strength his bleeding fragments, who would not weep at the spectacle? In such mutilated might sat Foster at his desk. His " Journal and Correspondence" contain much attractive and interesting matter. His letters, without ease, have great sin- cerity, calm discernment, disturbed by bursts of misanthropical power, as when he calls for a tempest of fire and brimstone upon the Russians, on their invasion of Poland, and a perpetual stream of sarcasm adds a tart tinge to the whole. His " Journal," on the other hand, is rich in those thoughts which procreate thought in others — in descriptions of natural objects which he encountered — in quiet sidelong glances into human character — in the expres- <# sion of gloomy and desolate feelings, and in sudden, momentary, and timorous ghmpses into the deeper abysses of thought than those where his spirit usually dwells. How grand this, for in- stance: — " Argument from miracles for the truth of the Chris- tian doctrines. Surely it is fair to believe that those who received from heaven superhuman power received likewise superhuman wisdom. Having rung the great bell of the universe, the sermon to follow must be extraordinary." Hear, again, this criticism on Burke: — " Burke's sentences are pointed at the end — instinct with pungent sense to the last syllable; they are like a charioteer's whip, which not only has a long and effective lash, but cracks and inflicts a still smarter sensation at the end. They are like some serpents, whose life is said to be fiercest in the tail." The whole " Journal," indeed, is a repository of such things. How much of Foster's originality lay in his thoughts, or how much in his images, or how much of it resulted from his early isolation from suitable books and kindred minds, we stay not to inquire. As it is, we have in his works the collected thoughts of a powerful mind tliat has lived " collaterally or aside" to the world — that never flattered a popular prejudice — that never bent to a popular idol — that never deserted in the darkest hour the cause of libertj- — that never swore to the shibboleth of a party or, at least, never kept its vow — and that now stands up before o 70 THOMAS nooD. us alone, massive and conspicuous, a mighty and mysterious frag- ment, the Stonehenge of modern moralists. Shall we inscribe immortality upon the shapeless yet sublime structure? He who reared it seems, from the elevation he has now reached, to answer, No; what is the thing you call immortality to me, who have cleft that deep shadow and entered on this greater and brighter state of being? We dare not say, with a writer formerly quoted, that to " Fos- ter the cloud has now become the sun." But certainly we may say to him, " Behold the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth," if not in its noonday effulgence, yet at least in its mild and twilight softness. In the night he dwelt, and although the visage of death may not have been to him tlie glorious lumi- nary he expected, yet is it not much that the night is gone, and gone for ever ? We take our leave of him in his own words — " ' Paid the debt of nature.' No; it is not paying a debt, it is i-ather like bringing a note to a bank to obtain solid gold in ex- change for it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body, which is nothing worth, and which you could not wish to retain long; you lay it down, and receive for it, from the eternal treasures, liberty, victory, knowledge, rapture." THOMAS HOOD. It is the lot of some men of genius to be born as if in the blank space between Milton's "L' Allegro "and "Penseroso," their proxi- mity to both originally equal, and their adhesion to the one or the other depending upon casual circumstances. V/hile some pendulate perpetually between the grave and the gay, others are carried off bodily, as it happens, by the comic or the tragic muse. A few there are who seem to say, of their own deliberate option, " Mirth, with thee we mean to live;" deeming it better to go to the house of feasting than to that of mourning — while the storm of adversity drives others to pursue sad and dreary paths, not at first congenial to their natures. Such men as Shakspere, Burns, and Byron, continue, all their lives long, to pass, in rapid and perpetual change, from the one province to the other; and this, indeed, is the main source of their boundless ascendency over the general mind. In Young, of the " Night Thoughts," the laughter, never very joyous, is converted, through the effect of gloomy casualties, into the ghastly grin of the skeleton Death — the pointed satire is exchanged for the solemn sermon. In Cowper, the fine schoolboy glee which inspirits his humour goes down at THOMAS HOOD. 71 last, and is quenched like a spark in the wild abj'ss of his mad- ness — " John Gilpin" merges in the " Castaway." Hood, on the other hand, with his strongest tendencies originally to the pa- thetic and the fantastic-serious, shrinks in timidity from the face of the inner sun of his nature — shies the stoop of the descending Pythonic power — and, feeling that if he wept at all it were floods of burning and terrible tears, laughs, and does little else but laugh, instead. "We look upon this writer as a quaint masquer — as wearing above a manly and profound nature a fantastic and deliberate disguise of folly. He reminds us of Brutus, cloaking under pre- tended idiocy a stern and serious design which burns in his breast, but which he chooses in this way only to disclose. A deep message has come to him from the heights of his nature, but, like the ancient prophet, he is forced to cry out, " I cannot speak — I am a child!" Certainly there was, at the foundation of Hood's soul, a seri- ousness, which all his puns and mummeries could but indifferently conceal. Jacques, in the forest of Arden, mused not with a pro- founder pathos, or in quainter language, upon the sad pageant of humanity than does he; and yet, like him, his "lungs" are ever ready to " crow like chanticleer" at the sight of its gro- tesquer absurdities. Verily, the goddess of melancholy owes a deep grudge to the mirthful magician who carried oiF such a pro- mising votary. It is not every day that one who might have been a great serious poet will condescend to sink into a punster and editor of comic annuals. And, were it not that his original ten- dencies continued to be manifested to the last, and that he turned his drollery to important account, we would be tempted to be angry, as Avell as to regret, that he chose to play the fool rather than King Lear in the play. As a poet. Hood belongs to the school of John Keats and Leigh Hunt, with qualities of his own, and an all but entire freedom from their peculiarities of manner and style. What strikes us, in the first place, about him, is his great variety of subject and mode of treatment. His works are in two small duodecimo vo- lumes; and yet we find in them five or six distinct styles at- tempted — and attempted with success. There is the classical — there is the fanciful, or, as we might almost call it, tlie " Mid- summer Night" — there is the homely tragic narrative — there is the wildly grotesque— there is the light, and there is the grave and pathetic — lyric. And, besides, there is a style, which we despair of describing by any one single or compound epithet, of which his " Elm Tree" and " Haunted House" are specimens- resembling Tennyson's " Talking Oak" — and the secret and power of which, perhaps, lie in the feeling of mystic correspond- ence between man and inanimate nature, in the start of momentary 72 THOMAS HOOD. consciousness with which we sometimes feel that in nature's com- pany we are not alone, that nature's silence is not that of death; and are aware, in the highest and grandest sense, that wc are " made of dust," and that the dust from which we were once taken is still divine. We know few volumes of poetry where we find, in the same compass, so little mannerism, so little self-repetition, such a varied concert, along with such unique harmony of sound. Through these varied numerous styles, Ave find two or three main elements distinctly traceable in all Hood's poems. One is a singular subtlety in the perception of minute analogies. The weakness, as well as the strength of his poetry, is derived from this source. His serious verse, as well as his witty prose, is laden and encumbered with thick coming fancies. Hence, some of his finest pieces are tedious without being long. Little more than ballads in size, they are books in the reader's feeling. Every one knows how resistance adds to the idea of extension, and how roughness impedes progress. Some of Hood's poems, such as " Lycus," are rough as the centaur's hide; and, having difficulty in passing along, you are tempted to pass them by altogether. And though a few, feeling that there is around them the power and spell of genius, generously cry, " There's true metal here, Avhen we have leisure, we must return to this," yet they never do. In fact. Hood has not been able to infuse human interest into his fairy or mythological creations. He has conceived them in a happy hour; surely on one of those days when the soul and na- ture are one — when one calm bond of peace seems to unite all things — when the sun seems to slumber, and the sky to smile — when the air becomes a wide balm, and the low wind, as it wan- ders over fiowers, seems telling some happy tidings in each gor- geous ear, till the rose blushes a deep crimson, and the tulip lifts up a more towering head, and the violet shrinks more modestly away as at lovers' whispers; in such a favoured hour — when the first strain of mu«ic might have arisen, or the first stroke of paint- ing been drawn, or the chisel of the first sculptor been heard, or the first verse of poetry been chanted, or man himself, a nobler harmony than lute ever sounded, a finer line than painter ever drew, a statelier structure and a diviner song, arisen from the dust — did the beautiful idea of the " Plea of the Midsummer Fairies" dawn upon this poet's mind. But although he has conceived his fairies in a happy hour, and framed them with exquisite skill and a fine eye to poetic proportion, he has not made them alive — he has not made them objects of love; and you care less for his cen- taurs and his fairies than you do for the moonbeams or the shed leavesof the forest. How difierentwith the Oberon and theTitania of Shakspere ! They are true to the fairy ideal, and yet they are human — their hearts warm with human passions, as fond of gos- sip, flattery, intrigue, and quarrel, as men or women can be — and THOMAS HOOD. 73 you sigli with or smile at them, precisely as you. do at Theseus and Hippolyta. Indeed, we cannot but admire how Shakspere, like the arc of humanity, always bends in all his characters into the one centre of man — how his villains, ghosts, demons, witches, fairies, fools, harlots, heroes, clov/ns, saints, sensualists, women, and even his kings, are all human, disguises, or half-lengths, or miniatures, never caricatures nor apologies for mankind. How full the cup of manhood out of which he could baptise — now an lago, and now an Ague-cheek — now a Bottom, and now a Mac- beth — now a Dogberry, and now a Caliban — now an Ariel, and now a Timon — into the one communion of the one family — 'nay, have a drop or two to spare for Messrs Cobweb and Mustardseed, who are allowed to creep in too among the number, and who at- tract a share of the tenderness of their benign father. As in Swift, his misanthropy sees the hated object in everything, blown out in the Brobdignagian, shrunk up in the Lilliputian, flapping in the Laputan, and yelling with the Yahoo — nay, throws it out into those loathsome reflections, that he may intensify and mul- tiply his hatred; so in the same way operates the opposite feeling in Shakspere. His love to the race is so great that he would colo- nise with man all space, fairyland, the grave, hell, and heaven. And not only does he give to superhuman beings a human inte- rest and natui'e, but he accomplislies what Hood has not attempted, and what few else have attempted with success — he adjusts the human to the superhuman actors; they never jostle, you never wonder at finding them on the same stage, they meet without a start, they part without a shiver, they obey one magic ; and you feel that not only does one touch of nature make the whole world kin, but that it can link the universe in one brotherhood, for the secret of this adjustment lies entirely in the humanity which is diff'used through every part of the drama. In it, as in one soft ether, float, or swim, or play, or dive, or fly, all his characters. In connection with the foregoing defect, we find in Hood's more elaborate poetical pieces no effective story, none that can bear the weight of his subtle and beautiful imagery. The rich blos- soms and pods of the peaflower-tree are there, but the strong dis- tinct stick of support is wanting. This defect is fatal not only to long poems, but to all save the shortest; it reduces them instantly to the rank of rhymed essays; and a rhymed essay, with most people, is the same thing with a rhapsody. Even dreams require a nexus, a nisus, a nodus, a point, a purpose. Death is but a tame shadow witliout the scythe. The want of a purpose in any clear, definite, impressive form has neutralised the efl'ect of many poems besides Hood's — some of Tennyson's, and one entire class of vShelley's — whose "Triumph of Life" and "Witch of Atlas" rank with " Lycus" and the " Midnight Fairies" — being, like them, beautiful, diff'use, vague; and, like them, perpetually 74 THOMAS HOOD. promising to bring forth solid fruit, but yielding at length leaves and blossoms only. Subtle fancy, lively wit, and copious language, are the un- doubted qualities of Hood as a poet. But, besides, there are two or three moral peculiarities about him as delightful as his intel- lectual; and they are visible in his serious as well as lighter pro- ductions. One is his constant lightsomeness of spirit and tone. His verse is not a chant but a carol. Deep as may be his inter- nal melancholy, it expresses itself in, and yields to, song. The heavy thunder-cloud of wo comes down in the shape of sparkling, sounding, sunny drops, and thus dissolves. He casts his melan- choly into shapes so fantastic, that they lure first himself, and tlien his readers, to laughter. If he cannot get rid of the grim gigantic " shadow of himself," which walks ever before him, as before all men, he can, at least, make mouths and cut antics be- hind its back. This conduct is, in one sense, wise as well as witty, but will, we fear, be imitated by few. Some will continue to follow the unbaptised terror, in tame and helpless submission; others will pay it vain homage; others will make to it resistance equally vain ; and many will seek to drown in pleasure, or forget in business, their impression that it walks on before them — silent, perpetual, pausing with their rest, running with their speed, grow- ing with their growth, strengthening with their strength, forming itself a ghastly rainbow on the fumes of their bowl of festival, lying down Avith them at night, starting up with every start that disturbs their slumbers, rising with them in the morning, rushing before them like a rival dealer into the market-place, and appear- ing to beckon them on behind it, from the deathbed into the land of shadows, as into its own domain. If from this dreadful fore- runner we cannot escape, is it not well done in Hood, and would it not be well done in others, to laugh at, as we pursued its in- evitable steps ? It is, after all, perhaps only the future greatness of man that throws back this gloom upon his infant being, cast- ing upon him confusion and despair, instead of exciting him to gladness and to hope.* In escaping from this shadow, we should be pawning the prospects of our immortality. How cheerily rings Hood's lark-like note of poetry among the various voices of the age's song — its eagle screams, its raven croakings, its plaintive nightingale strains! And yet that lark, too, in her lowly nest, had her sorrows, and, perhaps, her heart had bled in secret all night long. But now the " moi'n is up again, the dewy morn," and the sky is clear, and the wind is still, and the sunshine is bright, and the blue depths seem to sigh for her coming; and up rises she to heaven's gate, as aforetime; and • This thought we copy from Carlyle, who has copied it from the Germans, and they from Pascal. THOMAS HOOD. 75 as she soars and sings she remembers her misery no more ; nay, hers seems the chosen voice by which Nature would convey the full gladness of her own heart, in that favourite and festal hour. No one stops to question tlie songstress in the sky as to her theory of the universe — "Under which creed, Bezonian! speak or die!" So it were idle to inquire of Hood's poetry, any more than of Keats's, wdiat was its opinion of the origin of evil, or the pedobaptist controversy. His poetry is fuller of humanity and of real piety that it does not protrude any peculiarities of personal belief; and that no more than the sun or the book of Esther has it the name of God written on or in it, although it has the essence and the image. There are writers who, like secret, impassioned lovers, speak most seldom of those objects which they most fre- quently think of and most fervently admire. And there are others whose ascriptions of praise to God, whose encomiums on religion, and whose introduction of sacred names, sound like affi- davits, or self-signed certificates of Christianity — they are so fre- quent and so forced. It is upon this principle that we would de- fend Wordsworth from those who deny him the name of a sacred poet. True, all his poems are not hymns; but his life has been a long hymn, rising, like incense, fi-om a mountain altar to God. Surely, since Milton, no purer, severer, living melody has mounted on high. Yet who can deny that the religion of the " Ode to Sound," and of the " Excursion," is that of the " Paradise Lost," the " Task," and the " Night Thoughts?" And, without classin"- Hood in this or any respect with Wordsworth, we dare as little rank him with things common and unclean. Hear him- self on this point: — " Thrice blessed is the man with whom The gracious prodigality of nature — The bahn, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom, The bounteous providence in every feature — Recall the good Creator to his creature ; Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome! Each cloudcapp'd mountain is a holy altar ; An organ breathes in every grove; And the full heart's a psalter, Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love." And amid all the mirthful details of the long warfare which he waged with Cant (from his " Progress of Cant," downwards), we are not aware of any 'real despite done to that spirit of Chris- tianity, to which Cant, in fact, is the most formidable foe. To the viask of religion his motto is, spare no arrows; but, when the real, radiant, sorrowful, yet happy y«ce appears, he too has a knee to kneel and heart to worship. But, best of all in Hood is that warm humanity which beats in all his writings. His is no ostentatious or systematic philanthropy ; 76 THOMAS HOOD. it is a mild, clieerful, irrepressible feeling, as innocent and tender as the embrace of a child. It cannot found soup-kitchens; it can only slide in a few rhymes and sonnets to make its species a little happier. Hospitals it is unable to erect, or subscriptions to give, silver and gold it has none; but in the orisons of its genius it never fails to remember the cause of the poor; and if it cannot, any more than the kindred spirit of Burns, make for its country " some usefu' plan or book," it can " sing a sang at least." Hood's poetry is often a pleading for those who cannot plead for them- selves, or who plead only like the beggar, who, reproached for his silence, pointed to his sores, and replied, " Isn't it begging I am with a hundred tongues ? " This advocacy of his has not been thrown utterly away ; it has been heard on earth, and it has been heard in heaven. The genial kind-heartedness which distinguished Thomas Hood did not stop with himself. He silently and insensibly drew around him a little cluster of kindred spirits, who, without the name, have obtained the character and influence of a school, which may be called the Latter Cockney School. ¥/ho the parent of this school, properly speaking, was, whether Leigh Hunt or Hood, we will not stop to inquire. Perhaps we may rather compare its mem- bers to a cluster of bees settling and singing together, without thought of precedence or feeling of inferiority, upon one flower. Leigh Hunt and Hood, indeed, have far higher qualities of imagi- nation than the others, but they possess some properties in com- mon with them. All this school have warm sympathies, both with man as an individual, and with the ongoings of society at large. All have a quiet but burning sense of the evil, the cant, the injustice, the inconsistency, the oppression, and the falsehood, that are in the world. All are aware that fierce invective, furious recalcitration, and howling despair, can never heal nor mitigate these calamities. All are believers in their future and perma- nent mitigation; and are convinced that literature — prosecuted in a proper spirit, and combined with political and moral progress — will marvellously tend to this result. All have had, or have, too much real or solid sorrow to make of it a matter of parade, or to find or seek in it a frequent source of inspiration. All, finally, would rather laugh than weep men out of their follies, and minis- tries out of their mistakes ; and, in an age which has seen the steam of a tea-kettle applied to change the physical aspect of the earth, all have unbounded faith in the mightier miracles of moral and political I'evolution which the mirth of an English fireside is yet to effect when propei'ly condensed and pointed. We rather honour the motives than share in the anticipations of this witty and bril- liant band. Much good they have done and are doing; but the full case is beyond them. It is in mechanism, after all, not in magic, that they trust. "We, on the other hand, have more hope THOMAS HOOD. 77 in the double-divine charm which Genius and Religion, fully wedded together, are yet to wield; when, in a high sense, the words of the poet shall be accomplished — " Love and song, song and love, entertwined evermore, Weary earth to the suns of its youth shall restore." Mirth like that of " Punch" and Hood can relieve many a fog upon individual minds, butis powerless to remove the great clouds which hang over the general history of humanity; and around even po- litical abuses it often plays harmless as the summer evening's lightning, or, at most, only loosens without smiting them down. Voltaire's smile showed the Bastile in a ludicrous light, as it fan- tastically fell upon it; but Rousseau's earnestness struck its pin- nacle, and Mirabeau's eloquence overturned it from its base. There is a call in our case for a holier earnestness, and for a purer, nobler oratory. From the variety of styles which Hood has attempted in his poems, we select the two in which we think him most successful — the homely tragic narrative, and the grave pathetic lyric. We find a specimen of the former in his " Eugene Aram's Dream." This may be called a tale of the Confessional; but how much new interest does it acquire from the circumstances, the scene, and the person to whom the confession is made ! Eugene Aram tells his story under the similitude of a dream, in the interval of the school toil, in a shady nook of the play-ground, and to a little boy. What a ghastly contrast do all these peaceful images pre- sent to the tale he tells, in its mixture of homely horror and shadowy dread! What an ear this in which to inject the fell revelation ! In what a plain yet powerful setting is the awful pic- ture thus inserted ! And how perfect at once the keeping and the contrast between youthful innocence and guilt, grey-haired before its time! — between the eager, unsuspecting curiosity of the lis- tener, and the slow and difficult throes, by which the narrator re- lieves himself of his burden of years! — between the sympathetic, half-pleasant, half-painful shudder of the boy, and the strong con- vulsion of the man! The Giaour, emptying his polluted soul in the gloom of the convent aisle, and to the father trembling instead of his penitent, as the broken and frightful tale gasps on, is not equal in interest nor awe to Eugene Aram recounting liis dream to the child, till you as well as he wish, and are tempted to shriek out, that he may awake, and find it indeed a dream. Eugene Aram is not like Bulwer's hero — a sublime demon in love; he is a mere man in misery, and the poet seeks you to think, and you can think, of nothing about him, no more than himself can, ex- cept the one fatal stain which has made him what he is, and which he long has identified with himself. Hood, with the instinct and art of a great painter, seizes on that moment in Aram's history 78 THOMAS HOOD. wliicli formed the hinge of its interest — not the moment of the murder — not tlie long, silent, devouring remorse that followed — not the hour of the defence, nor of the execution — but that when the dark secret leapt into light and punishment; this thrilling, curdling instant, predicted from the past, and pregnant with the future, is here seized, and startlingly shown. All that went be- fore was merely horrible, all that followed is horrible and vulgar ; the poetic moment in the story is intense. And how inferior the laboured power and pathos of the last volume of Bulwer's novel to these lines ! — " That very night, while gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn Through the cold and heavy mist ; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, VVith gyves upon his wrist." And here, how much of the horror is breathed upon us from the calm bed of the sleeping boy! The two best of his grave, pathetic lyrics are the " Song of the Shirt" and the " Bridge of Sighs." The first was certainly Hood's great hit, although we were as much ashamed as rejoiced at its success. We blushed when we thought that at that stage of his life he needed such an introduction to the public, and that thousands and tens of thousands were now, for the first time, in- duced to ask—" Who's Thomas Hood?" The majority of even the readers of the age had never heard of his name till they saw it in " Punch," and connected with a song — first-rate, certainly, but not better than many of his former poems ! It casts, to us, a strange light upon the chance medleys of fame, and on the lines of Shakspere — " There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Alas ! in Hood's instance, to fortune it did not lead, and the fame was brief lightning before darkness. And v/hat is the song which made Hood awake one morning and find himself famous ? Its great merit is its truth. Hood sits down beside the poor seamstress as beside a sister, counts her tears, her stitches, her bones — too transparent by far through the sallow skin — sees that though degraded she is a woman still; and rising up, swears by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that he will make her wrongs and wretchedness known to the limits of the country and of the race. And hark! how, to th.at cracked, tuneless voice, trembling under its burden of sorrow, now shrunk down into the whispers of weakness, and now shuddering up into the laughter of despair, all Britain listens for a moment — listens, meets, talks, and does little or nothing. It was much that one THOMAS HOOX). 79 slirill shriek sTiould rise and reverberate above tliat world of wild confused wailings, which are the true "cries of London;" but, alas ! that it has gone dovv-n again into the abyss, and tliat we are now employed in criticising its artistic quality, instead of record- ing its moral eifect. Not altogether in vain, indeed, has it sound- ed, if it have comforted one lonely heai't, if it have bedewed with tears one arid eye, and saved to even one sufferer a pang of a kind which Shakspere only saw in part, when he spoke of the "proud vian's contumely" — the contumely of a proud, imperious, fashionable, hard-hearted woman — " one that was a woman, but, rest her sonl, she's dead." Not the least striking nor impressive thing in this " Song of the Shirt" is its half-jesting tone, and light, easy gallop. What sound in the streets so lamentable as the laughter of a lost female ! It is more melancholy than even the death-cough shrieking up through her shattered frame, for it speaks of rest, death, the grave, forgetfulness, perhaps forgiveness. So Hood into the centre of this true tragedy has, with a skilful and sparing hand, dropt a pun or two, a conceit or two; and these quibbles are pre- cisely what make you quake. " Every tear hinders needle and thread," reminds us distantly of these words, occurring in the very centre of the Lear agony, " Nuncle, it is a naughty night to swim in." Hood, as Avell as Shakspere, knew that, to deepen the deepest "WO of humanity, it is the best way to show it in the lurid light of mirth ; that there is a sorrow too deep for tears, too deep for sighs, but none too deep for smiles; and that the aside and the laughter of an idiot might accompany and serve to aggravate the anguish of a god. And what tragedy in that swallow's back which " twits with the spring" this captive without crime, this suicide without intention, this martyr without the prospect of a fieiy chariot ! The " Bridge of Sighs" breathes a deeper breath of the same spirit. The poet is arrested by a crowd in the street: he pauses, and finds that it is a female suicide whom they have plucked dead from the waters. His heart holds its own coroner's inquest upon her, and the poem is the verdict. Such verdicts are not common in the courts of men. It sounds like a voice from a loftier climate, like the cry which closes' the " Faust," "She is pardoned." He knows not — what the jury will know in an hour — the cause of her crime. He wishes not to know it. He cannot determine what proportions of guilt, misery, and madness have mingled with her " mutiny." He knows only she was miserable, and she is dead — dead, and therefore away to a higher tribunal. He knows only that, whate'er her guilt, she never ceased to be a woman, to be a sister, and that death, for him hushing all questions, hiding all faults, has left on her " only the beautiful." What can he do ? He forgives her in the name of humanity; every heart says 80 THOMAS HOOD. amen, and his verdict, thus repeated and confirmed, may go down to eternity. Hei-e, too, as in the " Song of the Shirt," the effect is trebled by the outward levity of the sti-ain. Light and gay the masque- rade his grieved heart puts on; but its every flowei*, feather, and fringe shakes in the internal anguish as in a tempest. This one stanza (coldlj^ pi'aised by a recent writer in the " Edinburgh Re- view," whose heart and intellect seem to be alike extinct, but to us how unspeakably dear !) might perpetuate the name of Hood: " The bleak wind of March Made her tremble and shiver, But not the dark arch, Nor the black flowing river; Mad from life's history — Glad to death's mystery Swift to be hurl'd, Anywhere, anywhere Out of the world ! " After all this, we " have not the heart," as Lord JeflPrey used to say, to turn to his " Whims and Oddities," &c., at large. " Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any man living," was his self-proposed epitaph. Whether pun- ning was natural to him or not, we cannot tell. We fear that with him, as Avith most people, it was a bad habit, cherished into a necessity and a disease. Nothing could be more easily acquired than the power of punning, if, in Dr Johnson's language, one's mind were but to abandon itself to it. What poor creatures you meet, from whom puns come as easily as perspiration. If this was a disease in Hood, he turned it into a " commodity." His innumerable puns, like the minnikin multitudes of Lilliput sup- plying the wants of the Man Mountain, fed, clothed, and paid his rent. This was more than Aram Dreams or Shirt Songs could have done, had he written them in scores. Some, we know, will, on the other hand, contend that his facility in punning was the outer form of his inner faculty of minute analogical pei'cep- tion — that it was the same power at play — that the eye which, when earnestly and piercingly directed, can perceive delicate re- semblances in things has only to be opened to see like words dancing into each other's embrace; and that this, and not the perverted taste of the age, accounts for Shakspere's puns; pun- ning being but the game of football, by which he brought a great day's labour to a close. Be this as it may, Hood punned to live, and made many suspect that he lived to pun. This, however, was a mistake. For, apart from his serious pretensions as a poet, his puns swam in a sea of humour, farce, drollery, fun of every kind. Parody, caricature, quiz, innocent double entendre, mad exaggeration, laughter holding both his sides, sense turned awry, THOMAS MACAULAT. 81 find clownriglit, staring, slavering nonsense, were all to be found in his writings. Indeed, every species of wit and humour abounded, with, perhaps, two exceptions; — the quiet, deep, ironi- cal smile of Addison and the misanthropic grin of Swift (form- ino' a stronger antithesis to a laugh than the blackest of frowns) were not in Hood. Each was peculiar to the single man whose face bore it, and shall probably re-appear no more. For Addi- son's matchless smile we may look and long in vain; and forbid that such a horrible distortion of the human face divine as Swift's grin (disowned for ever by the fine, chubby, kindly family of mirth!) should be witnessed again on earth! " Alas! poor Yorick. AVhere now thy squibs? — thy quiddi- ties ? — thy flashes tliat wont to set the table in a roar ? Quite chopfallen ?" The death of a man of mirth has to us a drearier significance than that of a more sombre spirit. He passes into the other world as into a region where his heart had been trans- lated long before. To death, as to a nobler birth, had he looked forward; and when it comes his spirit readily and cheerfully yields to it, as one great thought in the soul submits to be dis- placed and darkened by a greater. To him death had lost its terrors, at the same time that life had lost its charms. But " can a ghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides?" — is there wit any more than wisdom in the grave? — do puns there crackle? — or do " Comic Annuals" there mark the still procession of the years? The death of a humorist, as the first serious epoch in his his- tory, is a very sad event. In Hood's case, however, we have this consolation: a mere 'humorist he Avas not, but a sincere lover of his race — a hearty friend to their freedom and welfare — a deep sympathiser with their sufferings and sorrows; and, if he did not to the full consecrate his high faculties to their seiwice, surely his circumstances as much as himself were to blame, \yriting, as we are, in Dundee, where he spent some of his early days, and which never ceased to possess associations of interest to his mind; and owing, as we do, to him a debt of much pleasure, and of some feelings higher still, we cannot but take leave of his writings with every sentiment of admiration and gratitude. THOMAS MACAULAY. To attempt a new appraisement of the intellectual charactei; of Thomas Macaulay, we are impelled by various motives. Our former notice of him* was short, huiTied, and imperfect. Since • In our fest " Gallery of Portraits." u 82 THOMAS MACAULAT. it was written, too, we have had an opportunity of seeing and hearing the man, which, as often happens in such cases, has given a more distinct and tangible shape to our views, as well as considerably modified them. Above all, the public attention has of late, owing to circumstances, been so strongly turned upon him, that we are tolerably sure of carrying it along with us in our present discussion. The two most popular of British authors are, at present, Charles Dickens and Thomas Macaulay. The supremacy of the former is verily one of the signs of the times. He has no massive or profound intellect — no lore superior to a schoolboy's — no vast or creative imagination — little philosophic insight, little power of serious writing, and little sympathy with either the subtler and profounder parts of man, or with the grander features of Nature (witness his description of Niagara — he would have painted the next pump better !) ; and yet, through his simplicity and sincerity, his boundless honhommie, his fantastic humour, his sympathy with everyday life, and his absolute and unique dominion over every region of the Odd, he has obtained a popularity Avhich Shakspere nor hardly Scott in their lifetime enjoyed. He is ruling over us like a Fairy King or Prince Prettyman — strong men as well as weak yielding to the glamour of his tiny rod. Louis XIV. walked so erect, and was so perfect in the management of his person, that people mistook his very size, and it was not discovered till after his death that he was a little, and not a large man. So many of the admirers of Dickens have been so dazzled by the elegance of his proportions, the fairy beauty of his features, the minute grace of his motions, and the small sweet smile which plays about his mouth, that they have imagined him to be a Scott, or even a Shakspere. To do him justice, he himself has seldom fallen into such an egregious mistake. He has seldom, if ever, sought to alter, by one octave, the note Nature gave him, and which is not that of an eagle, nor of a nightingale, nor of a lark, but of a happy, homely, gleesome " Cricket on the Hearth." Small almost as his own Tiny Tim, dressed in as dandyfied a style as his own Lord Frederick Verisoft, he is as full of the milk of hu- man kindness as his own Brother Cheeryble ; and we cannot but love the man who has first loved all human beings, who can own Newman Noggs as a brother, and can find something to respect in a Bob Sawyers, and something to pity in a Ealph Nickleby. Never was a monarch of popular literature less envied or more loved; and while rather wondering at the length of his reign over such a capricious domain as that of letters, and while fearlessly expressing our doubts as to his greatness or permanent dominion, we own that his sway has been that of gentleness — of a wide- minded and kindly man; and take this opportunity of wishing long life and prosperity to " Bonnie Prince Charlie." THOMAS MACAULAr. 83 In a different region, and on a higher and haughtier seat, is Thomas Macaulay exalted. In general literature, as Dickens in fiction, is he held to be facile 2n'inceps. He is, besides, esteemed a rhetorician of a high class — a statesman of no ordinary calibre a lyrical poet of much mark and likelihood — a scholar ripe and good and, mounted on this high pedestal, he "has purposed in his heart to take another step," and to snatch from the hand of the Historic Muse one of her richest laurels. To one so gifted in the prodigality of Heaven, can we approach in any other atti- tude than that of prostration ? or dare we hope for sympathy, while we proceed to make him the subject of free and fearless criticism ? Before proceeding to consider his separate claims upon public admiration, we will sum up, in a few sentences, our impressions of his general character. He is a gifted, but not a great man. He is a rhetorician without being an orator. He is endowed with great powers of perception and acquisition, but with no power of origination. He has deep sympatliies with genius, without pos- sessing genius of the highest order itself. He is strong and broad, but not subtle or profound. He is not more destitute of original genius than he is of high principle and purpose. He has all'common faculties developed in a large measure, and cultivated to an intense degree. What he wants is the gift that cannot be R GEORGE CROLY. 103 cution been disturbed and scared away. The tliird is tlie ideal describe!-, who catches and arrests that volatile film, expressing the life of life, the gloss of joy, the light of darkness, and the wild sheen of death ; in short, the fine or terrible something which is really about the object, but which the eye of the gifted alone can see, even as in certain atmospheres only the rays of the sun are visible. The fourth is the historical describer, who sees and paints objects in relation to their past and future history, who gets so far icithin the person or the thing as to have glimpses be- hind and before about it, as if he belonged to it, like a memory or a conscience; and the fifth is the universal describer, who sees the object amidst its total bearings, representing in it more or less fully the great whole of which it is one significant part. Thus, suppose the object a tree, one will slump up its character as large or beautiful — words which really mean nothing; another will, with the accuracy of a botanist, analyse it into its root, trunk, branches, and leaves; a third will make its rustle seem the rhythm of a poem; a fourth will see in it, as Cowper in Yardley Oak, its entire history, from the acorn to the axe, or perchance from the germ to the final conflagration ; and a fifth will look on it as a mouth and mirror of the Infinite — a slip of Igdrasil. Or is the object the ocean — one will describe it as vast, or serene, or tremendous, epithets which burden the air but do not exhaust the ocean; another will regard it as a boundless solution of salt; a third will be fascinated by its terrible beauty; a fourth, with a far look into the dim records of its experience, will call it (how different from the foregoing appellations !) the '■'■ melanchohj main;" and the fifth w^ill see in it the reflector of man's history, the shadow and mad sister of earth — the type of eternity! These last three orders, if not one, at least slide often into each other, and Dr Croly appears to us a combination of the third and theTourth. His descriptions are rather those of the poet than of the seer. They are rapid, but always clear, vivid, strong, and eloquent, and over each movement of his^^ew, an invisible ^ewi/ seems to hang and to keep time. Searching somewhat more accurately for a classification of minds, they seem to us to include five orders — the prophet, the artist, the analyst, the copiast, and the combination in part of all the four. There is, first, the prophet, who receives immediately and gives out unresistingly the torrent of the breath and power of his own soul, which has become touched by a high and holy influence from behind him. This is no mechanical office; the fact that he is chosen to be such an instrument, itself proclaims his breadth, elevation, power, and patency. There is next the artist, who receives the same influence in a less measure, and who, instead of implicitly obeying the current, tries to adjust, 104 DR GEORGE CROLY. control, and get it to move in certain bounded and modulated streams. There is, thirdly, the analyst, who, in proportion to the faintness in which the breath of inspiration reaches him, is the more desirous to turn round ttjwn it, to reduce it to its elements, and to trace it to its source. There is, fourthly, the copiast — we coin a term, as he would like to form the far-olF sigh of the abo- riginal thought, which alone reaches him, into a new and power- ful spoken word — but in vain. And there is, lastly, the combi- nation of the whole four — the clever, nay, gifted mimic, whose light energy enables him to circulate betAveen, and to be some- times mistaken for, them altogether. Dr Croly is the artist, and in general an accomplished and powerful artist he is. There is sometimes a little of the slapdash in his manner, as of one who is in haste to be done with his sub- ject. His style sometimes sounds like the horse-shoes of the be- lated traveller, "spurring apace to gain the timely inn." He generally, indeed, goes off at a gallop, and continues at this gene- rous, breakneck pace to the close. He consequently has too few pauses and rests. He and you rush up panting, and arrive breathless at the summit. And yet there is never anything er- ratic or ungraceful about the motion of the thought or style. If there be not classical repose, there is classical rapture. It is no vulgar intoxication — it is a debauch of nectar ; it is not a New- market, but a Nemean race. Dr Croly's intellectual distinction is less philosophic subtlety, than strong, nervous, and manly sense. This, believed with per- fect assurance, inflamed with passion, surrounded with the rays of imagination, and pronounced with a dogmatic force and dignity peculiarly his own, constitutes the circle of his literary character — a circle which also includes large and liberal knowledge, but which has been somewhat narrowed by the influence of views, in our judgment, far too close and conservative. Especially, as we have elsewhere said, whenever he nears the French Revolution he loses temper, and speaks of it in a tone of truculence, as if it were a virulent ulcer, and not a salutary blood-letting to the so- cial system — the stir of a dunghill, and not the explosion of a volcano — the effort of a few earthworms crawling out of their lair, and producing a transient agitation in their native mud, and not a Vesuvius, moved by internal toiunents to cast out the cen- tral demon, and with open mouth to appeal to Heaven. To Croly this revolution seems more a ray from hell, shooting athwart our system, than a mysterious part of it, through which earth must roll as certainly as through its own shadow — Night ; more a re- tribution of unmitigated wrath than a sharp and sudden surgical application, severe and salutary as cautery itself. Now that we have before us a trinity of such revolutions, we have better ground for believing that they are no anomalous convulsions, but DR GEORGE CROLY. 105 the periodical fits of a singular subject, whom it were far better to watch carefully and treat kindly than to stigmatise or assault. Bishop Butler, walking in his garden with liis chaplain, after a long fit of silent thought, suddenly turned round and asked him, if he did not think tliat nations might get mad as well as individuals. What answer the worthy chaplain made to this question we are not informed, but we suspect that few now would coincide with the opinion of the bishop. Nations are never mad, though often mistaken and often diseased; or, if mad, it is a fine and terrible frenzy, partaking of the chnracter of in- spiration, and telling, through all its blasphemy and blood, some great truth otherwise a word unutterable to the nations. What said that first revolution of France? It said that men are men, that " God hath made of one blood all nations who dwell upon the face of the earth," and it proved it, alas! by viinglinrj together in one tide the blood of captains and of kings, of rich and poor, of bond and free: it destroyed for ever the notion of men being dust under the tread of power, and showed them at the least to be gunpowder, a substance always dangerous, and always, if trod on, to be trod on warily. What said the three days of Jul}', 1830? They said, that if austere, unlimited tyranny exceed in guilt, diluted and dotard despotism excels in folly, and that the contempt of a people is as effectual as its anger in subverting a throne. And what is the voice with which the world is yet vibrating, as if the sun had been struck audibly and stunned upon his mid-day throne? It is that, as a governing agent, the days of expediency are numbered, and that henceforth not power, not cunning, not conventional morality, not talent, but truth has been crowned monarch of France, and, if the great experiment succeed, of the world.* It is of Dr Croly as a prose writer principally that we mean to speak. His poetry, though distinguished, and nearly to the same extent, by the qualities of his prose, has failed in making the same impression. The causes of this are various. In the first place, it appeared at a time when the age was teeming to very riot with poetry. Scott, indeed, had betaken himself to prose novels; Southey to histories and articles; Coleridge to metaphysics; Lamb to "Elia;" and Wordsworth to his "Re- cluse," like the alchemist to his secret furnace. But still, with each new wound in Byron's heart, a new gush oi' poetry was flowing, and all eyes were watching this bard of the many sorrows, with the interest of those who are waiting silent or weeping for a last breath; and at the same time a perfect crowd of true poets were finding audience, "fit though few." Wilson, Barry Cornwall, Hogg, Hood, Clare, Cunninghame, Milraan, * Alas! alas! This was too evidently -ffritten iu 1848. K 106 BR GEOKGE CROLY. Maturin, Bowles, Crabbe, INIontgomery, are some of the now fa- miliar names which were then identified almost entirely with poetical aspirations. Amid such competitors Dr Croly first raised his voice, and only shared with many of them the fate of l>eing much praised, considerably abused, and little read. Se- condly, more than most of his contemporaries, he was subjected to the disadvantage which in a measure pressed on all. All were stars seeking to shine ere yet the sun (that woful blood- spattered sun of "Childe Harold") had fairly set. Dr Croly suffered more from this than others, just because he bore in some points a strong resemblance to Byron, a resemblance which drew Ibrth, both for him and Milman, a coarse and witless assault in " Don Juan." And, thirdly, Dr Croly's poems were chargeable, more than his prose writings, with the want of continuous inte- rest. They consisted of splendid passages, which rather stood for themselves than combined to form a v/hole. The rich " bugle blooms" were trailed rather than trained about a stick scarce worthy of supporting them, and this, with the monotony inevi- table to rhyme, rendered it a somewhat tedious task to climb to the reward which never failed to be met with at last. "Paris in 1815," however, was very popular at first; and " Cataline" copes worthily, particularly in the closing scene of the play, with the character of the gigantic conspirator, whose name even yet rings terribly, as it sounds down from, the dark concave of the past. His prose writings may be divided into three classes: his fic- tions, his articles in periodicals, and his theological works. We have not read his " Tales of the Great >St Bernard," but under- stand them to be powerful though unequah His " Colonna, the Painter," appeared in " Blackwood," and, as a tale shadowed by the deadly lustre of revenge, yet shining in the beauty of Italian light and landscape, may be called an unihymed "Lara." His " Marston, or Memoirs of a Statesman," is chiefly remarkable for the sketches of distinguished characters, here and in France, which are sprinkled through it, somewhat in the manner of Bulwer's " Devereux," but drawn with a stronger pencil and in a less capricious light. To Danton, alone, we think he has not done justice. On the principle of ex pecle Herculcm, from the power and savage truth of those colossal splinters of expression, which are all his remains, we had many years ago formed our imalterable opinion, that he was the greatest, and by no means the worst, man who mingled in the melee of the Revolution — the Satan, if Dr Croly will, and not the Moloch of the Paris Pande- monium — than liobespierre abler — than ]Marat, that squalid, screeching, out-of-elbows demon, more merciful — than the Giron- din champions more energetic — than even Mirabeau stronger and less convulsive; and are glad to find that Lord Brougham has recently been led, by personal examination, to the same opinion. DR GEORGE CROLT. 107 The Danton of Dr Croly is a hideous compound of dandjMsm, diabolism, and power — a kind of coxcomb butcher, who with equal coolness arranges his moustaches and his murders, and who, when bearded in the Jacobin Club, proves himself a bully and a coward. The real Danton, so broad and calm iu repose, so dilated and Titanic in excitement, who, rising to the exigency of the hour, seemed like Satan, starting from Ithuriel's spear, to grow into armour, into power, and the weapons of power — now uttering words which were " half battles," and now walking silent, and unconscious alike of his vast enei'gies and coming doom, by the banks of his native stream — now pelting his judges with paper bullets, and now laying his head on the block proudly, as if that head were the globe — was long since pointed out by vScott as one of the fittest subjects for artistic treatment, eitlier in. fiction or the drama, " worthy," says he, " of Schiller or Shak- spere themselves." DrCroly's highest effort in fiction is unquestionably" Salathiel." And it is verily a disgrace to an age, which devours with avidity whatever silly or putrid trash popular authors may be pleased to issue — such inane commonplace as " Now and Then," where the only refreshing things are the " glasses of wine" which are poured out at the close of every third page to the actors (alas, why not to the readers!), naturally thirsty amid such dry work, or the coarse horrors which abound in the all-detestabic " Lu- cretia" — that " Salathiel" has not yet, we fear, more than reached a second edition. It has not, however, gone without its reward. By the ordinary fry of circulating library readers neglected, it was read by a better class, and by none of those who read it for- gotten. None but a " literary divine" could have written it. Its style is steeped in Scripture. But Croly does more than snatch " live coals from off the altar" to strew upon his style ; his spirit as well as his language is Oriental. You feel yourselves in Palestine; the air is that through which the words of prophets have vibi-ated and the wings of angels descended — the ground is scarcely yet calm from the earthquake of the crucifixion — the awe of the world's sacrifice, anil of the prodigies which attended it, still lowers over the land — still gapes unmended the rent in tiie vail — and still are crowds daily convening to examine the fissure in the rocks, when one lonely man, separated by his propi-r crime to his proper and un- ending wo, is seen speeding, as if on the wings of frenzy, toward the mountains of Naphthali. It is Salathiel, the hero of this story — the AVandering Jew — the heir of the curse of a dying Saviour, " Tarry thou till I come." As an artistic conception, we cannot profess much to admire what the Germans call the " Everlasting Jew." The interest is exhausted to some extent by the very title. The subject pro- 180 DR GEORGE CROLY. diets an eternity of sameness, from which we shrink, and are tempted to call him an everlasting bore. Besides, we cannot well realise the condition of the wanderer as very melancholy, after all. What a fine opportunity must the fellow have of seeing the world, and the glory and the great men thereof! Could one but get up behind him, what " pencillings" could one perpetrate by the " way ! " What a triumph, too, has he over the baffled skeleton, death! What a new fortune each century, by selling to advantage his rich " reminiscences!" What a short period at most to wander — a few thousand years, while yonder, the true wanderers, the stars, can hope for no rest! And what a jubilee dinner might he not expect, ere the close, as the " oldest inhabi- tant," with perhaps Christopher North in the chair, and De Quincey (whom some people suspect, however, of being the said personage himself) acting as croupier! Altogether, we can hardly, without ludicrous emotions, conceive of such a character, and are astonished at the grave face which Shelley, Wordsworth, Mrs Norton (whose " Undying One," by the way, is dead long ago, in spite of a review, also dead, in the " Edinburgh"), Cap- tain Medwyn (would he too had died ere he murdered the me- mory of poor Shelley !), Lord John Russell (who, in his " Essays by a Gentleman who had left his Lodgings," has taken a very, very faint sketch of the unfortunate Ahasuerus), and Dr Croly, put on while they talk of his adventures. The intei-est of " Salathiel," beyond the first splendid burst of immortal anguish with which it opens, is almost entirely irre- spective of the character of the Wandering Jew. It is chiefly valuable for its pictures of Oriental scenery, for the glimpses it gives of the cradled Hercules of Christianity, and for the gor- geous imagery and unmitigated vigour of its writing. Plot ne- cessarily there is none ; the characters, though vividly depicted, hurry past, like the rocks in the " Walpurgis Night" — are seen intensely for a moment, and then drop into darkness ; and the crowding adventures, while all interesting individually, do not gather a deepening interest as they grow to a climax. It is a book which you cannot read quickly, or with equal gusto at all times, but Avhich, like " Thomson's Seasons," " Young's Night Thoughts," and other works of rich massiveness, yield intense pleasure, when read at intervals, and in moments of poetic en- thusiasm. I^r Croly's contributions to periodicals are, as might have been expected, of various merit. We recollect most vividly his papers on Burke (since collected), on Pitt, and a most masterly and eloquent outline of the career of Napoleon. This is as rapid, as brief almost and eloquent, as one of Bonaparte's own bulletins, and much moi'e true. It constitutes a rough, red, vigorous chart of his fiery career, without professing to complete DR GEORGE CROLY. 109 pliilosophically the analysis of his character. This task Emerson lately, in our hearing, accomplished with much ingenuity. His lecture was Napoleon in essence. He indicated his points with the ease and precision of a lion-showman. Napoleon, to Emer- son, apart from his splendid genius, is the representative of the faults and the virtues of the middle class of the age. We heard some of his auditors contend that he had drawn two portraits in- stead of one; but in fact Napoleon was two, if not more, men. Indeed, if you draw first the bright and then the black side of any character, you have two beings, which the skin and brain of the one actual man can alone fully reconcile. The experience of every one demonstrates at the least a dualism; and who might not almost any day sit down and write a letter, objurgatory, or condoling, or congratulatory, to "my dear yesterday's self?" Each man, as well as Napoleon, forms a sort of Siamese twins — although, in his case, it was matter of thankfulness that the cord could not be cut. Of Dr Croly's book on the " Revelation" we have spoken for- merly. Under the shadow of that inscrutable pyramid it stands, one of the loftiest attempts to scale its summit and explain its construction; but to us all such seem as yet ineffectual. A more favourable specimen of his theological writing is to be found in his volume of " Sermons," published some time ago. The public has reason to congratulate itself on the little squabble which led to their publication. Some conceited persons, it seems, had thought proper to accuse Dr Croly of preaching sermons above the heads of his audience, and suggested greater simplicity. Now, after a careful perusal of them, we would suggest, even without a public phrenological examination of those auditors' heads, that, whatever be their situation in life, they are, if un- able to understand these discourses, incapable of their duties, are endangering the public, and should be remanded to school. Clearer, more nervous, and, in the true sense of the term, simpler discourses have not appeai'cd for many years. Their style is in general pure Saxon — their matter strong, manly, and his own — their figures always forcible, and never forced — their theology sound and Scriptural — and would to God such sermons were being preached in every church and chapel throughout Britain ! They might recall the many wanderers who, with weary heart and foot, are seeking rest elsewhei-e in vain, and might counte- ract that current which is drawing away from the sanctuaries so much of the talent, the virtue, and the honesty of the land. Dr Croly, as a preacher, in his best manner, is faithfully re- presented in those discourses, particularly in his sermons on " Stephen," the " Theory of Martyrdom," and the " Productive- ness of the Globe." We admire, in contrast with some modern and ancient monstrous absurdities to the contrary, his idea of 110 DR GEORGE CROLY. God's purpose in making his universe — not merely to display his own glory, which, when interpreted, means just, like the stated purpose of Cgesar, to extend his own name. Surely to circulate his essence and image — to proclaim himself merciful, even through punishment — and even in hell-flames to write himself down Love, is, as Ur Croly proclaims it, " the chief end" of God! His sermon on Stephen is a noble picture — we had almost said a daguerreotype — of that first martyrdom. His "Productiveness of the Globe" is richer than it is original. His " Theory of Reli- gion" is new, and strikingly illustrated. His notion is, that God, in three different dispensations — the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian — has developed three grand thoughts: fii'st the being of God; secondly, in shadow, the doctrine of atonement; and thirdly, that of immortality. With this arrangement we are not entirely satisfied, but reserve our objections till the " conclu- sion of the whole matter," in the shape of three successive vo- lumes on each of these periods, and the idea of each, has appeared, as we trust it speedily shall. We depicted, some time since, in a periodical, our visit to Dr Croly's chapel, and the impression made by his appearance, and the part of his discourse we heard. It seemed to us a shame to see the most accomplished clergyman in London preaching to so thin an audience; but perhaps it is accounted for partly by the strictness of his conservative principles, and partly by the stupid prejudice Avhich exists against all literary divines. Lat- terly, we are told, his attendance has greatly increased. We are sorry we cannot, ere we conclude, supply any particu- lars about his history. Of its details we are altogether ignorant. In conversation, he is described as powerful and commanding, Hoo-g, the Ettrick Shepherd, we remember, describes him as rather disposed to take the lead, but so exceedingly intelligent that you entirely forgive him. He has been, as a literary man, rather solitary and self-asserting — has never properly belonged to any clique or coterie — and seems to possess an austere and somevifhat exclusive standard of taste. It is to us, and must be to the Christian world, a pleasing thought to find such a man devoting the maturity of his mind to labours peculiarly professional; and every one who has the cause of religion at heart must wish him God speed in his present re- searches. Religion has in its abyss treasures yet unsounded and unsunned, though strong must be the hand, and true the eye, and retentive the bi'eath, and daring yet reverent the spirit of their successful explorer — and such we believe to be qualities pos- sessed by Dr Croly. Ill SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. Perhaps the leadiiif; authors of the age may be divided into three classes. 1st, Those who have written avowedly and en- tirely for the few ; 2dly, Tliose who have written principally for the many ; and, 3dly, Those who have sought their audience in both classes, and have succeeded in forming, to some extent, at once an exoteric and an esoteric school of admirers. Of the first class, Coleridge and V."ordsv,-orth are the most distinguished specimens. Scott and Dickens stand at the head of the second; and Byron and Bulwer are facile pnncipes of the third. Both these last-named writers commenced their career by appealing to the sympathies of the multitude; but by and by, either satiated by their too easy success, or driven onward by the rapid progress of their own minds, they aimed at higher things, and sought, nor sought in vain, a more select audience. Byron's mind, originally unfond of, if not unlitfor, speculation, v/as enticed upwards to those rusrged and dangerous tracts of thought, where he has crathered the rarest of his beauties, by intimacy with Shelley, by envious emulation of his Lake contemporaries, and, above all, by the pale band of his misery, unveiling to him heights and depths in his nature and genius, which were previously unknown and unsus- pected, and beckoning him onward through their grim and sha- dowy regions. He grew at once, and equally, in guilt, misery, and power. An intruder, too, on domains where some other thinkers had long fixed their calm and peinnanent dwelling, his appearance was the more startling. Here was a dandy discuss- in s the great questions of natural and moral evil; a roue in silk stockings meditating suicide and mouthing blasphemy on an Alpine rock; a brilliant and popular wit and poet setting Spinoza to music, and satirising the principalities and powers of heaven, as bittei'ly as he had done the bards and reviewers of earth. Into those giddy and terrible heights, where Milton had entered a per- mitted guest,_in " privilege of virtue;" where Goethe had walked in like a passionless and prying cherub, forgetting to worship in his absorbing desire to know; and on which Shelley was wrecked and stranded in the ctorm of his fanatical unbelief; Byron is up- borne by the presumption and the despair of his mental misery. Unable to see through the high walls which bound and beset our limited faculties and little life, he can at least dash his head against them. Hence in " Manfred," *' Cain," " Heaven and Earth," and " The Vision of Judgment," we have him calling upon the higher minds of his age to be as miserable as he was, just as he had in his first poems addressed the same sad message, less energetically, and less earnestly, to the community at large. And were it not unspeakably painful to contemplate a noble mind engaged in this 1 12 SIR EDWARD BULAVKR LYTTON. profitless " apostlesliip of affliction," this thankless gospel of pro- clamation to men, that, because they are miserable, it is their duty to become more so; that, because they are bad, they are bound to be worse, we might be moved to laughter by its striking resem- blance to the old story of the fox who had lost his tail. In the career of Bulwer, we find a faint yet traceable resem- blance to that of Byron. Like him, he began with wit, satire, and persiflage. Like him, he affected, for a season, a melodra- matic earnestness. Like him, he was at last stung into genuine sincerity, and shot upwards into a higher sphere of thought and feeling. The three periods in Byron's history are distinctly marked by the three works, " English Bards," " Childe Harold," and " Cain." So "Pelham," "Eugene Aram," and " Zanoni," accurately mete out the stages in Bulwer's progress. Minor points of resemblance might be noted between the pair. Both sprung from the aristocracy; and one, at least, was prouder of Avhat he deduced from Norman blood than from nature. Bul- wer, like Byron, is a distinguished dandy. Like him, too, he has been separated from his wife; like him, he is liberal in his poli- tics. And while Byron, by way of doing penance, threw his jaded system into the Greek war, Bulwer has with better result leaped into a tub of cold water ! Point and brilliance are at once perceived to be the leading qualities of Bulwer's writing. His style is vicious from excess of virtue, weak from repletion of strength. Every word is a point, every clause a beauty, the close of every sentence a climax. He is as sedulous of his every stroke, as if the effect of the whole depended upon it. His pages are all sparkling with minute and insulated splendours ; not suffused with a uniform and sober glow, nor shown in the reflected light of a few solitary and surpassing beauties. Some writers peril their reputation upon one long difiicult leap, and, it accomplished, walk on at their leisure. With others, writing is a succession of hops, steps, and jumps. This, in general, is productive of a feeling of tedium. It teases and fa- tigues the mind of the reader. It at once wearies and provokes. If in Bulwer's writings we weary less than in other's, it is owing to the artistic skill with which he intermingles his points of hu- mour with those of sententious reflection or vivid narrative. All is point: but the point perpetually varies from "gay to grave, from lively to severe;" including in it raillery and reasoning, light dialogue and earnest discussion, bursts of political feeling and raptures of poetical description; here a sarcasm, almost worthy of Voltaire, and there a passage of pensive grandeur, which' Rousseau might have sealed with his tears. To keep up this perpetual play of varied excellence, required at once great vigour and great versatility of talents ; for Bulwer never walks through his part, never proses, is never tame, and seldom SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTOX. 113 indeed substitutes sound for sense, or mere flummery for force and fire. He generally writes his best; and our great quarrel, indeed, with him is, that he is too uniformly erect in the stirrups, too conscious of himself, of his exquisite management, of his com- plete equipment, of the speed with which he devours the dust; and seldom exhibits the careless grandeur of one who is riding at the pace of the whirlwind, with perfect self-oblivion, and with perfect security. Buhver reminds us less of an Englishman Frenchified than of a Frenchman partially Anglicised. The original powers and tenden- cies of his mind, his eloquence, wit, sentiments, and feelings, his talents and his opinions, his taste and style, are those of a modern Frenchman. But these, long subjected to English influences, and long trained to be candidates for an English popularity, have been modified and altered from their native bent. In all his writings, however, you breathe a foreign atmosphere, and find very slight sympathy with the habits, manners, or tastes of his native country. Not Zanoni alone, of his heroes, is cut off" from country, as by a chasm, or if held to it, held only by ties which might with equal strength bind him to other planets ; all his leading characters, whatever their own pretensions, or whatever their creator may assert of them, are in reality citizens of the world, and have no more genuine relation to the land whence they spring, than have the winds, which linger not over its loveliest landscapes, and hurry past its most endeared and conse- crated spots. Eugene Aram is not an Englishman; Rienzi is hardly an Italian, Buhver iS' perhaps the first instance of a great novelist obtaining popularity without a particle of nationality in his spirit or in his writings. We do not question his attachment to his own principles or his native country; but of that tide of national prejudice which, Burns says, " shall boil on in his breast till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest," he betrays not one drop. His novels might all have appeared as translations from a foreign language, and have lost but little of their interest or verisimilitude. This is the more remarkable, as his reign exactly divides the space be- tween that of two others, who have obtained boundless fame, greatly in consequence of the very quality, in varied forms, which Buhver lacks. Scott's knowledge and love of Scotland, Dickens' knowledge and love of London, stand in curious antithesis to Bulwer's intense cosmopolitanism and ideal indifference. Akin to this, and connected either as cause or as effect with it, is a certain dignified independence of thought and feeling in- separable from the motion of Bulwer's mind. He is not a great original thinker; on no one subject can he be called profound, but on all he thinks and speaks for himself. He belongs to no school cither in literature or in politics, and he hascreutednoschool. 1 14 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. He is too proud for a Radical, and too wide-minded for a Tory. He is too definite and decisive to belong to the mystic school of letters — too impetuous and impulsive to cling to the classical — too liberal to be blind to the beauties of either. He has attained, thus, an insulated and original position, and may be viewed as a separate, nor yet a small estate, in our intellectual realm. He may take up for motto, " Nullius jurare addict us in verba magistri;'" he may emblazon on his shield " Desdichado." Some are torn, by violence, from the sympathies and attachments of their native soil, without seeking to take root elsewhere; others are early transplanted, in heart and intellect, to other countries; a few, again, seem born, rooted up, and remain so for ever. To this last class we conceive Bulwer to belong. In the present day, the de- mand for earnestness, in its leading minds, has become incessant and imperative. Men speak of it as if it had been lately erected into a new test of admission into the privileges alike of St Ste- phen's and of Parnassus. A large and formidable jury, with Thomas Carlyle for foreman, are diligently occupied in trying each new aspirant, as well as back-speiring the old, on this ques- tion : " Earnest or a sham ? Heroic or hearsay ? Under which king, Bezonian ? speak, or die." Concerning this cry for earnest- ness, we can only say, en passant, that it is not, strictly speaking, new, but old; as old, surely, as that great question of Deborah's to recreant Reuben — " Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds to hear the bleating of the flocks ? " or that more awful query of the Tishbite's — " How long halt ye between two opinions ?" that it is, in theory, a robust truth ; and sometimes, in application, an exaggeration and a fallacy; and that, unless preceded by the words " enlightened " and " virtuous," earnestness is a quality no more intrinsically admirable, nay, as blind and brutal, as the rush of a bull upon his foeman, or as the foaming fury of a madman. Bulwer is not, we fear, in the full sense of the term, an earnest man: nay, we have heard of the great modern prophet of the quality, pronouncing him the most thoroughly false man of the age ; and another, of the same school, christens him " a double distilled scent-bottle of cant." In spite of this, however, we deem him to possess, along with much that is affected, much, also, that is true, and much that is deeply sympathetic with sincerity, al- though no devouring fire of purpose has hitherto filled his being. And, as we hinted before, his later writings exhibit sometimes, in mournful and melancholy forms, a growing depth and truth of feeling. Few, indeed, can even sportively wear for a long time the yoke of genius without its iron entering into the soul, and eliciting that voice of eloquent sorrow or protest which becomes immortal. Bulwer, as a novelist, has, from a compound of conflicting and imported materials, reared to himself an independent structure. SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 115 He has united many of the qualities of the fashionable novel, of the Godwin philosophical novel, and of the Waverley tale. He has the levity and thoroughbred air of the first, much of the mental anatomy and philosophical thought which often overpower the narrative in the second, and a portion of the dramatic liveli- ness, the historical interest, and the elaborate costume of the third. If, on the other hand, he is destitute of the long, solemn, overwhelming swell of Godwin's style of writing, and of the variety, the sweet, natural, and healthy tone of Scott's, he has some qualities peculiar to himself — point, polish — at times a classical elegance — at times a barbaric brilliance, and a per- petual mint of short sententious reflections — compact, rounded, and shining as new-made sovereigns. We know no novelist from whose writings we could extract so many striking sentences containing fine thoughts, chased in imagery, " apples of gold in a network of silver.'' The wisdom of Scott's sage reflections is homely but commonplace; Godwin beats his gold thin, and you gather his philosophical acumen rather from the whole conduct and tone of the story, and his commentary upon it, than from single and separate thoughts. Dickens, whenever he moralises, in ills own person, becomes insutferably tame and feeble. But it is Bulwer's beauty that he abounds in fine, though not far, gleams of insight ; and it is his fault that sometimes, while watching these, he allows the story to stand still, or to drag heavily, and sinks the character of novelist in that of brilliant essay-writer, or inditer of smart moral and political apophthegms. In fact, his works are too varied and versatile. They are not novels or romances so much as compounds of the newspaper article, the essay, the political squib, the gay and rapid dissertation, which, along wnth the necessary ingredients of fiction, combine to form a junction, without constituting a true artistic whole. Reserving a few remarks upon one or two other of his works till afterwards, wc recur to the three which seem to typify the stages of his progress: " Pelham," "Eugene Aram," and " Zanoni." " Pelham," like " Anastasius," begins with a prodi- gious afiectation of wit. For several pages, the reading is as gay and as wearisome as a jest-book. You sigh for a simple sentence, and would willingly dig even for dulness as for hid treasure. The wit, too, is not an irrepressible and involuntary issue, like that from the teeming brain of Hood: it is an artificial and forced flow; and the author and his reader are equally relieved, when the clear path of the tale at lengtli breaks away from the luxu- riant shrubbery in which it is at first buried, and strikes into more open and elevated ground. It is the same with " Anasta- sius;" but " Pelham" does not reach those heights of tenderness, of nervous description, and of solemn moralising, which liave rendered the other the prose " Don Juan," and something better. 1 16 SIR EDWAKD BULWER LYTTON. It is, at most, a series, or rather string, of clever, dashing, dis- connected sketches; and the moral problem it works out seems to be no more than this, that, under the corsets of a dandy, there sometimes beats a heart. In " Eugene Aram," Bulwer evidently aims at a higher mark, and, in his own opinion, with considerable success. We gather his estimate of this work from the fact that he inscribes a laboured and glowing panegyric on Scott with the words " The Author of Eugene Aram." Now, probably, he would exchange this for *' The Author of Zanoni," Nor should we, at least, nor, we think, the public, object to the alteration. " Eugene Aram" seems to us as lamentable a perversion of talent as the literature of the age has exhibited. It is one of those works in which an unfortunate choice of subject neutralises eloquence, genius, and even interest. It is with it as with the " Monk" and the " Cenci," where the more splendid the decorations which surround the dis- gusting object, the more disgusting it becomes. It is, at best, deformity jewelled and enthroned. Not content with the native diflBculties of the subject — the triteness of the story — its recent date — its dead level of certainty — the author has, in a sort of daring perversity, created new difficulties for himself to cope withal. He has not bid the real pallid murderer to sit to his pencil, and trusted for success to the severe accuracy of the por- traiture. Him he has spirited away, and has substituted the most fantastic of all human fiends, resembling the more hideous of hei'aldic devices, or the more uneartlily of fossil remains. Call him rather a graft from Godwin's Falkland, upon the rough reality of the actual " Eugene Aram ;" for the worst of the matter is, that, after fabricating a being entirely new, he is compelled, at last, to clash him with the old pettifogging mui-derer, till the compound monstrosity is complete and intolerable. The philo- sopher, the poet, the lover, the sublime victim fighting with more " devils than vast hell can hold," sinks, in the trial scene, where precisely he should have risen up like a " pyramid of fire," into a sophister so mean and shallow, that you are reminded of the toad into which the lost archangel dwindled his stature. The morality, too, of the tale seems to us detestable. The feelings with which you rise from its perusal, or, at least, with which the author seems to wisli you to rise, are of regret and indignation, that, for the sin of an hour, such a noble being should perish, as if he would insinuate the wisdom of quarrel (how vain \) with the laws of retribution. It is not wonderful that, in the struggle with such self-made difiiculties, Bulwer has been defeated. The wonder is, that he has been able to cover his retreat amid such a cloud of beauties; and to attach an interest, almost human, and even profound, to a being whom we cannot, in our wildest dreams, identify with mankind. The whole tale is one of those hazardous SIR EDWARD BULWER LTTTON. 1 1 7 experiments which have become so common of late years, in which a scanty success is sought at an infinite peril; like a wild- flower, of no great worth, snatched, by a hardy wanderer, from the jaws of danger and death. We notice in it, however, with pleasure, the absence of that early levity which marked his writ- ing, the shooting germ of a nobler purpose, and an air of sincerity fast becoming more than an air. In saying that " Zanoni " is our chief favourite among Bulwer's writings, we consciously expose ourselves to the charge of para- dox. If we err, however, on this matter, we err in company with the author himself, and, we believe, with all Germany, and with many enlightened enthusiasts at home. We refer, too, in our approbation, more to the spirit than to the execution of the work. As a whole, as a broad and brilliant picture of a period and its hei-o, " Rienzi" is perhaps his greatest work, and " that shield he may hold up against all his enemies." " The Last Days of Pompeii," on the other hand, is calculated to enchant classical scholars, and the book glows like a cinder from Vesuvius, and most gorgeously are the reelings of that fiery drunkard depicted. The " Last of the Barons," again, as a cautious yet skilful filling up of the vast skeleton of Shaksperc's conception of Warwick, is attractive to all who relish English story. But we are mistaken, if on that class who love to see the Unknown, the Invisible, and the Eternal looking in upon them, through the loops and win- dows of the present; v»'hose footsteps turn instinctively toward the thick and the dark places of the " wilderness of this world;" or who, by deep disappointment or solemn sorrow, have been driven to take up their permanent mental abode upon the perilous verge of the unseen world, if " Zanoni" do not, on such, exert a mightier spell, and to their feelings be not more sweetly attuned, than any other of tliis writer's books. It is a book not to be read in the drawing-room, but in the fields — not in the sunshine, but in the twilight shade — not in the sunshine, unless, indeed, that sunshine has been saddened, and sheathed by a recent sorrow. TJien will its wild and mystic measures, its pathos, and its gran- deur, steal in like music, and mingle Avith the soul's emotions, till, like music, they seem a part of the soul itself. No term has been more frequently abused than that of reli- gious novel. This, as commonly emjdoyed, describes an equivo- cal birth, if not a monster, of whicii the worst and most popular specimen is " Coelebs in Search of a Wife." It is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious part of her book. Holding it with a half shudder, and at arra's-lengtli, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in tlie other and the other infusion of prose criticism, commonplace moralising, and sage aphorism, till it is fairly diluted down to her standard of utility and safety. But a religious novel, in the high and true sense of the term, is 1 18 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. a noble thought: a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out, as it were, in flowers: a principle old as Deity, wreathed with beauty, dramatised in action, incarnated in life, purified by suffering and death. And we confess, that to this ideal we know no novel in this our country that approaches so nearly as " Zanoni." An intense spirituality^ a yearning earnest- ness, a deep religious feeling, lie upon its every page. Its beauties are not of the " earth earthy." Its very faults, cloudy, colossal, tower above our petty judgment-seats, towards some higher tri- bunal. Best of all is that shade of mournful grandeur which rests upon it. Granting all its blemishes, the improbabilities of its story, the occasional extravagances of its language, let it have its praise for its pictures of love and grief — of a love leading its votary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and reminding you of that which made angels resign their starry thrones for the " daughters of men ;" and of a grief too deep for tears, too sacred for lamentation, the grief which he increaseth that increaseth knowledge, the grief which not earthly immortality, which death only can cure. The tears which the most beautiful and melting close of the tale wrings from our eyes are not those which wet the last pages of ordinary novels: they come from a deeper source; and, as the lovers are united in death, to part no more, triumph blends with the tenderness with which we witness the sad yet glorious union. Bulwer, in the last scene, has apparently in his eye the conclusion of the "Revolt of Islam," where Laon and Laone, springing in spirit from the funereal pile, are united in a happier region, in the "calm dwellings of the mighty dead," where on a fairer landscape I'ests a " holier day," and where the lesson awaits them, that "Virtue, though obscured on earth, no less Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness." Amid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other productions, we may mention one or two " dearer than the rest." The " Student," from its disconnected plan, and the fact that the ma- jority of its papers appeared previously, has seemed to many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless collection of its author's study-sweepings. This, however, is not a fair or correct estimate of its merits. It in reality contains the cream of Bulwer's periodical writings. And the " New Monthly Magazine," during his editorship, approached our ideal of a perfect magazine; com- bining, as it did, impartiality, variety, and power. His " Con- versations with an Ambitious Student in ill health," though hardly equal to the dialogues of Plato, contain many rich meditations and criticisms, suspended round a simple and affecting story. The word " ambitious," however, is unfortunate ; for what stu- SIR EDWARD BULWER LTTTON, 119 dent IS not, and should not be, ambitious? To study, is to climb '• Jiigher still, and hijilier, like a cloud of fire." Talk of an am- bitious chamois or of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an ambitious student. The allegories in the " Student" strike us as eminently fine, with glimpses of a more creative imagination than we can find in anv of his writings save " Zauoni." We have often re- gretted that the serious allegory, once too much affected, is now almost obsolete. Why should it be so? Shall truth no more have its mounts of transfiguration ? Must Mirza no more be overheard in his soliloquies? And is the road to the "Den" of Bunyan lost for ever? We trust, Ave trow not. In the " Stu- dent," too, occurs his far-famed attack upon the anonymous in periodical writing. We do not coincide with him in this. We do not think that the use of the anonymous either could or should be relinquished. It is, to be sui'e, in some measure relin- quished as it is. The tidings of the authorship of any article of consequence, in a Keview or Magazine, often noAV pass with the speed of lightning through the literary world, till it is as well known in the book-shop of the country town, or the post-office of the country village, as in Albemarle or George Street. But, in the first place, the anonymous forms a very profitable exercise for the acuteness of our young critics, who become, through it, masters in the science of internal evidence, and learn to detect the fine Roman hand of this and the other writer, even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots of his i's. Besides, secondly, the anonymous forms for the author an ideal character, and fixes him in an ideal position; and hence many writers have surpassed themselves, both in power and popularity, Avhile writing under its shelter. So witli Swift, in his "Tale of a Tub;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter Scott ; Addison, too, was never so good as when he put on the short face of the " Spectator." Wilson is never so good as when he assumes the glorious alias of Christoplier North. And, thirdly, the anony- mous, when preserved, picjues the curiosity of the reader, mysti- fies him into interest; and, on the other hand, sometimes allows a bold and honest writer to shoot folly, expose error, strij) false pretension, and denounce wrong, with greater safety and effect. A time may come wiien the anonymous will require to be abandoned ; but we are very doubtful if that time has yet ar- rived. In pursuing, at the commencement of this paper, a parallel be- tween Byron and Bulwer, we omitted to note a stage, the last in the former's literary progress. Toward the close of his career^ his wild shrieking earnestness subsided into Epicurean derision. He became dissolved into one contemptuous and unhappy sneer. Beginning with the satiric bitterness of "English Bards," he ended with the fiendish gaiety of " Don Juan." He laughed at 120 RALPH WALDO EMEUSON. first that he "might not weep;" but ultimately this miserable mirth drowned his enthusiasm, his heart, and put out the few flickering embers of his natural piety. The deep tragedy dis- solved in a poor yet mournful farce. We trust that our novelist will not complete his resemblance to the poet, by sinking into a satirist. 'Tis indeed a pitiful sight that of one, who has passed the meridian of life and reputation, grinning back, in helpless mockery and toothless laughter, upon the brilliant way which he has traversed, but to which he can return no more. We antici- pate for Bulwer a better destiny. He who has mated with the mighty si)irit, which had almost reared again the fallen Titanic form of republican Rome; whose genius has travelled up the llhine, like a breeze of music, "stealing and giving odour;" who, in "England and the English," has cast a rapid but vigorous glance upon the tendencies of our wondrous age; who, in his verse, has so admirably pictured the stages of romance in Milton's story; who has gone down a "diver lean and strong," after Schiller, into the " innermost main," lifting with a fearless hand the "veil that is woven with niglit and with terror;" and in " Zanoni" has essayed to relume the mystic fires of the Rosicru- cians, and to reveal the dread secrets of the spiritual world; must worthily close a career so illustrious.* RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Elsewhere we have spoken shortly, but sincerely, of Emei'son, and, even at the risk of egotism, we must say that we have been not a little amused at the treatment which our remarks have met * Since the above was written, Bulwer Las' published three works of con- sequence, all very different from each other : " Lucretia," a detestable imita- tion of a detestable school ; " Harold," a tine historical romance ; and " The Caxtons," the sweetest, simplest, most genuine and natural of all his produc- tions. An ingenious friend in " Hogg" has charged us with having painted an incongruous and inconsistent portrait of Bulwer, asserting that our origi- nal feeling toward him was that of enthusiastic admiration, but had been modified upon the mere dictum of some eminent friend. This is a total mis- apprehension. Our feelings of admiration toward Bulwer have rather grown than otherwise. _ In the year 1840, we wrote rather slightingly of him in Thomas Aird's '"' Dumfries Herald," but we had not then read " Zanoni." ' To piece together an old and new opinion, is, indeed, an absurd attempt, and leads to an absurd result ; but it is an attempt we have never made, and let the public judge whether it be a result which we have reached. We could retort upon our clever friend, by proving that within one year he expressed two opinions of this very articlii. KALPU WALDO EMERSON. 121 ■with from the press of America. So far as we can judge from periodicals and nen^spapers, from Bahiraore to Boston, a cry of universal reprobation has assailed that article. It has fallen be- tween two stools — on the one hand, Emerson's detractors are furious with us for placing him at the head of American litera- ture, and so far they are right — though a most national writer, to American literature he does not belong. He is among them, but not of them — a separate state, which no Texas negotiation will ever be able to annex to their territory. On the other hand, the school of Transcendeutali^ts contend that Ave do him less than justice; that our lines are unable to measure or to hold this leviathan; and the opinion of one American author to thisefl'ect deeply humiliated us, till accidentally falling in with her own cri- ticisms, and finding that, among other judgments of the same kind, she preferred Sou they, as a poet, to Shelley, Ave Avei'e not a little comforted, and began to think that, perhaps, we had as good a right to think and speak about Emerson as herself. " Verily, a prophet hath honour, save in his own country, and among those of his own house" — an expression containing much more truth than it at first seems to imply ; for, indeed, the ho- nour given in one's own country is often as Avorthless as the ne- glect or abuse ; and, notwithstanding the Avell-knoAvn French adage, the vilest and commonest of hero Avorship is that of valets . and parasites, Avho measure their idol by the standard of his superiority to their own littleness. Hero-Avorship, however, even in rts Avorst form, is preferable to that spirit of jealousy which pervades much of the American press in reference to Emerson, which, at the mention of his name, elicits in each journal a long list of illustrious-obscure (like a shoAver of bats from the roof of a barn on the entrance of a light), in its judgment superior to him — as though a Cockney, insulted by a panegyric on Carlyle, as one of the principal literary ornaments of London, were to produce and parade the names of the subordinate scribblers in the " Athenaium," &c., as the genuine galaxy of her mental fir- mament. With occasional exceptions, the great general rule is — how does a name sound afar? — Avhat impression does it make upon those Avho, unprejudiced either for or against the author personally — uncii"cumscribed by clique or coterie — unaltered by adverse, unsoftened by favourable criticism, have fairly brought his Avorks to the test of their oAvn true-feeling and true-telling souls? Tills has been eminently the case witli Emerson. To him, •Britain is beginning to requite the justice Avhich America, to her honour, first awarded to Carlyle. Sincere spirits, in every part of the country, wlio have, many of them, no sympathy Avith Emerson's surmised opinions, delight, nevertheless, to do him honour, as an eloquent and gifted man, caught, indeed, and 122 RALPH WALDO EMERSOIV. Struggling in a most alien element, standing almost alone in a mechanical country, and teaching spiritual truth to those to many of whom Mammon — not Moses — has become the laAvgiver, and Cant — not Christ — the God, but as yet faithful to the mission with which he deems himself to be fraught. Alike careless and fearless of the judgment which may be passed by any man here or in America on our opinions, we pro- pose now to extend our former estimate of Emerson — an estimate which has at once been strengthened and modified by the volume of poems he has recently issued. And first of his little volume of poems. They are not wholes, but extracts from the volume of his mind. They are, as he truly calls some of them, " Woodnotes," as beautiful, changeful, capri- cious, and unfathomable often as the song of the birds. On hearing such notes, we sometimes ask ourselves, " What says that song which has lapped us in such delicious reverie, and made us almost forget the music in the sweet thoughts which are sug- gested by it?" A'ain the question, for is not the suggestion of such sweet thoughts saying enough, saying all that it was needed to say ? It is the bird that speaks — our own soul alone can fur- nish the interpretation. 80 with many of the poems of Emerson. They mean absolutely nothing — they are mere nonsense-verses, except to those who have learned their cypher, and whose heart instinctively dances to their tune. It is often a wordless music — a Avild, wailing rhythm — a sound inexplicable, but no more ab- surd or meaningless than the note of the flute, or the thrill of the mountain bagpipe. Who would, or who, though willing, could, translate into common, into all language, that train of thought and emotion, long as the life of the soul and wide as the firma- ment, which one inarticulate melody can awaken in the mind? So some of Emerson's verses float us away, listening and lost, on their stream of sound, and of dim suggestive meaning. Led himself, as he repeatedly says, " as far as the incommunicable," he leads us into tlie same mystic region, and we feel that even in nature there are things unutterable, which it is not possible for the tongue of maia to utter, and which yet are real as the earth and the heavens. Coleridge remarks, that wherever you find a sentence musically woi'ded, of true rhythm, and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too. Mere no-meaning will not wed Avith sweet sound. We do not profess to be in the secret of some of the more mystic poems in this volume, such as " Uriel" and the " Sphynx ; " but we are ready to apply the old Socratic rule in his behalf— what we un-* derstand is excellent, what we do not understand is likely to be excellent too. A man is often better than his theory, however good and com- l^aratively true that theory be ; and this holds especially true of RAl-PH WALDO EM5;RS0N. 1'23 a poet'.s creetl, wliicli, however dry, hard, and abstract, flushes into beauty at his touch, even as the poet's cottage has cliarms about it which are concealed i'roni the vulgar eye; and the poet's bride is often by him prodigally clothed with beauties which niggard nature had denied her. What Emerson's creed is, we honestly say we do not know — that all Ave confidently assert cc n- cerning it is, that you cannot gather it like apples into baskets, nor grind it like corn into provender, nor wind and unwind it like a hank of 3'arn, nor even collect it like sunlight into a focus, and analyse it into prismatic points, whether five or seven — nor enclose it within all the vocabularies of all vernacular tongue?; and yet that it is not so bad or unholy, but that in his mind Beauty pitches her tents around its borders, and Wonder looks up toward it with rapt eye, and Song tunes sweet melodies in its praise, and Love, like the arms of a child seeking to span a giant oak, seeks to draw into her embrace its immeasurable vastness. It is such a creed as a man might form and subscribe in a dream, and when he awoke receive a gentle shrift from wise and gentle con- fessors. AVhy criticise or condemn the long nocturnal reverie of a poetic mind, seeking to impose its soft fantasy upon the solid and stupendous universe ! We will pass it by in silence, simply re- torting the smile with which he regards our sterner theories, as we Avatch him weaving his network of cobweb around the limbs of the " Sphynx," and deeming that he has her fast. This, indeed, is the great fault of Emerson. He has a pen- chant for framing brain-webs of all sorts and sizes ; and, because they hang beautifully in the sunbeam, and wave gracefully in the breeze, and are to his eye peopled with a fiiiry race, he deems them worthy of all acceptation, and we verily believe Avould mount the scafiold, if requisite, for the wildest day-dream that ever crossed his soul among the woods. It was for visions as palpable as tlie sun that the ancient prophets sacrificed or perilled their lives. It was for facts of which their own eyes and ears were cognisant that the apostles of the Lamb loved not their lives unto the death. It was not till this age that " Cloudland," nay, dreamland — dimmer still — sent forth a missionary to testily, with rapt look and surging eloquence, his belief in the shadows of his own thoughts. Emerson, coming down among men from his mystic altitudes, reminds us irresistibly at times of Rip Van AVlnkle, with his grey beard and rusty firelock, descending the Catskill Mountains, from his sleep of a humlred years. A dim, sleepy atmosphere hangs aroundhini. All things havean unreal appeai-auce. Men seem "like trees walking." Of his own identity he is by no means certain. Ab in the " Taming of the Shrew," the sun and the moon seem to have interchanged places; and yet, arrived at his native vil- lage, he (not exactly like honest liip) opens shop, and sells, not 124 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. the mystic draught of tlie mountain, but often the merest com- monphice preparations of an antiquated morality. In fact, nothing is more astounding about tliis writer than the mingled originality and triteness of his matter. Now he speaks as if from inmost communion with the soul of being; Nature seems relieved of a deep burden which had long lain on her bosom, when some of his oracular words are uttered ; and now it is as if the throat of the thunder had announced the rule of three — as if the old silence had been broken, to enunciate some truism which every schoolboy had long ago recorded in his copy-book. The " Essay on Compensation," for example, proves most trium- phantly that vice is its own punishment, and virtue its own re- ward; but, so far as it seeks to show that vice is its own only punishment, and virtue is its own onhj reward, it signally fails. The truth, indeed, is this — vice does punish, and terribly punish, its victims, but who is to punish vice ? How is it to be gibbeted for the warning of the moral universe? Can a mere under-cur- rent of present punishment be sufficient for this, if there be such a thing as a great general commonwealth in the universe at all? Must it not receive, as the voluntary act of responsible agents, some public and final rebuke ? The compensation which it at present obtains is but comparatively a course of private teaching; and does not the fact, that it is on the whole unsuccessful, create a necessity for a more public, strict, and effectual reckoning and instruction ? Thus, what is true in this celebrated essay is not new; and what is new is not true. This is not unfrequently the manner of Emerson. To an egregious truism, he sometimes suddenly appends a paradox as egregious. Like a stolid or a sly servant at the door of a drawing-room, he calls out the names of an old respected guest and of an intruding and presumptuous charlatan, so quickly and so close together, that they appear to the company to enter as a friendly pair. Of intentional deception on such matters, we cheerfully and at once acquit him; but to his eye, emerging from the strange dreamy abnormal regions in which he has dwelt so long, old things appear new, and things new to very crudity appear stamped with the authority and covered with the hoary grandeur of age. Emerson's object of worship has been by many called nature — it is, in reality, man; but by man, in his dark ambiguities and inconsistencies, repelled, he has turned round and sought to see his face exhibited in the reflector of nature. It is man whom he seeks everywhere in the creation. In pursuit of an ideal of man, he runs up the midnight winds of the forest, and questions every star of the sky. To gain some authentic tidings of man's origin — his nature — past and future history — he listens with patient ear to the songs of birds — the wail of torrents — as if each RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 125 smallest surge of air were whispering, could he but catch the meaning, about man. He feels that every enigma runs into the great enigma — what is man ? and that, if he could but unlock his own heart, the key of the universe were found. Perhaps nature, in some benignant or unguarded hour, will tell him where that key was lost ! At all events, he will persist in be- lieving that the creation is a vast symbol of man; that every tree and blade of grass is somehow cognate with his nature, and significant of his destiny; and that the x-emotest stars are only the distant perspective of that picture of which he is the central figure. It is this which so beautifies nature to his eye — that gives him more than an organic or associated pleasure in its forms, and renders it to him, not so much an object of love or of admiration as of ardent study. To many, natux*e is but the face of a great doll — a well-painted insipidity; to Emerson, it has sculptured on it an unknown but mighty language, which he hopes yet to de- cipher. Could he but understand its alphabet ! — could he but accurately spell out one of its glorious syllables ! In the light of that flashing syllable he would appear to himself discovered, ex- plained ; and thus, once for all, would be read the riddle of the world ! This, too, prevents his intercourse with nature from becoming either tedious or melancholy. Nature, to most, is a gloomy com- panion. Sometimes they are tired of it — more frequently they are terrified. " What does all this mean ? what would all this teach us ? what would tliose frowning schoolmasters of mountains have us to do or learn?" are questions which, though not pre- sented in form, are felt in reality, and which clear, as by a whip of small cords, the desecrated temple of nature. A few, indeed, are still left standing in the midst alone ! And among those few is Emerson, who is reconciled to remain, chiefly through the hope and the desire of attaining one day more perfect knowledge of nature's silent cypher, and more entire communion with na- ture's secret soul. Like an enthusiastic boy clasping a Homer's " Iliad," and saying, " I shall yet be able to inulerstand this," does he seem to say, " Dear are ye to rae, ]\Ionadnoc and Agio- chook, dear ye Alleghanies and Niagaras, because I yet hope (or at least those may hope who are to follow me) to unfix your clasps of iron — to unroll your sheets of adamant — to deliver the truths that aie buried and struggling below you — to arrest in human speech the accents of your vague and 1 mnultuous thunder." As it is, his converse with creation is intimate and endearing. " Passing over a bai'c common, amid snow puddles, he almost fears to say how glad he is." He seems (particularly in his " Wood- notes") an inspired tree, his veins full of sap instead of blood; and you take up his volume of poems, clad as it is in green, and M 126 RALril WALDO EMERSON. smell to it as to a fresh leaf. He is like the shepherd (in John- son's fine fable) among the Carpathian rocks, who understood the language of the vultures ; the sounds— 'how manifold — of the American forest say to his purged ear what they say to few others, and what even his language is unable fully to express. Akin to this passionate love of nature is one main error in Emerson's system. Because nature consoles and satisfies him, he would preach it as a healing influence of universal efficacy. He would send man to the fields and woods, to learn instruction and get cured of his many wounds. These are the airy academies which he recommends. But, alas! how few can act upon the recommendation ! How few entertain a genuine love for na- ture ! Man, through his unhappy wanderings, has been sepa- rated, nay, divorced, from what was originally his pure and beauti- ful bride — the universe. No one feels this more than Emerson, or has mourned it in language more plaintive. But why will he persist in prescribing nature as a panacea to those who, by his own showing, are incapable of apprehending its virtue ? They ai-e clamouring for bread, and he would give them rocks and ruins. We hold that between man and nature there is a gulf, which nothing but a vital change upon his character, circum- stances, and habits can fill up. Man, as a collective being, has little perception of the beauty, and none of the high spiritual meaning, of creation ; and as Avell teach the blind religion through the avenue of the eye, as teach average man truth or hope, or faith or purity, through a nature amid which he dwells an alien and an enemy. ■ On no subject is there so much pretended, and on none so little real feeling, as in reference to the beauties of nature. We do not al- lude merely to the trash which professed authors, even like Dickens, indite when, against the grain, it is their cue to fall into raptures with Niagara, or the scenery of the Eternal City, but to the ex- periences of every-day life. How often have we travelled with parties of pleasure (as they are called), whose faces, after the first burst of animal excitement, produced by fresh air and society, had subsided, it was impossible to contemplate without a mixture of ludicrous and melancholy emotions. Besides, here and there, a young gentleman, with elevated eyebrow and conceited side- look, spouting poetry, and a few young ladies looking intensely sentimental during the spoutation, the majority exhibited, so far as pleasure was concerned, an absolute blank — weariness, disgust, insipid disregard, or positive aversion, to all the grander features of the sceneiy were the general feelings visible. Still more de- testable were their occasional exclamations of foi'ced admiration, nearly as eloquent, but not so sincere, as the enthusiasm of porkers over their provender. And how quickly did a starveling jest or a Avretched pun jerk them down from their altitudes to a more RALPH WALDO ExMERSOX. 127 congenial region! A double entendre told better than the sight of a biforked Grampian. The poppling of a soda cork was finer music than the roar of a cataract. A silly flirtation among the hazel-bushes was far more memorable than the sudden gleam of a blue lake flashing through the umbrage like another morning. And when the day was over, and the party were returning home- wards, it was dismal, amid the deepening shadows of earth and the thickening glories of the sky, to witness tlie jaded looks, the exhausted spirits, the emptied hearts and souls of those vain flut- terers about nature, whom the mighty mother had amused her- self with tiring and tormenting, instead of unbaring to them her naked loveliness, or hinting to them one of the smallest secrets of her inmost soul. Specimens these of myriads upon myriads of parties of pleasure, which fashion is yearly stranding upon the shores of nature — to them an inhospitable coast — and proofs that man, as a s^jecies, must grow, and perhaps grow for ages, ere he be fit, even " on tiptoe standing," to be on a level with that " house not made with hands," of which he is now the unworthy tenant. Surely the beauties of nature are an appliance too re- fined for the present coarse complaints of degraded humanity, which a fiercer caustic must cure. Emerson may be denominated emphatically the man of con- trasts. At times he is, we have seen, the most commonplace, at other times the most paradoxical of thinkers. So is he at once one of the clearest and one of the most obscure of writers. He is seldom muddy; but either transparent as crystal or utterly opaque. He sprinkles sentences (as divines do Scripture quota- tions) upon his page, which are not only clear, but cast, like glow-worms, a far and fairy light around them. At other times he scatters a shower of paragraphs, which lie, like elf-knots, in- sulated and insoluble. Hence reading him has the stimulus of ji walk amid the interchanging lights and shadows of the woods. Or, you feel somewhat like the unlearned reader of Howe and Baxter, when he comes upon their Latin and Greek quotations. You skip or bolt his bits of mysticism, and pass on w^ith greater gusto to the clear and the open. Whether there be decrees in biblical inspiration or not, there are degrees in his. Now he rays out light, and now, like a bhxck star, he deluges us with dark- ness. The explanation of all this lies, we think, here — Emerioa has naturally a poetic and practical, not a pliilosophic or subtle, mind; he has subjected himself, however, to philosophic culture, with much care, but with partial success: when he speaks directly from his own mind, his utterances are vivid to brilliance; when he speaks from recollection of his teachers, they are exceedingly perplexed and obscure. He is perhaps, apart altogether from his verse, the truest poet America has produced. He has looked immediately, and through 128 RALPH AVALDO EJVLERSOPr. no foreign medium, at the poetical elements which he found lying around him. He has " staid at home with the soul," leav- ing others to gad abroad in search of an artiucial and imperfect inspiration. He has said, " Jf the spirit of poetry chooses to de- scend upon me as I stand still, it is \ye\\ ; it not, I will not go a step out of my road in search of it; here, on this rugged soil of Massachusetts, I take my stand, baring my brow in the breeze of my own country, and invoking the genius of my own woods." Nor has he invoked it in vain. Words, which are pictures — sounds, which are song — snatches of a deep woodland melody — jubilant raptures in praise of nature, reminding you alar off of those old Hebrew hymns, Avhich, paired to the timbrel or the clash of cymbals, rose like the cries of some gi'eat victory to heaven — ai-e given to Emerson at his pleasure. His prose is not upon occasion, and elaborately dyed with poetic hues, but wears them ever about it on its way, which is a way, not along the earth, but through the high and liquid air. Why should a man like this write verse? Does he think that truth, like sheep, re- quires a bell round its neck, ere it be permitted to go abroad? Have his tlioughts risen irresistibly above the reaches of jirose, and voluntarily moved into harmonious numbers? Does he mean to abandon — or could he, without remorse — that wondrous prose style of his, combining the sweet simplicity of Addison with much of the force of Carlyle? Is he impatient to have his verses set to music, and sung in the streets or in the drawing-rooms? Let him be assured that, exquisite as many of his poems are, his other writings are a truer and richer voice, their short and mel- low sentences moving to the breath of his spirit as musically as the pine-cones to the breeze. When we take into account this author's poetic tendencies and idealistic training, we are astonislied that he should be often the most practical of moralists. And yet so it is. His refined theories frequently bend down like rainbows, and rest their bases on earth. He often seeks to translate transcendental truth into life and action. Himself may be standing still, but it is as a cannon stands still ; his words are careering over the world, calling on men to be fervent in spirit, as well as diligent in busi- ness. There is something at times almost laughable in the sight' of this man living "collaterally or aside" — this quiet, rapt mystic standing with folded arms, like a second Simon Stylites, and yet preaching motion, progress — fervent motion, perpetual kindling progress to all around him. Motionless as a finger-post, he, like it, shows the way onwards to all passers-by. He is, in this respect, very unlike Wordsworth, who would protect the quiet of his fields as carefully as that of his family vault, or as the peace of his OAvn heart ; who, in love for calm, would almost prefer pacing the silent streets of a city of the plague to the most RALPH AVALDO EMERSON. 129 crowded tliorouglifares of London, and Avho bates each railway as if, to use the Scripture allusion, its foundation were laid on his first-born, and its terminus were set up over the grave of his youngest child. Emerson, standing on the shore, blesses the steaniers that are sweeping past, and cries, " Sweep on to your destination with your freightage of busy thoughts and throbbing purposes, and, as you pass, churn up the waters into poetry;" perched on Mouadnoc, he seems to point a path into the cloud- land of the future for the rushing railway train, which aflPects him not with fear, but with hope, ibr he looks on the machinery of this age as a great scheme of conductors, lying spread and ready for the nobler influences of a coming period. lie feels that the real truth is this: railways have not desecrated nature, but have left man behind, and it were Avell that man's spiritual should overtake his physical progress. The great lessons of a practical kind which Emerson teaches, or tries to teach, his countrymen, are faith, hope, charity, and self-reliance. He does not need to teach them the cheap virtues of industry and atten- tion to their own interest; certain distinctions between meum and tuum, right and vvTong, even he has failed to impress upon their apprehension. But he has been unwearied in urging them to faith — in other words, to realise, above the details of life, its in- trinsic vi^orth and grandeur as a whole, as well as the presence of divine laws, controlling and animating it all; to hope — in the existence of an advance as certain as the motion of the globe (a feeling this which we notice with pleasure to be growing in his writings); to love, as the mother of that milder day which he expects and prophesies: and to self-reliance, as the strong girdle of a nation's, as well as of an individual's loins, without which both are " weak as is a breaking wave." To a country like America, whose dependence upon Britain too often reminds us of an upstart hanging heavily, yet with an air of insolent carelessness, upon the arm of a superior, of what use might the latter lesson be! " Trust thyself. Cut a strong oaken staff from tliy own woods, and rest sturdily, like a wood- land giant, upon it. Give over stealing from, and then abusing the old country. Kill and eat thine own mutton, instead of liv- ing on rotten imported /r/cosse'es. Aspire to originality in some- thing else than national faults, insolences, and brutalities. Dare to be true, honest — thyself, indeed, a new country — and the Great Spirit, who loved thee in thy shaggy primeval mantle, will love thee still, and breathe on thee a breatli of liis old inspi- ration." Thus, substantially, in a thousand places, does Emerson preach to his native country. In judging, whether of his faults or merits, we ought never to lose sight of what is his real position — he was, and is a reduce. He has voluntarily retired from society. Like the knights of 1 30 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. old, who left the society of their mistresses to meditate in solitary places upon their charms, he, in love to man, has left him, and muses alone upon his character and destiny. His is not the savage grumbling retreat of a Black Dwarf, nor the Parthian flight of a Byron, nor the forced expulsion of a Shelley, who, seeking to clasp all men to his wild bosom, was with loud out- cries repelled, and ran, shrieking, into solitude — it has been a quiet, deliberate, dignified withdrawal. He has said, " If I leave you, I shall, perchance, be better able to continue "to love you — and perhaps, too, better able to understand you — and per- haps, above all, better able to profit you." And so the refined philanthropist has gone away to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, among the blackberry vines, or by the " leopard-coloured rills," or up the long dim vistas of the forest glades. A healthier and happier Cowper, his retreat made, at the time, as little noise as that of the solitary of Olney. London knew not that one, soon to be the greatest poet of that age, and the most powerful satirist of its own vices, was leaving for the country, in the shape of a poor, timid hypochondriac. None cried " Stole away" to this wounded hare. So Boston nor New England imagined that their finest spirit had forsaken his chapel for the cathedral of the woods — and they would have laughed you to scorn had you told them so. In this capacity of recluse he has conducted himself in a way worthy of the voice which came to him from the heart of the forest, saying, " Come hither and I will show thee a thing." By exercise and stern study he has conquered that tendency to aim- less and indolent reverie, which is so apt to assail thinking men in solitude. By the practice of bodily temperance and mental hope, he has, in some measure, evaded the gloom of vexing thoughts and importunate cravings. His mind has, " like a melon," expanded in the sunshine. " The outward forms of sky and earth. Of hill and valley, he has view'd ; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude." Still we cannot say that he has entirely escaped the drawbacks to which the recluse is subject. He has been living in a world of his own — he has been more conversant with principles than with facts — and more with dreams than either. His writing some- times wants the edge and point which can be gained only by a rough contact with the world ; as it is, it is often rather an inar- ticulate murmur as of a brook, careless whether it be heard or understood or not, than the sharp voice of a living man. Per- haps, also, like most solitaries, he has formed and nursed an exaggerated idea of himself and his mission. In despite to the KALPH WALDO EMERSOH. 131 current of general opinion, lie sometimes throws In rugged and crude absurdities, which have come from some other source than of the "Oversoull" And, altogether, through the mist of the sweet vision, which seems the permanent abode of his own mind, he has but imperfect glimpses of the depth and intensity of that human misery which is but another name for human life. There is another subject where, we humbly think, his views are still more egregiously in error. We refer to human guilt. "We agree with him in thinking that there is a point of view from which this dark topic may be a theme of gratulation. But we deem him premature and presumptuous in imagining that he has already reached that high angle of vision. If Foster's discoloured sight, on the one hand, gave "hell a murkier gloom," and made sin yet uglier than it is, Emerson refines it away to nothing, and really seems to regard the evil committed by man in precisely the same light as the cunning of the serpent and the ferocity of the tiger. Who has anointed his eyes with eye-salve, so that he can look complacently, and with incipient praise on his lips, upon the loathsome shapes of human depravity? What Genius of the western mountains has taken him to an elevation, whence the mass of man's wickedness, communicating with hell, and growing up tov/ard retribution, appears but a molehill, agreeably diversifying the monotony of this world's landscape? The sun may, with his burning lips, kiss and gild pollution, and remain pure ; but that human spirit ought to be supernal which can touch and toy vrith sin. And if, in his vision of the world, there be barely room for guilt, where is there space left or required for atonement? It was once remarked by us of John Foster, " pity but he had been a wickeder man;" the meaning of which strange expression was this — pity but that, instead of standing at such an austere distance from human frailty, he had come nearer it, and in' a larger measure partaken of it himself; for, in this case, his con- ceptions of it would have been juster, and less terribly harsh. We may parallel this by saying, pity almost but Emerson had been a worse and an unhappier man ; for thus might he have felt more of the evil of depravity, from its remorse and its re- tribution, and been enabled to counteract that tendency, which evidently exists in his sanguine temperament, to underrate its virulence. Like every really original mind, Emerson has been frequently subjected to, and injured by, comparison with others. Because he bears certain general resemblances to others, he must be their imitator or feebler alias. Because he is as tall as one or two re- puted giants, he must be of their progeny! He has been called, accordingly, the American Montaigne — the American Carlyle — nay, a " Yankee pocket edition of Carlyle." Unfortunate « 132 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. Amei'ica! It has been so long the land of mocking-bh*ds, that, when an eagle of Jove at last appears, he must have imported his scream, and borrowed the wild lustre of his eye! A great original standing up in an imitative country looks so sudden and so strange, that men at first conceive him a forced and foreign production. We will, on the contrary, cling to our belief, that Emerson is himself, and no other; and has learned that piercing yet musical note to which nations are beginning to listen directly from the fontal source of all melody. We are sure that he would rather be an owl, hooting his own hideous monotone, than the most accomplished of the imitative race of mocking- birds or parrots. We think that we can observe in many of Emerson's later essays, and in some of his poems, symptoms of deepening obscu- rity ; the twilight of his thought seems rushing down into night. His utterances are becoming vaguer and more elaborately oracu- lar. He is dealing in deliberate puzzles — through the breaks in the dark forest of his page you see his mind in full retreat toward some remoter Cimmerian gloom. That retreat we would arrest if we could, for we are afraid that those who will follow him thither will be few and far between. Since he has gathered a large body of exoterick disciples, it is his duty to seek to instruct, instead of perplexing and bewildering them. Of Emerson's history, we have little to tell. He was one of several brothers — all men of promise and genius — who died early, and whose loss, in one of his little poems, he deplores, as the " strong star-bright companions" of his youth. He officiated for some time as a clergyman in Boston. An American gentle- man, who attended his chapel, gave us lately a few particulars about his ministry. Noted for the amiability of his disposition, the sti'ictness of his morals, and attention to his duties, he be- came, on these accounts, the idol of his congregation. His preaching, however, was not generally popular, nor did it deserve to be. Our informant declared, that while Dr Channing was the most, Emerson was the least, popular minister in Boston, and confessed that he never heard him preach a first-rate sermon till his last, in which he informed his congregation that he could conscientiously preach to them no more. The immediate cause of his resignation was his adoption of some peculiar vie^vs of tlie Lord's Supper. In reality, however, the pulpit was not his pride of place. Its cii'cle not only confined his body, but re- stricted his soul. He went away to think, farm, and w^rite (as the Hutchisons so sweetly sing^ in the " old granite state." Thence, save to lecture, he has seldom issued, till his late pilgri- mage to Britain. One trial, he has himself recorded to have shot like lightning through the haze of his mystic tabei'nacle, and to have pierced his soul to the quick. It was the death of a KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 133 dear child of rare promise, whose threnody he has sung as none else could. It is the most touching of his strains to us, who have felt how the blotting out of one fair young face (albeit not so nearly related) is for a season the darkening of earth and of heaven. Since beginning to write, we have had the opportunity of hearing Emerson the lecturer, as well as of meeting Emerson the man, and we shall close by a few jottings on him. Of Emer- son the private individual, it were indelicate to say much; suffice it that he has notliing very remarkable or peculiar about him, but is simply a mild and intelligent gentleman, with whom you might be hours and days in company, without suspecting him to be a i^hilosopher or a poet. His manners are those of one ^vho has studied the graces in the woods. His conversation is at times a sweet rich dropping, like honey from the rock. His great- ness is gracefully disguised under sincere modesty and simplicity of character ; he is totally free from those go ahead crotchets and cants which disgust you in many- Americans; and it is impossible for the most prejudiced to be in his society, and not be impressed with respect for the innocence of his life, and regard for the simplicity of his manners. Plain and homely he may be as a wooden bowl, but not the less rich and ethereal is the nectar of thought by which he is filled. A lecturer, in the common sense of the term, he is not; call him rather a public monologist, talking rather to himself than to his audience — and what a quiet, calm, commanding conversation it is! It is not the seraph, or burning one that you see in the midst of his wings of fire — it is the naked cherubic reason thinking aloud before you. He reads his lectures without excitement, without energy, scarcely even with emphasis, as if to try what can be effected by the pure, unaided momen- tum of thought. It is soul totally unsheathed that you have to do with ; and you ask, is this a spirit's tongue that is sounding on its way? so solitary and severe seems its harmony. There is no betrayal of emotion, except now and then when a slight tremble in his voice proclaims that he has arrived at some spot of thought to him peculiarly sacred or dear, even as our fellow-traveller along a road sometimes starts and looks round, arrived at some landmark of passion and memory, which to us has no interest; or as an earthly steed might be conceived to shiver under the advent of a supernal horseman — soliis voice must falter here and there below the glorious burden it lias to bear. There is no .emphasis, often, but what is given by the eye, and this is felt only by those who see him on the side view; neither standing behind nor before can we form any conception of the rapt living Hash which breaks forth athwart the spectator. His eloquence is thus of that high kind which produces great effects at small expendi- ture of means, and without any effort or turbulence; still and 134 RALPH WALPO EMERSON, strong as gravitation, it fixes, subdues, and turns us around. To be more popular tlian it is, it i-equires only two elements — first, a more artistic accommodation to the tastes and understandings of the audience ; and, secondly, greater power of personal passion, in which Emerson's head as well as his nature seems deficient. Could but some fiery breath of political zeal or religious enthu- siasm be let loose upon him, to create a more rapid and energetic movement in his style and manner, he would stir and inflame the world. His lectures, as to their substance, are very comprehensive. In small compass, masses of thought, results of long processes, lie compact and firm; as 240 pence are calmly enclosed in one bright round sovereign, so do volumes manifold go to compose some of Emerson's short and Sibylline sentences. In his lecture on Napoleon, as we have already seen, he reduces him and the history of his empire to a strong essence. Eloquence, that ample theme, in like manner he condenses into one lecture — a lecture for once which proved as popular as it Avas profound. His in- tellectual tactics somewhat resemble those of Napoleon. As he aimed at, and broke the heart of opposing armies, Emerson loves to grasp and tear out the trembling core of a subject, and show it to his hearers. In both of these lectures we admired his selec- tion of instances and anecdotes ; each stood for a distinct part of the subject, and rendered it at once intelligible and memorable. An anecdote thus severely selected answers the end of a bone in the hand of an anatomical lecturer: it appeals to sense as well as soul. We liked, too, his reading of a passage from the " Odyssey," descriptive of the eloquence of Ulysses. It was translated into prose — the prose of his better essays — by himself, and was read with a calm classical power and dignity, which made a thousand hearts still as the grave. For five minutes there seemed but two things in the world — the silence, and the voice which was pass- ing through it. If men, we have often exclaimed, would but listen as atten- tively to sermons as they do to the intimations at the end. Emer- son generally commands such attention ; especially, we are told, that during his first lecture in Edinburgh on Natural Aristocracy it was fine to see him, by his very bashfulness, di-iven not out of, but into himself, and speaking as if in the forest alone with God and his own soul. This was true self-possession. The audience, too, were made to feel themselves as much alone as their orator. To give a curdling sense of solitude in society, is a much highev achievement than to give a sense of society in solitude. It is among the mightiest acts of spiritual power thus to insulate the imagination or the conscience of man, and suggests afar off tha proceedings of that tremendous day, when in the company of t\ universe each man will feel himself alone. GKORGE DAWSON, 1 3o In the three k'ctures ice heard from Mr Emerson, there did not occur a sinple objectionable sentence. But there was unques- tionably a blank in all, most melancholy to contemplate. We have no sympathy with the attempts which have been made to poison the'popularmind.and to rouse the popular passions, against this gentleman, whether by misrepresenting his opinions or by blackening his motives. He does not believe himself to be God. He is the least in the world of a proselytiser. He visited this country solely as a literary man, invited to give literary lectures. Whatever be his creed, he has not, in Scotland at least, protruded it; and even if he had, it would have done little harm; for as easily transfer and circulate Emerson's brain as his belief. But, when we think of such a mind owning a faith seemingly so cold, and vague, and shadowy; and when, in his lectures, we find moral and spiritual truths of such importance robbed of their awful sanctions, separated like rays cut otf from the sun — from their parent system and source — swung from off their moorings upon the Rock of Ages — and supported upon his own authority alone — when, in short, the Moon of genius comes between us and the Sun of God, we feel a dreariness and desolation of spirit in- expressible ; and, much as we admire the author and love the man, we are tempted to regret the hour when he first landed upon our shores. Our best wishes, and those of thousands, went with him on his homeward way; but coupled with a strong desire that a better, clearer, and more definite light might dawn upon his soul, and create around him a true " forest sanctuary." Long has he been, like Jacob, dreaming in the desert: surely the ladder can- not be far of. GEORGE DAWSON. The ofhce of an interpreter, if not of the highest order, is cer- tainly very useful, honourable, and, at certain periods, particu- larly necessary. There are times wlien the angle at which the highest minds of the age stand to the middle and lower classes is exceedingly awkwanl and uncertain. Their names and their pretensions are Avell known; even a glimmer of their doctrine has got abroad; some even of their books are read with a maxi- mum of avidity, and a minimum of understanding; but a fuller reflection of tiieir merits and their views, a iarther circulation of their spirit, and a more complete disciiarge of their electric in- fluences, are still needed. For the^e purposes, unless the men will condescend to interpret themselves, we must have a separate 1 36 GEORGE DAWSON. class for the purpose. Indeed, sucli a class will be created by the circumstances. As each morning we see a grand process of in- terpretation, when the living light leaps downwards from heaven to the mountain summits, and from these to the low-lying hills, and from these to the deep glens — each mountain and hill taking up in turn its part in the great translation, till the landscape is one volume of glory — so mind after mind, in succession, and in the order of their intellectual stature, must catch and reflect the empyrean fire of truth. Chief among the interpreters of our time stands Thomas Car- lyle. He has not added any new truth to the world's stock, nor any artistic work to the world's literature, nor is he now likely to do so; but he has stood between the British mind and the great German orbs, and flung down on us their light, with a kind of contemptuous profusion, coloured, too, undoubtedly, by the strange rugged idiosyncrasy on which it has been reflected. This light, however, has fallen short of the middle class, not to speak of the masses of the community. This translation must itself be trans- lated. For some time it might have been advertised in the news- papers — " Wanted, an interpreter for Sartor Resartus." With- out the inducement of any such advertisement, but as a volunteer, has Mr George Dawson stepped forward, and has now for several years been plying his profession with much energy and very con- siderable success. It were not praise — it were not even flatteiy — it were simply insult and irony, to speak of Mr Dawson in any other light than as a clever, a very clever translator, or, if he will, interpreter, of a greater translator and interpreter than himself. In all the lectures we have either heard or read of his, every thought and shade of thought was Carlyle's. The matter of the feast was, first course, Carlyle; second, do.; dessert, do.; toiijom^s, Car- lyle: the dishes, dressing, and sauce only, were his own. Nor do we at all quarrel with him for this. Since the public are so highly satisfied, and since Carlyle himself is making no com- plaint, and instituting no hue and cry, it is all very well. It is really, too, a delightful hachis he does cook, full of pepper and spice, and highly palatable to the majority. Our only proper ground of quarrel would be, if he were claiming any independent merit in the thought, apart from the illustrations and the easy vigorous talk of the exhibition. We have again and again been on the point of exclaiming, when compelled to contrast descrip- tion with reality. We shall henceforth believe nothing till we have seen it with our eyes, and heard it with our eai's. The most of the pictures we 'see drawn of celebrated people seem, after we have met with the originals, to have been painted by the blind. So very many detei-minedly praise a man for quali- ties which he has not — if a man is tall, they make him short; if GtlORGE DAWSON, 137 dark, tliey give him fair hair; if his brow be moderate in dimen- sions, they call it a great mass of placid marble; if he be an easy, fluent speaker, they dignify hira with the name orator; if his eye kindle with the progress of his theme, they tell us that his face gets phosphorescent, and as the face of an angel. Hence the mortifying disappointments which are so common — disap- pointments produced less by the inferiorittj than by the unlikeness of the reality to the description. David Scott, when he visited Coleridge, was chagrined to find his forehead, of which he had read ravings innumerable, of quite an ordinary size. We watched Emerson's face very narrowly, but could not, for our life, per- ceive any glow mounting up its pale and pensive lines. We had heard much of Dawson's eloquence, but found that while there was much fluency there Avas little fire, and no enthusiasm. Dis- tance and dunces together had metamorphosed hiju, even as a nobler cause of deception sometimes changes, says one, a village steeple into a tower of rubies, and plates a copse with gold. To call this gentleman a Cockney Carlyle, a transcendental bagman, were to be too severe; to call him a combination of Cobbett and Carlyle, Avere to be too complimentary. But while there is much in the matter which reminds you of Carlyle, as the reflection reminds you of the reality, there is much in his style and manner which recalls William Cobbett. Could Ave conceive Cobbett by any possibility forsAvearing his OAvn nature, converted to Germanism, and proclaiming it in his OAvn way, we should have had George DaAvson anticipated and forestalled. The Saxon style, the homely illustrations, the conversational air, the frequent appeals to common sense, the broad Anglicanisms, and the perfect self-possession, are common to both, Avith some important differences, indeed ; since Dawson is much terser and more pointed — since his humour is dry, not rich— and since he is, as to substance, rather an echo than a native, though rude voice. To such qualities as Ave have noAv indirectly enumei'ated, we are to attribute the sway he has acquired over popular, and espe- cially over English audiences. They are not, Avhile hearing him, called profoundly either to think or feel. They are not pain- fully reminded that they have not read. Enthusiastic appeal never warms their blood. A noble self-contempt and forgetful- ness is never inculcated. Of reverence for the ancient, the past, and the mysterious, there is little or none. They are never ex- cited even to any fervour of destructive zeal. A strong, some- what rough voice is heard pouring out an even, calm, yet SAvift torrent of mingled paradoxes and truisms, smart epigrammatic sentences, short, cold, hurrying sarcasms, deliberate vulgarisms of expression, quotations from " Sartor Kesartus" and Scripture, and from no other book — never growing and never diminishing 138 GEORGE DAWSON. m interest — never suggesting an end as near, nor reminding us of a beginning as past — every one eager to listen, but no one sorry when it is done; the purpose of the whole being to shake, we think, too much, respect for formulas, creeds, and constituted authorities — to inculcate, we think too strongl}^ a sense of inde- pendence and individualism — and to give to the future, we think, an undue preponderance over the past. Mr George Dawson has I'ead with considerable care and accu- racy the signs of his time. He has watched the direction and the rate of the popular tide, and has cast himself on it with an air of martyrdom. His has been the desperate determination at all hazards to sail with the stream. He sees, what only the blind do not, that a new era is begun, in which, as Napoleon said, " there shall be no Alps," Avhen they threatened to impede his march; our young mind has in like manner sworn there shall be no past, no history, no Bible, no God even, if such things venture to stand across our way, and curb ow principle of progress, and is rushing on heroically with this daring multi- tude. One is amused at the cry of persecution which he raises on his way. The tei'm, to us, in such cases as his, sounds su- premely ludicrous. What, in general, does persecution for con- science-sake now mean ? It means, if the subject be a clergy- man, the trebling of his audience and the doubling of his income; if an author, the tenfold sale of his works; if a man in business, three customers instead of one — not to speak of the pleasures of notoriety, lecturing engagements, gold watches, and pieces of plate. Pleasant and profitable persecution ! even when it is di- versified by a little newspaper abuse — the powerless hatred of the deserted party — and some strictures in the magazines! What comparison between this species of persecution and the treatment which a Wordsworth or a Shelley received? or what comparison between it and the neglect, contempt, and poverty which now befall many a worthy and conscientious supporter of the Old? We knew an elderly neglected clergyman, who came to a brother minister and said, "I wish you would preach against me; it might bring me into notice." Mr Dawson has been preached, placarded, and prayed into notice — a notice in which he has expanded and bourgeoned like a peach-tree in the sunshine, and yet of which he thinks proper to complain as per- secution ! Pretty exchange ! an elegant pulpit for a barrel of burning coals — fifteen hundred admiring auditors for a thousand exulting foes — the "Church" instead of the "Cross" of the Saviour. We really cannot, in this world of wo, find in our hearts one particle of pity to spare for Mr Dawson, nor for any such mellifluous martyrs. No eagle soaring and screaming in the teeth of the storm — no thunder- cloud moving up the wind, do we deem our hero ; but, GEOKGE DAWSON. 139 on the ^vhole, a most complacent and beautiful peacock's feather, sailins: adown the breeze, vet with an air as if it had created and could turn it if he chose; or, shall we say, a fine large bubble de- scending with dignity, as if it were the cataract? or — shall we try it once more? — a straw, imagining that because it shows the direction, it is directing the wind. If these figures do not give satisfaction, we have fifty more at the service of INIr Dawson's admirers ; for, after all, we must blame his admirers and his enemies more tlian himself. He has much about him that is frank, open, and amiable. A clever young man, endowed with a rare talent for talk, he began to talk in a manner that offended his party. Many, on the other hand, of no party, were struck with surprise at hearing such bold and liberal sentiments uttered from such a quarter. Pure, unmixed Carlylism coming from a Baptist pulpit sounded in their ears sweet and strange. The rest mighthave been expected. Between the dislike of his foes, the wild enthu- siasm of his friends, the ill-calculated pounce of the Archbishop of York, the real, though borrowed, merit of many of his senti- ments, and the real native force of his speech — he found himself all at once on a giddj' eminence which might have turned stronger heads ; for here was the rarissima avis of a liberal Ba})tist — a Car- lylistic clei'gyman, a juvenile sage, andatranscendentalist talking English — there was no bird in all Knowesley Park that could be named in comparison. Here, besides, was positively the first Daw- son (except Peel's friend) that had, as an intellectual man, been known beyond his own doorway. Such circumstances, besidesafelt want in the public mind, which he professed to supply, account for the rapid rise of one, who had written and done nothing ex- cept a few lectures and sermons, to the summit of notoriety. So far as Dawson is a faithful Tenderer or doer into English of Thomas Cai-lyle's sentiments, we have, we repeat, no quarrel witli him. But in some points we dislike his mode of expounding and illustrating these, or, if he be in all things an accurate expounder of his principal, why, then, we must just venture to question his principal's infallibility. Mr Dawson, for instance, sets himself with all his might to in- culcate the uselessness of the clergy as teachers of truth, and the superiority of the lecturing class, or prophets, as he modestly calls tliem. Samuel, he told us, was a much greater personage than the priests of his day. We do not, in all points, " stand up for our order." We are far from thinking that the clergy, as a whole, are awake to the necessities of the age, or fully alive to all its tendencies. We know that Dr Tholuck, when in this country, Avas grieved at the want of learning he found in some of our greatest men, and especially at their ignorance of the state of matters in Germany. We know that he advised two eminent doctors of different denominations to read Strauss's "Life of 140 GEORGE DAWSON. Christ;" and that, while one of them declined, in very strong language, the other, Dr Chalmers (how like him !), said, " Well, I will I'ead it, Dr Tholuck; is't a big book?" Strauss, of course, he recommended, not from sympathy with its theory, but because it is a book as necessary to be read now by the defenders of Christianity as was Gibbon's "History" fifty years ago. But, while granting much to Mr Dawson, Ave are far from granting all. Ministers do not profess to be prophets, except in so far as they are declarers of tlie divine will, as exhibited in the Scrip- tures, or as they may be endowed with that deep vision of truth and beauty which is now, by courtesy, called prophetic sight. But who are prophets, pray, in any other sense ? ^Vho can now pretend to stand to ministers in the relation to which that Samuel, who had, in his youth, been awakened by the voice of God, and who, in his manhood, had, by his call, aroused the slumbering thunder, and darkened the heavens by the waving of his hand, stood to the priesthood of Israel ? Not surely George Dawson, nor yet Thomas Carlyle — no, nor Fichte nor Goethe themselves. Alas ! may we not now, all of us, take up the complaint of the Psalmist ? — " Our signs we do not now beliold, There is not us among A Prophet more, nor any one That knows the time how long." It is, as it was at the close of Saul's guilty and inglorious reign, when God refused to answer by dreams, by Urim, or by prophets, and when, in defect of the true vision, he went to consult with wizards and quach salvers. We are, indeed, rather more favoured — -we have still among us wise and gifted men ; but if we would find prophets, in the highest sense of the word, we must just go back and sit at the feet of those awful bards of Israel — those legislators of the future — whose Vv'ords are full of eyes. As poets, as seers, as teachers, as truthful and earnest men, not to speak merely of their august supernatural pretensions, they still tower alone, unsurmounted and unapproached, the Himalayan moun- tains of mankind. It is easy for a popular lecturer, primed and ready with his three or his six polished and laboured efforts, to sneer at the ministers of Jesus. But it is not so easy for one of this now ca- lumniated class to keep up for long years a succession of effective appeals to the conscience and to the heart, in season and out of season — through good report and through bad report. And it is not particularly kind or graceful in a gentleman, who must have experienced the peculiar difficulties of the order to which he still belongs, to turn again, and rend them ; enjoying, as he does, even yet, some of the immunities of the class, it is mean in him to shirk GEOKGE DAWSON. 141 its responsibilities, and, meaner still, to try to shake its credit in the estimation of his countrymen. He draws, to be sui-e, after Emerson, a distinction between a preacher and a man preaching — a distinction as obvious nearly as that between a fiddlini; man and a man fiddlin"-, a barking puppy and a puppy barking. He is not a preaching man, but a man preaching. What a miserable quibble! Wlio means by a preacher anything else than a man who has voluntarily assumed the task of declaring the truth of God to his fellows ? Does one necessarily cease to be a man in becoming a preacher? Or does one necessarily become a man by ceasing to be, or wishing it to be thought that he has ceased to be, a preacher ? Nay, verily. In fact, a considerable share of Mr Dawson's popularity, with a cer- tain class at least, springs from the preacher-air, and the preacher- phrases, which still cling to his delivery and style. He is little else than a clever lecturer, made out of the elements or ruins of a second-rate preacher. In Mr Dawson's lectures we find no variety of thought. Two or three ideas, imported into his mind, are rattled like peas over and over, into a tliousand different sounds or discords. The same terms, too, such as subjective and objective, dynamical and me- chanical, are pei-petually repeated, with a parrot-like iteration. There is in some minds, and in some styles, a gigantic monotony, as in the ocean surges. But there is also a small mannerism aris- ing from the mimicry of a model — itself, in part, a copy, which can with difficulty be endured for a few nights, and for no more. Of course, he proclaims warfare against conventionalisms of speech and of thought : to call, in prayer, a woman a handmaiden, the sea the great deep, &c,, is with him a grave offence. Words are things. Things ought to be called by their right names. A spade should be a spade: and not, as Dr Johnson might have said, a " broad, semi-wooden, semi-iron instrument, for tearing the iDosom o{ terra fir ma, the pioneer of the advenient seed." Shade of Dr Johnson! then, art thou not provoked to ask, "What, in the name of wonder, George Dawson, art thou? what callest thou thyself? Art thou infidel, pagan, or Christian, or anything more than a man preaching? I know not how to entitle thee, posi- tively ; but, negatively, depend upon it, /shall never call theCy by any accident, ' a great deep.' " Too often in Mr Dawson's prelections, as in some of Emerson's essays, what is new is not true, and what is true is not new. In proclaiming the stern truth that there is something higher than happiness, namely, blessedness, he oidy repeated the finest sen- tence in that abysmal volume, " Sartor Resartus." But who in- structed him for once to go beyond his master, and to ridicule the phrase, " luxury of doing good?" Altliough duty can play its liigh part at times without public fee or reward, has it not always, N 142 GEORGE DAWSON. in its own exercise, "a joy beyond the name of pleasure ?" Does not Scripture often appeal to the desire and to the prospect of happiness as stimulants to duty? Has not the Divine Being an- nexed even to sacrifice and to martyrdom a feeling which we may appropriately term " luxury," if luxury mean something at once delicious and rare ? " To be good for good's sake," is the noblest reach of man ; but what does good imply in its very conception ? Surely some severe but real delight, partly in present feeling, and partly in future prospect. We know riglit well the tendency of Mr Dawson's sneer — it is an attempt to scotf out the golden candlestick of celestial blessedness, as the reward of the good; although as well might he seek to puff away to-morrow's sun. We notice, in connection with all his allusions to religion, a want of moral reverence for the subject. Suppose it were true, what he so often intimates, that God has abandoned our present forms of worship, in what spirit should he tread the deserted shrine ? In what spirit did (we beg pardon for the reference) the vSon of Man walk in the desecrated and doomed Temple of Jeru- salem ? It was not, certainly, with contemptuous disregard, any more than with the cry on his lips, "Kaze, raze it to its founda- tion!" It was, doubtless, with tears in his eyes, as he remem- bered, " Here God once dwelt." AVith what coolness, with what propensity to sneer, with what ill-suppressed joy, at these long desolations, do some now walk through what they call a ruin, as forsaken as the temple of Jupiter Palatinus ! Shame to thee, George Dawson, if this be thy feeling, as we fear it is ! This is not, rely on it, the feeling of thy master, though he never took the vows of the ministry upon his soul. If we have not totally misconstrued the nature of Thomas Carlyle, be passes through the sanctuary, which he deems now forsaken, nay, a den of thieves, with emotions of profoundest sorrow, because, to use the language of Howe, the broken arches, the mouldering inscrip- tions, and the extinct fire, seem to him but too plainly to testify that the Great Inhabitant is gone. Mr Dawson's /or/e lies, unquestionably, in his lively and amus- ing illustrations. His is a species of proverbial philosophy. He abounds both in " old sawa and modern instances." He accommo- dates the results of philosophy to every-day life, and translates its technicalities into the loose conversation, almost into the slang, of every-day language. It may be questioned whether in this he does men much service; for, in the first place, in such a process a great deal that is most valuable necessarily escapes. There are thoughts in every high philosophy which will not bear translation into ordinary speech. Our English vernacular will only look ludicrous as it attempts to girth their greatness ; and these thoughts are, of course, the deepest and noblest. Secondly, apart from this aboriginal difficulty, the translator, when also a popular GEORGE DAWSON. 143 lecturer, is under strong'temptation to dilute what truth lie does tell too much, and to give his babes, instead of milk, milk and water. And, thirdly, those babes will be exceedingly apt to fancy, after a few such diluted preparations, that they have sud- denly shot up into men of full age. In the short space of four or five amusing hours, they are quite qualified to chatter Carlylese to dogmatise on the characteristics and tendencies of the age, and to look with sovereign contempt on ministers, and on all \yho are weak enough to puttheir trust in them. We met, some time ago, in a London omnibus, a good-natured, amusing old lady, at whom we inquired if she had ever been in Edinburgh. She an- swered, "No; but I saw a ■panoramar of it, which gave me a very good hidear of it." Such a satisfactory panoramaric hidear does Mr Dawson give his auditors of the German philosophy, and of Plato. When I hear such a preacher, said one, I go home well pleased with him; when I hear such another, I go home ill- pleased with myself. Mr Dawson sends home most of his audience well pleased with him and with themselves, and thinking more of him and of themselves than of his theme. They carry away no stings with them — none of that fine humility, of that divine despair, which contemplation of nature's vastness and of man's littleness inevi- tably produces, and yet which never fails afterwards to excite genuine aspiration. From hearing Professor Nichol, you come home with but one thought, the grandeur of his subject; in which almost the thouglit of the lecturer has been lost, to which he has but served meekly to point, like the rod which he holds in his hand. In hearing Samuel Brown you have a similar feeling, blended, however, owing to his youth, with still more admiration for the man, who, at such an age, seems conversant with myste- ries so profound, as if he had commenced his studies in an anti- natal state of being. The masterly ease, self-possession, clear- ness, interest, and iluency of Mr Dawson's talk, give you an hour's, or perchance a night's pleasure, and that is all; for, in- deed, he is rather a talker than a teacher. To those who have read Carlyle's " Miscellanies," and other works, he tells nothing new; and those who have not, are in general more amused by the novel and vivid illustrations, than impressed and subdued by what to them ought to be the startling truths. The enthusiast alone can teach, because he alone can feel up to that point where feel- ing overflows, burning and sometimes scalding, into other minds. Mr Dawson may be, we trust is, at heart a sincere man, but he is not an enthusiast; he has no self-forgetfulness, no rapt emotion of any kind ; he manages his instrument but too dexterously, and too consciously well. We have no conception what he can have made of Switzerland — what shape its rocks, torrents, and glaciers have assumed in his mind — what gingerbread cast of the Alps he r> 144 GEORGE DAAVSON. has contrived to form, or how his essentially cold and clever style has managed to rise to cope with the matrnificent field. Were there any barn-fowl flutterings, any ghastly contortions of ima- ginative penury and weakness ? or did he, as Ave rather suspect, with his wonted tact, avoid the grander featui'es of his subject, and turn aside into paths equally pleasing, less hackneyed, and for him less dangerous ? Let our Glasgow -friends, who heard him on this subject, answer the question. Altogether, Mt" Dawson's mission seems to us exceedingly uncertain, both as to its purpose and its probable results. We do not see any distinct reason or call why he should have separated himself to that gospel of negations which he preaches. We have asked him already what is he ? we ask him now what he wishes us to be ? A man who has started from the ranks, who has done so as if in obedience to a voice, " Come out, and be thou separate," ought to be able to tell with some explicitness what he would give us in exchange for what we are in effect required to resign. But " story," like the knife- grinder, " he has none to tell, sir." He offers, it is true, relief to doubters — nay, builds a chapel for them, and calls it by the un- pretending name — the " Church of the Saviour ;" but, in truth, his teaching only adds fire to fever, and seems to us a masterly ma- chinery for creating or confirming doubt. We grant him readily that doubters — the most interesting and one of the most nume- rous of classes of men in the present day, including, not now as formerly, merely the vain and the vicious, but many of the sin- cere, the intelligent, the virtuous, and the humble — including, especially, so many of the young and rising spirits of the time — are not sufficiently attended to in the daily ministrations. Their feelings are not respected, their questions are not fairly an- swered, their motives and characters are misrepresented, their doubts are flung back unresolved, contemptuously, in their face; and hence many of them are carrying their questions to other oracles, and getting their Gordian knots cut by other swords, than that of the Spirit.* But let those who have done, repair the injury. Let the various churches of the country set to work with greater zeal, with greater unanimity, and, above all, with greater intelligence, and greater charity, to attend to this most important and neglected class. Let them not dream that merely to abuse Germanism is to answer it. Let them no longer waste their strength and breath in calling Carlyle or Emerson by hard names. Let them demonstrate that their charges against Christianity as dead, are untrue, by show- ing that its ancient spirit is still alive. Let them remember that the front of sceptical battle is changed since the days of Voltaire * We refer our readers, for a more particular elucidation of our views oo this subject, to our subsequent paper on Sterling. GEORGE DAW30.V. 14^ and Volney — that the character of tlie leaders is changed too— and that there must be a corresponding change in the tactics ot Christian defenders. Such books as Paley, Watson, Hall on Modern InfideHtj, or Olinthus Gregory, the leviathan of Ger- man scepticism takes up but as straw or rotten wood. They split upon his adamantine scales. The onset of Paine and Vol- ney was from below — from the hell of mean passions, politics, and low conceptions of man; the onset of the German philosophers is from above — from the height of transcendental thought. From a higher eminence ought their onset to be repelled. Dr Chal- mers, from that lofty watch-tower which he occupied, and round which, alas 1 the shades of evening were gathering fast, saw the bulking danger — and it was his all but last act to set the trumpet to his mouth, and blow an alarm to the Christian Avorld. Would it had been more widely echoed and obeyed ! Such a tender, general, and enlightened attention to the doubting Thomases of the day, would produce numerous good consequences. It would show reli- gion in her piost amiable aspect — having compassion upon the ignorant and upon those that are out of the way. It would arrestthe doubts of many, ere they were hardened into a fierce and aggressive infidelity. Itwould change every church into a refuge for those who are tossed with tempest, and not comforted— a true "Church of the Saviour;" and itwould proclaim to those officious "flatterers," who would rid men of their burdens elsewhere than at the Cross and the Sepulchre, that their occupation was gone. We are not, however, at all sanguine of such results as near. Our Avretched divisions and partyisms — the bigoted battle we are still disposed to do for the smallest minutiie of our different creeds, while its main pillars are so pow^erfully assailed — our general deadness and coldness, seem to augur that some mighty regenerating process is needed by all churches, ere they can fully meet wants which are yearly becoming more and more imperious. " Good religious people," writes to us one of the most eminent evangelical minis- ters in a sister country, '• have a great deal to learn, and some of them will never learn anything. They are unconscious of the new world in which they live. They do not know what a diffe- rent thing the pulpit is, and how different the preacher ought to be, since the new and mighty preacher in the form of the Press has risen up, and occupied so much of the preacher's old ground. The Press and the Pulpit might and ought to understand each other better than they do." Coinciding in such views, we do not, however, expect that Mr Dawson's pulpit will do much to pro- mote the reconciliation of those two rival powers. He is verily not a preacher, but a man preaching magazine articles, sprinkled with Scripture texts. He belongs to an amphibious order of be- ings, neither in nor out of the church. We cannot conceive him- self long to remain at ease in such an ambiguous position, nor that 146 GEORGE DAWSON. the public can continue to place much confidence in him as a clergyman. We are not afraid that he will ever be totally over- looked. He is young, ready, fluent, ambitious, with much power of mental assimilation, a fertile, teeming brain, and a tongue and pair of lungs perfectly first-rate. Such qualities in bustling times can never tail of their reward, although, we should ima- gine, that the lecture-room, instead of the chapel, will by and by become the favourite field for their exhibition. We venture to conclude this from the perusal of his sermon — the opening one of his new chapel — entitled, " The Demands of the Age upon the Church." If this be an average specimen of Mr Dawson's writing or preaching powers, we must warn the public that they are not to expect him to become a Hall in the pulpit, or a Foster at the desk. As a composition, it is loose, careless, even vulgar. Think of an expression like this occur- ring in a discourse on such a solemn occasion : — " We do not unite on the sly." The style is an odd compound of Carlylisms and Pick- wickisms. The bond of union it proposes is no bond at all. A union of common doubts and disbeliefs may form a vast moral in- firmary, but not a church. We forewarn him, that it is diiEcult now, as of old, to make bricks without straw, and build a house without cement. That the doubters deserve special tending, he proves satisfactorily. He does not prove the adaptation of his chapel to their case. The spirit of Christianity he would divorce from its eternal principles and facts — an attempt as hopeless as to separate the life of a tree from its leaves, branches, and trunk. The only part of the discourse at all valuable is its statement of the admitted fact, that vital religion is at a low ebb; but even this he exaggerates, and his notion, that it has passed over to the free-thinkers, is simply not true. We have only to read this ser- mon to be convinced, that, although his church be called the Church of the Saviour, he is not destined to be the saviour of the church. We know full Avell that such a fi-ank expression of our senti- ments will, as did our strictures on Macaulay and Burns, create against us a number of opponents. We are perfectly indifferent. Whenever the trigger of the gun, Truth, is drawn, by however feeble a hand, and a report follows, multitudes of timorous or stupid creatures are sure to rise up alarmed or enraged, and to rend the air with their screams. It will be said that we are actuated by some animus against Mr Dawson, just as a few block- heads accused us of hating a man Avho had been dead for half a century, and whose genius we had taken fifty opportunities of lauding in terms little short of downright idolatry. We must simply disown any such feeling. We gave Mr Dawson constant attendance and earnest attention. We were occasionally delighted, and testified it by no feeble or niggardly applause. We saw much GEORGE DAWSON. 147 about him in private that was pleasing. But a sense of duty, coupled, we grant, with a certain feeling of indignation at the undue prominence which is partly given him, and which in part he assumes, and to whicli no man possessed merely of mechanical gifts, however extraordinary, is entitled, have urged us to write as we have written. " It is intolerable," said one, " to think of the literary coteries of London being ov^er-crowed in the accent of an Ecclefechan carter." This may be, and is, and ought to be borne, when that accent stirs and inflames under the words of genius. But it is intolerable, that a glib and flowing tongue, conveying borrowed sentiments, in the language of the Pickwick papers, should be listened to as if behind it were flashing the eye of a Burns, or towering the brow of a Shakspere. And it is still more intolerable, that a man without depth, learning, originality, or enthusiasm, should be swaying opinion, or shaking the faith of any in the great inspirations of the past. If Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are to be blotted out, let the blank be filled up with names of a somewhat higher calibre — and mighty to start a nobler spiiit — than that of George Dawson. Our faith in popular lecturing has never been great, and has been lessened by the experiences of several past winters. In the course of them, we have heard five or six of the most distinguished of the class, and have not only listened carefully to them, but have watched the effects of their prelections on their audiences. So far as the lecturers are concerned, our expectations have been exceeded rather than the reverse. All, in different styles, were excellent. All, through very different avenues, found their way to the attention and to the applause of their hearers. One, by a rich anecdotage, and the clear and copious detail of facts, nailed the ears of his audience to his lips. Another gathered them around him, talking though he was in an unknown tongue, through the cloudy grandeur of his speculation. Another took them captive by the enthusiasm which shone in his face and quivered on his lips. Another passed across them, like a rapid snow-drift, showering on their passive spirits a thick succession of clear, cold sentences. All exerted power; all gave a certain amount of pleasure. Did any much more ? Was any permanent elevation given, or lasting effect produced? Had Scotland, P2ng- land, and America been ransacked for their choicest spirits, only to produce a certain tickling gratification, at most amounting to a high intellectual treat ? We do not wish to speak dogmati- cally on the point, but it is our distinct impression that, in a spiri- tual, not in a pecuniary sense, the cost outwent the ]irofit. The great ends of teaching were not, and in the space, and in the cir- cumstances, could hardly have been, answered. JMultitudes, un- prepared by previous reading and training, were brought out by curiosity, or in some cases by a better principle, to hear some of 148 ALFRED TENNYSON. the first men of the age; listened with most exemplary attention, were thrilled or tickled, but we fear not fed. We are convinced that steady attendance upon one plain single month's course on geology, or modern history, would have done more good than whole years spent in hearing such brilliant birds of passage. ALFRED TENNYSON. The subject of the following sketch seems a signal example of the intimate relation which sometimes exists between original genius, and a shi-inking, sensitive, and morbid nature. We see in all his writings the struggle of a strong intellect to " turn and wind the fiery Pegasus" of a most capricious, volatile, and dream- driven imagination. Tennyson is a curious combination of im- pulse, strength, and delicacy approaching to weakness. Could we conceive, not an iEolian harp, but a grand piano, played on by the swift fingers of the blast, it would give us some image of the sweet, subtle, tender, powerful, and changeful movements of his verse, in which are wedded artificial elegance, artistic skill, and wild, impetuous impulse. It is the voice and lute of Ariel; but heard not in a solitary and enchanted island, but in a modern drawing-room, with beautiful women bending round, and moss- roses breathing, in their faint fragrance, through the half-opened windows. Here, indeed, lies the paradox of our author's genius. He is haunted, on the one hand, by images of ideal and colossal grandeur, coming upon him from the isle of the Syrens, the caves of the Kraken, the heights of Ida, the solemn cycles of Cathay, the riches of the Arabian heaven ; but, on the other hand, his fancy loves, better than is manly or beseeming, the tricksy ele- gancies of artificial life — the " w^hite sofas" of his study — the trim walks of his garden — the luxuries of female dress — and all the tiny comforts and beauties which nestle round an English parlour. ■ From the sublime to the snug, and vice versa, is with him but a single step. This moment tojing on the carpet with his cat, he is the next soaring with a roc over the valley of diamonds. We may liken him to the sea-shell which, sitting complacently and undistinguished amid the commonplace ornaments of the mantel- piece, has only to be lifted to give forth from its smooth ear the far- rugged boom of the ocean breakers. In this union of feminine feebleness and imaginative strength, he much resembles John Keats, who at one time could hew out the vast figure of the de- throned Saturn, " quiet as a stone," with the force of a Michael Angelo, and, again, with all the gusto of a milliner, describe the ALFRED TENNYSON. 149 undressing of his heroine in the " Eve of St Agnes." Indeed, although we have ascribed, and we think justly, original genius to Tennyson, there is much in his mind, too, of the imitative and the composite. He adds the occasional languor, the luxury of descriptive beauty, the feminine tone, the tender melancholy, the gi-and aspirations, perpetually checked and chilled by the access of morbid Aveakness, and the mannerisms of style which distin- guish Keats, to much of the simplicity and the philosophic tone of ^Yordsworth, the peculiar rhythm and obscurity of Coleridge, and a portion of the quaintness and allegorising tendency which were common with the Donnes, Withers, and Quarleses, of the seventeenth century. AVhat is peculiar to himself is a certain carol, light in air and tone, but profound in burden. Hence his little Iju-ics — such as " Oriana," " Mariana at the Moated Grange," the " Talking Oak," the " May Queen"— are among his most original and striking productions. Tliey tell tales of deep tragedy, or they convey lessons of v;ide significance, or they paint vivid and complete pictures, in a few lively touches, and by a few airy words, as if caught in dropping from the sky. By sobs of sound, by half-hints of meaning, by light, hurrying strokes on the ruddy chords of the heart, by a ringing of changes on cei'tain words and phrases, he sways us as if with the united powers of music and poetry. Our readers will, in illustration of this, remember his nameless little song, beginning " Break, break, break, On thy cold grey crags, sea ! " which is a mood of his own mind, faithfully rendered into sweet and simple verse. It is in composition no more complicated or elaborate than a house built by a child, but melts you, as that house would, were you to see it after the dear infant's death. But than this he has higher moods, and nobler, though still im- perfect aspirations. In his " Two Voices," he approaches the question of all ages — Whence evil? And if he, no more than other speculators, unties, he casts a soft and mellow light around this Gordian knot. This poem is no fancy piece, but manifestly a transcript from his own personal experience. He has sunk into one of those melancholy moods incident to his order of mind, and has become " aweary of the sun," and of all the sun shines upon,— especially of his own miserable idiosyncrasy. There slides in at that dark hour a still small voice: how ditierent from that which thrilled on Elijah's ear in the caves of Horeb ! It is the voice of that awful lady whom De Quincey calls Mater tene- brarum, our lady of darkness. It hints at suicide as the only remedy for human woes. " Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not tu be?" 150 ALFRED TENNYSON. And then there follows an eager and uneasy interlocution be- tween the *' dark and barren voice," and the soul of the writer, half spurning and half holding parley with its suggestions. Seldom, truly, since the speech by which Despair in Spenser en- forces the same sad argument, did misanthropy breathe a more withering blight over humanity and human hopes; seldom did unfortunate by a shorter and readier road reach the conclusion, " there is one remedy for all," than in the utterance of this voice. Death in it looks lovely; nay, the one lovely thing in the uni- verse. Again and again, the poet is ready to yield to the desire of his Own heart, thus seconded by the mystic voice, and, in the words of one who often listened to the same accents, to " lie down like a tired child, and weep away this life of care." But again and again the better element of his nature resists the temptation, and beats back the melancholy voice. At length, raising himself from his lethargy, he rises, looks forth — it is the Sabbath morn, and, as he sees the peaceful multitudes moving on to the house of God, and as, like the Ancient Mariner, he " blesses them un- aware," straightway the spell is broken, the " dull and bitter voice is gone," and, hark ! " A second voice is at his ear, A little whisper, silver-clear ; " and it gives him a hidden and humble hope, which spreads a quiet heaven within his soul. Now he can go forth into the fields, and "Wonder at the bounteous hours, The slow result of winter showers, You scarce can see the grass for Jlowers." * All nature calls upon him to rejoice, and to the eye of his heart, at least, the riddle is read. Nay, we put it to every heart if this do not, more than many elaborate ai-gumentations, touch the core of the difficulty. " Look up," said Leigh Hunt to Car- lyle, when he had been taking the darker side of the question, and they had both come out under the brilliance of a starry night, — "look up, and find your answer there!" And although the reply failed to convince the party addressed, v/ho, looking aloft, at the sparkling azure, after a deep pause, rejoined, with a sigh, and in tones we can well imagine, so melancholy and far with- drawn, " Oh! it's a sad sight;" yet, apart from the divine dis- coveries, it was the true and only answer. The beauty, whether of Tennyson's fields — where we " scarce can see the grass for flowers" — or of Leigh Hunt's skies, " whose unwithered counte- nance is young as on creation's day," and where we find an infi- • This fine line is borrowed from an old poet. ALFRED TENNYSON. 151 nite answer to our petty cavils — is enough to soothe, if not to satisfy — to teach us tlie perfect patience of expectancy, if not the full assurance of fiiith. Tennyson, in some of his poems as well as this, reveals in him- self a current of thought tending towards very deep and dark subjects. This springs partly from the metaphysical bias of his intellect, and partly from the morbid emotions of his heart. And yet he seems generally to toy and trifle with such tremendous themes — to touch them lightly and hui-riedly, as one might hot iron — at once eager and reluctant to intermeddle with them. Nevertheless, there is a perilous stuff about his heart, and upon his verse lies a " melancholy compounded of many simples." He is not the poet of hope, or of action, or of passion, but of senti- ment, of pensive and prying curiosity, or of simple stationary wonder, in view of the great sights and mysteries of Nature and man. He has never thrown himself amid the heats and hubbub of society, but remained alone, musing with a quiet but observant eye upon the tempestuous pageant w'hich is sweeping past him, and concerning himself little with the political or religious controversies of his age. There are, too, in some of his writings, mild and subdued vestiges of a wounded spirit, of a heart that has been disappointed, of an ambition that has been repressed, of an intellect that has wrestled with doubt, difficulty, and disease. In " Locksley Hall," for instance, he tells a tale of unfortunate passion with a gusto and depth of feeling which (unless we mis- contrue the mark of the branding-iron) betray more than a ficti- tious interest in the theme. It is a poem breathing the spirit of, and not much inferior to, Byron's " Dream," in all but that clear concentration of misery which bends over it like a bare and burning heaven over a bare and burriing desert. " Locksley Hall," again, is turbid and obscure in language, wild and dis- tracted in feeling. The Avind is down, but the sea still runs high. You see in it the passion pawing like a lion who has newly missed his prey, not fixed as yet in a marble form of still and hopeless disappointment. The lover, after a season of ab- sence, returns to the scene of his early education and hapless love, where of old he " Wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time." A feeling, cognate with, and yet more imperious than, those of his high aspirations, springs up in his mind. It arises in spring like the crest of a singing-bird. It is the feeling of love for Amy his cousin, sole daughter of her father's house and heart. The feel- ing is mutual, and the current of their true love flows smoothly on, till interrupted by the interference of relatives. Thus far he 152 ALFRED TENNYSON. remembers calmly ; but here recollection strikes the fierce chord of disappointment, and he bursts impetuously forth — " 0, my cousin, shallow-hearted. 0, my Amy, mine no more. 0, the dreary, dreary moorland. 0, the barren, barren shore." Darting then one hasty and almost vindictive glance down her future history, he predicts that she shall lower to the level of the clown she has wedded, and that he will use his victim a little better than his dog or his horse. Nay, she will become " Old and formal, suited to her petty part; With her little hoard of maxims, preaching down a daughter's heart" But himself, alas ! what is to become of him ? Live he must — suicide is too base an outlet from existence for his brave spirit. But what to do with this bitter boon of being ? There follow some wild and half-insane stanzas expressive of the ambitions and uncertainties of his soul. It is the Cyclops mad with blind- ness, and groping at the sides of his cave. He will hate and de- spise all women, or, at least, all British maidens. He will return to the orient land, whose " larger constellations" saw a father die. He will, in his despair, take some savage woman who shall rear his dusky race. But no — the despair is momentary — he may not mate with a squalid savage; he will rather revive old intellectual ambitions, and renew old aspirations, for he feels within him that the " crescent promise of his spirit has not set." It is resolved — but, ere he goes, let every ray of remaining love and misery go forth in one last accusing, avenging look at the scene of his disappointment and the centre of his wo. " Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall. Now, for me, the woods may wither; now, for me, the roof-tree fall. Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt ; Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain, or hail, or fire, or snow, For a mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go."' And thus the ballad closes, leaving, however, with us the in- evitable impression that the unfortunate lover is not done with Locksley Hall nor its bitter memories — that Doubting Castle is not down, nor Giant Despair dead — that the calls of the curlews around it will still resound in his ears, and the pale face of its Amy, still unutterably beloved, will come back upon his dreams — that the iron has entered into his soul — and that his life and his misery are henceforth commensurate and the same. Among the more remarkable of Tennyson's poems, besides those already mentioned, are " The Poet," " Dora," " Recollec- tions of the Arabian Nights," " CEnone," " The Lotos Eaters," " Ulysses," " Godiva;" and " The Vision of Sin." " The Poet" was written when the author was young, and when the high ideal of his heart was just dawning upon his mind. It is need- ALFRED TENNTSOX. 153 less to say that his view of the powers and influences of poetry is difierent with what prevails witli many in our era. Poetry is, with him, no glittering foil to be wielded gaily on gala days. It is, or ought to be, a sharp two-edged sword. It is not a baton in the hand of coarse authority — it is a magic rod. It is not a morning flush in the sky of youth, that shall fade in the sun of science — it is a consuming and imperishable fire. It is not a mere amusement for young lovesick men and women — it is as serious as death, and longer than life. It is tuned philosophy — winged science — fact on fire — " truth springing from earth" — high thought voluntarily moving harmonious numbers. His " Poet" is " dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love," and his words " shake the world." The author, when he wrote " The Poet," was fresh from school, and from Shelley, his early idol. Ere writing " Dora" he had become conversant with the severer charms of Wordsworth; and that poem contains in it not one figure or flower — is bare, literal, and pathetic as the book of Euth. Its poetry is that which lies in all natural life, which, like a deep quiet pool, has only to be disturbed in the shghtest degree to send up in dance those bells and bubbles which give it instantly ideal beauty and interest, and suddenly the pool becomes a poem ! His " Recollections of the Arabian Nights " is a poem of that species which connects itself perpetually, in feeling and memory, with the original work, whose quintessence it collects. It speaks out the sentiments of millions of thankful hearts. We feel in it what a noble thing was the Arabian mind — like the Arabian soil, " all the Sun's" — like the Arabian climate, fervid, golden — like the Arabian horse, light, elegant, ethereal, swift as the wind. " O, for the golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid!" O, for one look — though it were the last — of that Persian maid, whom the poet has painted in words vivid as colours, palpable almost as sense. Talk of enchantment ! The " Thousand-and-One Nights" is one enchantment — more powerful than the lamp of Aladdin, or the " Open Sesame " of Ali Baba. The author, were he one — not many — is a magician — a genie — greater than Scott, than Cervantes, equal to Shakspere himself. What poetry, passion, pathos, beauty of sentiment, elegance of costume, ingenuity of contrivance, wit, humour, farce, interest, variety, tact in transi- tion, sunniness of spirit, dream-like wealth of imagination, inci- dental but i^recious light cast upon customs, manners, history, re- ligion — everything, in short, that can amuse or amaze, instruct or delight the human spirit ! Like the " Pilgrim's Progress," — devoured by boys, it is a devout study for bearded men. Tennyson has expressed, especially, the moonlight voluptuous- ness of tone and spirit which breathes around those delicious pro- ductions, as well as the lavish magnificence of dress and decora- 154 ALFRED TENNYSON. tion, of furniture and architectui'e, which were worthy of the witch element, the sunny climate, and the early enchanted era, where and when they were written. But we doubt if he mates adequately with that more potent and terrible magic which haunts their higher regions, as in the sublime picture of the Prince's daughter fighting with the Enchanter in mid air, or in the myste- rious grandeur which follows all the adventures of Aboulfaouris. With this, too, indeed., he must have sympathy ; for it is evident that he abundantly fulfils Coleridge's test of a genuine lover of the " Arabian Nights." " Do you admire," said the author of " Kubla Khan" to Hazlitt, "the Thousand-and-One Nights?" " No," was the answer. '^ That' s because you don't dj'eam." But surely, since the " noticeable man, with large grey eyes," awoke in death from his long life-dream, no poet has arisen of whom the word were more true than of Tennyson, whether in reproach or commendation, asleep or awake — " Behold this dreamer cometh." In " CEnone," we find him up on the heights of Ida, Avith the large footprints of gods and goddesses still upon its sward, and the citadel and town of Troy, as yet unfallen, as yet unassailed, visible from its summit. Here the poet sees a vision of his own — a vision which, recorded in verse, forms a high third with Wordsworth's " Laodamia" and Keats's " Hyperion," in the classical style. Less austere and magnificent than the poem of Keats, which seems not so much a torso of earthly art as a splinter fallen from some other exploded world — less chaste, polished, and spiritual, than " Lao- damia," that Elgin marble set in Elysian light, it surpasses both in picturesque distinctness and pathetic power. The story is essentially that of " Locksley Hall," but the scene is not among the flat and sandy moorland of Lincolnshire, but in the green gorges and lav/ns of Ida. The deceived lover is CT^none, daughter of a river god. She has been deceived by Paris, and her plaint is the poem. Melancholy her song, as that of a disappointed woman — melodious as that of an aggrieved goddess. It is to Ida, her mother mountain, that she breathes her sorrow. She tells her of her lover's matchless beauty — of her yielding up her heart to him — of the deities descending to receive the golden apple from his hands — of his deciding it to Venus, upon the promise of the " fairest and most loving wife in Greece" — of his abandonment of Qilnone, and of her despair. Again and again, in her agony, she cries for death; but the grim shadow, too busy in hewing down the happy, will not turn aside at her miserable bidding. Her despair at last becomes fury; her tears begin to burn; she will arise — she will leave her dreadful solitude — " I will rise and go Down into Troy, and, ere the stars come forth, Talk with the wild Cassandra ; for she says A fire dances before her, and a sound ALFRED TENNYSON. 155 Rings ever in her ears of armed men. Wliat this may be I know not ; but I know That, whersoe'er I am, by night and day All earth and air seems only burning fire." And fancy follows ffinone to Ilium, and sees the two beautiful broken-hearted maidens meeting, like two melancholy flames, upon one funeral pile, minglino; their hot tears, exchanging their sad stories, and joining, in desperate exultation, at the prospect of the ruin which is already darkening, like a tempest, round the towers and temples of Troy. It is pleasant to find from such pro- ductions that, after all, the poetry of Greece is not dead — that the oaks of Delphos and Dodona have not shed all their oracular leaves — that the lightnings in Jove's hand are still warm — and the snows of Olympus are yet clear and bright, shining over the waste of years — that Mercury's feet are winged still — and still is Apollo's hair unshorn — that the mythology of Homer, long dead to belief, is still alive to the airy purposes of poetry — that, though the " dreadful infant's hand" hath smitten down the gods upon the capitol, it has left them the freedom of the Parnassian Hill; and that a Wordsworth, or a Tennyson, may even now, by in- clining the ear of imagination, hear the river god plunging in Scamander — ffinone wailing upon Ida — Old Triton blowing his wreathed horn ; for never was a truth more certain than that " a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." We had intended to say something of bis " Lotos Eaters," but are afraid to break in upon its charmed rest — to disturb its sleepy spell — to venture on that land " in which it seemed always after- noon" — or to stir its melancholy, mild-eyed inhabitants. We will pass it by, treading so softly that the " blind mole may not hear a footfall." We must beware of slumbering, and we could hardly but be dull on the enchanted ground. While the "Lotos Eaters" breathes the very spirit of luxuri- ous repose, and seems, to apply his own words, a perfect poem in " perfect rest," " Ulysses" is the incarnation of restlessness and insatiable activity. Sick of Ithaca, Argus, Telemachus, and (sub rosa) of Penelope too, the old, much-enduring Mariner King is again panting for untried dangers and undiscovered lands. " My purpose holds, To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die." Tennyson, with his fine artistic instinct, saw that the idea of Ulyssesat restwas an incongruous thought, and has chosen rather to picture him journeying ever onwards toward infinity or death — . " It may be that the gulfs will wash us down — It may be, we shall reach tlie happy isles, And Bee the great Achilles, whom we knew." 150 ALFRED TENNYSON. And with breathless interest, and a feeling approaching the sublime, we watch the grej-headed monarch stepping, with his few aged followers, into the bark, which is to be tlieir home till death, and stretching away toward eternity; and every heart and imagination cry out after him — " Go, and return no more." " Godiva" is an old story newly told — a delicate subject deli- cately handled — the final and illuminated version of an ancient and world-famous tradition. Its beauty is, that, like its heroine, it is " clothed on with chastity." It represses the imagination as gently and effectually as her naked virtue did the eye. We hold our breath, and shut every window of our fancy, till the great ride be over. And in this trial and triumph of female re- solution and virtue, the poet would have us believe that Nature herself sympathised — that the light was bashful, and the sun ashamed, and the wind hushed, till the sublime pilgrimage was past — and that, when it ended, a sigh of satisfaction, wide as the circle of eai'tli and heaven, proclaimed Godiva's victory. The " Vision of Sin" sti-ikes, we think, upon a stronger, though darker, chord than any of his other poems. There are in it im- penetrable obscurities, but, like jet black ornaments, some may think them dearer for their darkness. You cannot, says ilazlitt, make " an allegory go on all fours." A vision must be hazy — a ghost should surely be a shadow. Enough, if there be a mean- ing in the mystery, an oracle speaking through the gloom. The dream is that of a youth, who is seen riding to the gate of a pa- lace, from which " Came a child of sia, And took him by the curls, and led him in." He is lost straightway in mad and wicked revel, tempestuously yet musically described. Meanwhile, unheeded by the revellers, a " vapour {the mist of darkness /) heavy, hueless, formless, cold," is floating slowly on toward the palace. At length it touches the gate, and the dream changes, and such a change ! " I saw A grey and gap-tooth'd man, as lean as Death, Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath, And lighted at a ruin'd inn." And, lighted there, he utters his bitter and blasted feelings in lines reminding us, from their fierce irony, their misanthropy, their thrice-drugged despair, of Swift's " Legion Club;" and — as in that wicked, wondrous poem — a light sparkle of contemp- tuous levity glimmers with a ghastly sheen over the putrid pool of malice and misery below, and cannot all disguise the workings of that remorse which is not repentance. At length this sad evil utterance dies away in the throat of the expiring sinner, and be- hind his consummated ruin there arises a " mystic mountain ALFRED TENNTSON. 157 range," along which voices are heard lamenting, or seeking to explain, the causes of his ruin. One says — " Behold it was a crime Of sense, avenged by sense, that wore with time." Another — " The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame." A third — " He had not wholly quench'd his power — A little grain of conscience made him sour." And thus, at length, in a darkness visible of mystery and gran- deur, the " Vision of Sin" closes : — " At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ?' To which an answer peal'd from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn, God made himself an awful rose of dawn." A reply there is; but whether in the affirmative or negative, we do not know. A revelation there is; but whether it be an inter- ference in behalf of the sinner, or a display, in ruddy light, of God's righteousness in his punishment, is left in deep uncer- tainty. Tennyson, like Addison in his "Vision of Mirza," ven- tures not to withdraw the veil from the left side of the eternal ocean. He leaves the curtain to be the painting. He permits the imagination of the reader to figure, if it dare, shapes of beauty, or forms of fiery wrath, upon the " awful rose of dawn,'' as upon a vast background. It is his only to start the thrilling suggestion. After all, we have considerable misgivings about placing Tennyson — for what he has hitlierto done — among our great poets. We cheerfully accord him great powers; but he is, as yet, guiltless of great achievements. His genius is bold, but is waylaid at almost every step by the timidity and weakness of his temperament. His uttex'ance is not proportionate to his vision. He sometimes reminds us of a dumb man with important tid- ings within, but only able to express them by gestures, starts, sobs, and tears. His works are loopholes, not windows, tlirougli which intense glimpses come and go, but no broad, clear, and rounded prospect is commanded. As a thinker, he often seems like one who should perversely pause a hundred feet from the summit of a lofty hill, and refuse to ascend higher. " Up ! tlie breezes call thee — the clouds marslial thy way — the glorious prospect waits thee, as a bride adorned for her husband — angels or gods may meet thee on the top — it may be thy Mountain of Trans- 158 ALFRED TENNYSON. figuration." But no; the pensive or wilful poet chooses to re- main below. Nevertheless, the eye of genius is flashing in Tennyson's head, and his ear is unstopped, whether to the harmonies of nature, or to the still sad music of humanity. We care not much in which of the tracks he has already cut out he may choose to walk ; but we would prefer if he were persuaded more frequently to see visions and dream dreams — like his '• Vision of Sin" — imbued with high purpose, and forming the Modern Metamorphoses of truth. We have no hope that he will ever be, in the low sense, a popular poet, or that to him the task is allotted of extracting music from the railway train, or of setting in song the " fairy tales of science" — the great astronomical or geological discoveries of the age. Nor is he likely ever to write anything which, like the poems of Burns or Camjibell, can go directly to the heart of the entire nation. For no " Song of the Shirt," even, need we look from him. But the imaginativeness of his nature, the deep vein of his moral sentiment, the bias given to his mind by his early reading, the airy charm of his versification, and the seclu- sion in which he lives, like a flower in its own peculiar jar, all seem to prepare him for becoming a great spiritual dreamer, who might write not only " Recollections of the Arabian Nights, * but Arabian Nights themselves, equally graceful in costume, but impressed with a deeper sentiment, chastened into severer taste, and warmed with a purer flame. Success to such pregnant slumbers ! soft be the pillow as that of his own " Sleeping Beauty;" may every syrup of strength and sweetness drop upon his eyelids, and may his dreams be such as to banish sleep from many an eye, and to fill the hearts of millions with beauty! On the Avhole, Tennyson is less a prophet than an artist. And this alone would serve better to reconcile us to his silence, should it turn out that his poetic career is over. The loss of even the finest artist may be supplied — that of a prophet, who has been cut off in the midst of his mission, or whose words some envious influence or circumstance has snatched from his lips, is irreparable. In the one case, it is but a painter's pencil that is broken ; in the other, it is a magic I'od shivered. Still, even as an artist, Tennyson has not yet done himself full justice,' nor built up any structure so shapely, complete, and living, as may perpetuate his name.* • His " Princess," published since the above, is not even an attempt to- wards a vyhole. Nor do we admire so much as the public his " In Memoriam." It is a succession of fine quaint moralisings, with many timid gleams of thought, but with no adequate subject, no consecutive power, no new insight, no free, strong motion, no real unity, and discovering rather an elaborate and imitative ingenuitj' than original genius. How inferior, ia sweep, fire, force, variety, ease, and natural power, to the " Roman ! " ALFRED TENNYSON. 159 Alfred Tennyson is the son of an English clergyman in Lin- colnshire. He is of a retiring disposition, and seldom, though sometimes, emerges from his retirement into the literary coteries of London. And yet welcome is he ever among them — with his eager physiognomy, his dark hair and eyes, and his small, black tobacco-pipe. Some years ago, we met a brother of his in Dum- fries, who bore, we were told, a marked, though miniature resem- blance to him, a beautiful painter and an expert versifier, after the style of Alfred. The particulars of his literary career are familiar to most. His first production was a small volume of poems, published in 1831. Praised in the " Westminster" elaborately, and extravagantly eulogised in the "Englishman's Magazine" (a periodical con- ducted by William Kennedy, but long since defunct, and which, according to some malicious persons, died of tliis same article) — it was sadly mangled by less generous critics. " Blackwood's Magazine" doled it out some severely- sifted praise; and the author, in his next volume, rhymed back his ingratitude in the well-known lines to " Kusty, musty, fusty, crusty Christopher," whose blame he forgave, but wliose praise he could not. Mean- while, he was quietly forming a small but zealous cohort of admirers; and some of his poems, such as " Mariana," &c., were universally read and appreciated. His second production was less successful, and deserved to be less successful, than the first. It was stuffed with wilful impertinences and affectations. ^ His critics told him he wrote ill, and he answered them by writing worse. His third exhibited a very different spirit. It consisted of a selection from his two former volumes, and a number of ad- ditional pieces — the principal of which Ave have already analysed. In his selection, he winnows his former works with a very salu- tary severity; but what has he done with that delectable strain of the "Syrens?" We think he has acted well in stabling and shutting up his "Krakens" in their dim, ocean mangers; but we are not so willing to part with tliat beautiful sisterhood, and hope to see them again at no distant day, standing in their lovely isle, and singing — " Come hithor, come hither, and be our lords, For merry brides ftre we. We will kiss sweet kisses and speak sweet words. Ye will not find so happy a shore, Weary mariners, all the world o'er. Oh fly, oh fly no more." 160 PKOFESSOR NICHOL. This is the age of public lecturing, and we might spend a long time in discussing its pros and cot2^, its advantages and its evils. The open and legitimate objects which popular lecturing proposes to itself are chiefly the three following: instruction, excitement, and communication between the higher minds of the age and those of a lower grade. Now, in reference to its utility as an organ of instruction, much may be said on both sides. In public lecturing, truth is painted to the eye ; it is enforced and illustrated by voice, gesture, and action; it stands in the person of the orator as in an illumined window. The information thus given, attended by a personal interest, and accompanied by a peculiar emphasis, is more profoundly impressed upon the memory; and many, by the fairy aspect of truth which is presented, are induced to love and learn, who otherwise would have remained indifferent and distant. On the other hand, the quantity of knowledge com- municated by lecturing is seldom large; and, as to its quality, lecturers are under strong temptations to dilute it down to the capacities of their audience; and, instead of conducting them from first principles to details, to give them particular facts, and tell them to travel back themselves to leading principles, an ad- vice which they seldom, if ever, follow. Too often tiie hearers, however strongly urged to the contrary by their instructors, for- get to pursue profounder researches, to seek after higher sources; and the close of the six or seven lectures is the close of their studies, and furnishes the complement of their knowledge. Often, too, the class who have least access to books have also least ac- cess to lectures, or, even Avhen privileged to attend them, find their special wants but indifferently supplied. In the excitement produced by good public lecturing, its ad- vocates find a more plausible argument in its favour. It is an amusement so happy and so innocent; it withdraws so many from the theatre, the card- table, and the tavern ; it gives such a stimulus to nascent intellects; it creates around the lecturer such circles and semicircles of shining faces; it rouses in so many, breasts the spark of literary and scientific genius; it commences the manufacture of so many incipient Miltons, no longer mute and inglorious ; and of whole generations of young Arkwrights, worthy of their illustrious progenitor. Nay, we would go a little farther still: we would " better the instruction." Its excitement and pleasure do not stop here. The lecture-room promotes a great many matches; it brings young ladies and gentlemen into close and intimate propinquity ; it excites active and animated flirtations ; it forms, besides, a pleasant interchange to one class with the card-table — to another, an agreeable lounge on the road PROFESSOR NICIIOL. IGl to tlie afterpiece ; and to a third, a safe and decent half-way house to a quiet social talk in a quiet alehouse. It is also a nur- sery for the numerous sprigs of criticism which abound — faith- fully figured by the immortal " Punch," in those specimens of the rising generation who deem that, as " for that 'ere Shakspere, he has been vastly overrated." And last, not least, it permits many a comfortable nap to the hard-wrought doctor, or schoolmaster, or artisan — to whom it matters not whether the lecturer be in the moon or in the clouds, as they are only, like their instructor, absent and lost. Joking, however, apart, popular lecturing is undoubtedly a source both of much entertainment and excitement, though we are not sure but that that entertainment is more valued by the luxurious as a variety in their pleasures, than by the middle and lower classes as a necessity in their intellectual life; and, although we are sure that an undue proportion of that excitement springs from the glare of lights, the presence of ladies, the mere " heat, and stare, and pressure," of which Chalmers complained ; and that comparatively little of it can be traced to the art, less to the genius, and least of all to the subject, of the dis- courser. As a means of communication between men of science and literature and the age, it is, we are afraid, what Mr Home w^ould call a "false medium." You have in it the prophet, shorn, dressed, perhaps scented, perhaps playing miserable monkey- tricks to divert the audience — not coming down the Mount, with face shining, but with lips stammering, from that dread com- munion on the summit. Or, if he do preserve his integrity, and speak to the souls instead of the eyes and ears of his audience, it is at his proper peril; wild yawnings, slumbers both loud and deep, not to speak of the more polite hints conveyed in the music of slapping doors and rasping floors, are the reward of his fidelity. AVe are aware, indeed, that a few have been able to overcome such obstacles, and, in spite of stern adherence to a high object, to gain general acceptance. But these are the exceptions. Their success, besides, has greatly resulted from other causes than the truth they uttered. Certain graces of manner — certain striking points in delivery — a certain melody to whieh their thoughts were set — created at the first an interest which gradually, as the enthusiasm of the speaker increased, swelled into a brute wonder, which made you fancy the words " Orpheus no fable," written in a transparency over the speaker's head. But clear steady visions of truth, true and satisfying pleasure, and any per- manent or transforming change, were not given. The audience were lifted up for a season, as if in a whirlwind, by tlie sJieer power of eloquence ; they were not really elevated one distinct step — they came down precisely the same creatures, and to the 162 PROFESSOR NICHOL. same point, as before, and the thing would be remembered by them afterwards as a dream. Certain minds, again, there are which find in the lecture a far freer and more useful passage to the public ear and intellect, and succeed in giving not only a vague emotion of delight, but some solid knowledge, and some lusting result. Such a mind is that of Professor Nichol; and we propose now to analyse its con- stituent qualities, as well as the special causes of his great suc- cess as a lecturer. The first time we heard of Professor Nichol was on the publi- cation of his " Views of the Architecture of the Heavens," and the first thing that struck us about the production was the felicity of its title. The words " Architecture of the Heavens" suggested, first, the thought that the heavens were the building of a distinct divine architect; secondly, that the building was still in progress; and, thirdly, that from even this low and distant platform we are permitted glimpses of its gradual growth toward perfection. The essence, in fact, of the nebular hypothesis was contained in the title : and, although that hypothesis is now commonly thought exploded, it is only so far as the visible evidence is concerned — as a probable and beautiful explanation of phenomena, the origin of which is lost in the darkness of immeasurable antiquity, it retains its value. But how suggestive to us at the time was the expression, '• Architecture of the Heavens!" Formerly we deemed that, when man awaked into existence, the building, indeed, was there in all its magnitude, but that the scaffolding was down — all trace and vestige of the operation elaborately removed — and that the almighty Ai'chitect had withdrawn and hid himself. But now we had come upon the warm footprints of Omnipotence — the Power was only a few steps in advance; nay, thrilling thought ! we had only to lift our telescopes to behold him actually at work up there in the midnight sky. The tele- scope enabled us to stand behind the processes of the Eternal — it was a wing by which we overtook the great retreat of the Deity, if indeed a retreat it was, and not rather a perpetual progress — a triumphal march onwards into the infinite dark. It brought us ever new, electric, telegraphic tidings of Him whose goings forth were of old — from everlasting — and which were neio to everlasting as well. Such were the dim, yet high suggestions of the nebular hypothesis. If we relinquished them recently with a sigh, we now sigh no more ; for now we have been taught, in a manner most impressive, the immense age of the universe, whose orbs seem hoary in their splendour, and have thus found a new measure for computing our knowledge, or rather for more accurately estimating our ignorance, of the days of the years of the right hand of him that is the Most High. How long, we now exclaim, it must be since the Great Artist PROFESSOR NicnoL. 163 put his finishing touch to that serene gallery of paintings we call the stars, and yet how perfect and how godlike their execution ; since their lustre, their beauty, and their holy calm are this night as fresh and unfaded as at the beginning! And how solemn the thought, if these works, in the hiding of their Creator, be so magnificeut, how great must himself be, and how great must he have been, especially as he travailed in birth with such an offspring, amid the jubilant shouts of all awakening intelli- gence ! It is very common to skip the preface in order to get at the book. In this case, we skipped the book to get at the pictures. "We read, nay, devoured, the plates — the poems shall we call them — ere we read a word of the letterpress. And most mar- vellous to us was their revelation of those starry sprinklings, relieved against the dark background — those wild, capricious shapes, which reminded you of rearing steeds under the control of perfect riders — seeming at once to spurn and to be subject to immutable laws — those unbanked rivers of glory flowing through the universe — why, we seemed standing on a Pisgah, command- ing the prospect of immensity itself. But still more striking to overlook, as we then imagined, the creative forge of God, and to see his work in every stage of its progress — the six demiurgic days presented to us contemporaneously and at once. What a triumph, too, to mind over matter, and to a poor sun-illumined worm, over his haughty torch — to be able, with a pin-point, to indicate, and, if necessary, to hide, his place in the firmament ! It was, indeed, an hour much deserving of memory. The folding- doors of the universe seemed to open upon us in musical thunder; and, if we could not as yet enter, yet we could wish, like IMirza, for the wings of a great eagle to fly away within them. It was one of those apocalyptic moments that occur, or that can occur, so seldom in life, for it is not every day that we can see, for the first time, in the expanded page of immensity, the charter of our soul's freedom, and feel ourselves " enlarged" to the extent of the length and breadth, the depth and the height of the creation Returning from a reverie, in w4iich we saw our sun and his thousand neighbour stars quenched like a taper in the blaze of that higher noon, we found ourselves on earth again, and remembered that we had yet to read Dr Nichol's book. And it is the highest compliment we can pay it, to say that it did not dissipate or detract from the impressions which the eloquent pictures had produced, and that it gave tliem a yet clearer and more definite form. It bi-idged in the foaming torrent of our enthusiasm. It translated (as Virgil does Homer) the stern and literal grandeurs of night into a mild and less dazzling version. We liked, in the first place, its form. It consisted of letters, and of letters to a lady. This held out a prospect of ease, familiarity, clearness, 164 PROFESSOR KICHOL. and grace. Most expounders, hitherto, of astronomical truth had been either too stilted in their style, or too scientific in their substance. But here was a graceful convei'sation, such 'as an accomplished philosopher might carry on with an intelligent female, under the twilight canopy, or in the window recess, as the moon was rising. It in no way transcended female compre- hension, or, if it did, it was onl}' to slide into one of those beauti- ful, bev/itching mists, which the imagination of women so much loves. There were, too, a warmth and a heartiness about the style and manner, which distinguished the book favourably from the majority of scientific treatises. These, generally, are cold and dry. Trusting, it would seem, to the intrinsic grandeur of the subject, they convey their impressions of it in a didactic and feeble style, and catalogue stars as indifferently as they would the fungi of the forest. Nichol, on the contrary, seems to point to them, not with a cold I'od, but with a waving torch. lie never " doubts that the stars are fire " — no immeasurable icebergs they, floating in frozen air, but glowing, burning, almost living orbs ; and his words glow, burn, and nearly start from the page in unison. We will not denv that this heat and enthusiasm sometimes betrav him into splencUda vitia — into rhetorical exaggerations — into pas- sages which sound hollow, whether they are so or not — and worse, into dim and vague obscurities, copied too closely from his own nebulas, where you have misty glimmer, instead of clear, solid land; but his faults are of a kind which it is far more easy to avoid than to reach, which no sordid or commonplace mind, however accomplished, durst commit ; and the spirit which ani- mates his most peculiar combinations of sound, and peeps through his swelling intricacies of sentence, is always beautiful and sin- cere. Beyond most writers, too, on this theme, he has the power of giving, even to the uninitiated, a clear and memorable idea of his subject — the truths of Astronomy he paints upon the eye and soul of the reader. And this he is enabled to do — first, because he has a clear vision himself, which his enthusiasm is seldom permitted to dull or to distort; and, secondly, because he seeks — labours — is not satisfied till, he has transferred this entire to the minds of his readers, and of his auditors. Thus far of the mere manner of his writing. In considering its spirit, we shall find metal more attractive. This is distinguished by its sincere enthusiasm, its joyous hope, and by its religious reverence. What field for enthusiasm can be named in comparison with the innumerous and ever-burning stars — the first objects which attract the eyes of children, who send up their sweetest smiles, and uplift their tiny hands to pluck them down as playthings — the beloved of solitary shepherds, who, lying on the hillside, try to count them in their multitudes, call them by names of their own, love those " watchers and holy ones," as if they were com- PROFESSOR NICIIOL. 165 panion^ and frientls, and sometimes exclaim, Avitli the great shep- herd king of Israel, " "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man!" — the beloved of the mariner, who, pacing his mid- night deck, turns often aloft his eye to them, shining on him through the shrouds, or " Mirror'd in the ocean vast, A thousand fathoms down" — the loved of the wakeful, especially of those who are awake through sorrow, who, as they see them trembling through the lattice, feel, or fancy, that they are sympathising with their agonies, and would, if they could, send down a message from their far thrones that might wipe away their tears — the loved of the astronomer, who, a friendly spy, watches their every motion, and through the tube of his telescope distils into himself the essence of their beauty, their meaning, and their story — the loved of the poet's soul, who snatches many a live-coal of inspiration from their flaming altars — the loved of the Christian, who sees in them the reflection of his Father's glory, the milestones on the path of his Redeemer's departure, and of his return — the loved of all who have eyes to see, understandings to comprehend, and souls to feel their grandeur so unspeakable, their silence so pro- found, their separation from each other, and from us so entire, their multitude so vast, their lustre so brilliant, their forms so singular, their order so regular, their motions so dignified, so rapid, and so calm. " If," says Emerson, " the stars were to ap- pear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had thus been shown. But night after night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." It is singular, that, while the theory of the stars has been per- petually changing, the conception of their sublime character has under every theory, remained nearly the same. While they are believed to be, as in the darker ages, absolutely divine, incorrup- tible, and perfect in their essence, they were not regarded with more enthusiasm, alluded to with more frequency, or lauded with more eloquence, than now, when we know that imperfection, and inequality, decay, and destruction, snow, and p(;rhaps sin, have found their way thither, as Avell as here; and Dante, amid his innumerable descriptions of the heavenly bodies — and no poet has so many — has said nothing finer in their praise than we find iu some of the bursts of Bayley. If science has, with rude hand, torn off from the stars that i'alse lustre of supernaturalism which they bore so long, it has immeasurably multiplied their numbers, un- locked their secrets, at once brought them nearer and thrown 1 66 PROFESSOR NICHOL. them farther off, and supplied the glitter of superstition by the severe light of law. If they seem no longer the thrones of angels, they are at least porch-lamps in the temple of Almighty God. If no longer the regents of human destiny, they are the Urim and Thummim upon the breast of the Ancient of Days. If not now regarded as u part of the highest heaven, they at least light the way that leadeth to honour, glory, and immortality. From sparks they have broadened into suns ; from tliousands they have multiplied into millions. It is ever thus with the progress of genuine truth. Remorselessly, as it rushes on, it scatters a thousand beautiful dreams, slumbering like morning dew-drops among the branches of the wood, but from the path of its progress there rises, more slowly, a stern, but true and lasting glory, be- fore which, in due time, the former " shall no more be remem- bered, neither come into mind." A collection of all the descriptions of the stars, in the poetry and prose of every age, would constitute itself a galaxy. It would include Homer's wondrous one-lined allusions to them — so rapid and so strong, as they shone over Ida, or kept still watch above the solitary Ulysses in his sea- wanderings — the crown they wove over the bare head of the sleepless Prometheus — the glances of power and sympathy which they shed in, through rents in the night of the Grecian tragedies — the ornate and laboured pictures of Virgil and Lucretius — the thick imagery tliey supply to the Scripture bards — their perpetual intermingling with the Divina Comedia, darting down through crevices in the descending circles of damnation, circling the mount of purgatory, and paving the way to the vision of essential Deity — Shakspere's less frequent but equally beautiful touches — Milton's plaintive, yet serene re- ferences to their set glories — Young's bursts of wonder, almost of craving desire, for those nearer neighbours to the eternal throne, which appeared to him to see so far and to know so much — Byi'on's wild and angry lashing at them, like a sea, seeking to rise, and reach and quench them, on a thousand shipwrecks — "Wordsworth's love to them, ybr loving and resting on his favourite mountains — Bayley's hymnings of devotion — Chalmers's long- linked swells of pious enthusiasm — and last, not least, our author's^ raptures, more measured, more artistic, but equally sincere. There occurs a passage in one of Byron's letters, where he de- scribes himself, after a debauch, looking out at the night, when he exclaims, " What nothings we are before these stars!" and adds, that he never sufficiently felt their greatness, till he looked at them through Herschel's telescope, and saio that they were worlds. We rather wonder at this, for we have always thought that, to a highly imaginative mind, it mattered little whether it looked to the stars through the eye or the telescope. Who does not see and feel that they are worlds, if he has a heart and an imagination, as PROFESSOR NICUOL. 167 well as an eye? Who cares for the size of algebraic symbols? A star, at largest, is but a symbol, and the smaller it seems, the more scope it leaves for imagination. The telescope tends rather to crush and overwhelm than to stimulate — to fill than to fire — some souls. It necessarily, too, deprives the seeing of the stars, so far as they are regarded individually, of many of its finest accessories. The mountain which the star seems to touch — the tree through which it trembles — the soft evening air on which it seems silently to feed — the quick contrasts between it and its neighbouring orbs — its part as one of a constellated family — such poetical aspects of it are all lost, and the glare of illumination falls upon one unit, insulated at once from earth and from the other parts of heaven. It is as though we should apply a mag- nifying-glass to a single face in a group of painted figures, thereby enlarging one object at the expense of the others, which are not diminished, but blotted out. While, of course, acknowledjiinff the mighty powers and uses of the telescope, and confessing that from no dream did we ever more reluctantly awake than from one which lately transported us to Parsonstown, and showed us the nebula in Orion just dropping to pieces, like a bright dissolving cloud, yet we venture to assert, that many derive as much plea- sure and excitement from the crescent moon still as in Shak- spere's time, " a silver bow new bent in heaven" — from round, shivering Venus in the green west — from the star of Jove sus- pended high overhead, like the apparent king of the sky — and from those glorious jewels, hanging like two pendants, of equal weight and brilliance, from the ear of night, Orion and the Great Bear, as they could from any revelation of the telescope. This very night we saw what probably impressed our imagination as much as a glimpse of the liossian glories would have done. The night has been dark and drifting till a few minutes ago. We went out to the door of our dwelling, looking for nothing but darkness, when suddenly, as if flashing out through and from the gloom, and meeting us like a gigantic ghost at our very threshold, we were aware of the presence of Orion, and involuntarily shud- dered at the sight. All astronomers of high name have been led at first to their science by the workings of an enthusiasm as strong as passion and as high as poetry. We cannot doubt that Newton was from his boyhood fascinated by the beauty of tlie heavenly bodies, and that his wistful boyish glances at their serene splendour and mystic dance formed the germs of his future discoveries. To some Woolsthorpe reverie of twiliglit, we may trace the discoveries of his matured manhood. Surely a loftier principle was stirring in him than that whicli renders the juvenile mechanician uneasy till he has analysed the construction of a toy. It was not, in tiie first instance, the mathematical puzzles connected with theiu that 108 PROFESSOR NICHGL. allracted him to those remote regions; but it was their remote- ness, magnitude, and mystery uliich roused him to grapple with their secrets. Ordinary cliildren love to see, and would like to join, the march of soldiers, as they step stately by. The boy Newton burned to accompany, as an intelligent witness and com- panion, the steps of planets and suns. This enthusiasm never altogether subsided, as many well-known anecdotes prove. But too soon it ceased to express itself otherwise than by silent study and wonder; it retired deep into the centre of his being, and men, astonished at the lack-lustre look with which tlie eye of the sage was contemplating the stars, knew not that his spirit was the while gazing at them as w^ith the insatiate glance of an eagle. Thus frequently has it been with astronomers. Their ardour diving beyond human sight or sympathy has failed to attract the minds of others, and, by coating itself in the ice of cold fornmla) and petrified words, has repelled many a poetical enthusiast, whose imagination was not Jiis only faculty. "We look on Pro- fessor Niciiol as an accomplished mediator between the two classes of mind, or, as we have formerly called him, an Aaron to many an ineloquent Moses of astronomy. How he has preserved his child-like love for his subject-matter we do not know, but certainly we always feel, when reading him, tliat we are following the track of suns, burning and beneficent as footsteps of God, and not of " cinders of the element," whirled round in a mere mechanical motion. It is said that he has sacri- ficed powers of original discovery to popular effect; but what if this popular effect, in which so many are now participating, should be to rouse the slumbering energies of still mightier geniuses, and give us a few Newtons, instead of one fully- developed Nichol! We like next to, and akin to this, in Professor Nichol, his spirit of hope and joy. This, we think, ought to be, but is not always, the result of starry contemplations. We quoted before Carlyle's celebrated exclamation, " Ah, it's a sad sight," as he looked up to a sparkling January sky. Whether w^e join with him in this, or v/ith Emerson in expressions of jubilant praise, may depend partly upon our state of feeling. In certain moods, the stars will appear hearths, in others hells. The moon is bayed at, not by dogs alone. The evening star awakens the gloomy hour of the misanthrope, and shines the signal to the murderer, as well as lights the lover to his assignation with his mistress, and the poet to°his meeting with the muse. It seems now, besides, evident to most, that the universe being made of one material, struggle, un- certainty, wo, and the other evils to which finitude is heir, are, in all probability, extended to its remotest limits, and that thus the stars are no islands of the blest, but, like our own world, stern arenas of contest, of defeat or of victory. Still there are PROFESSOR MCnOL. ]G0 many reasons why the hoavonly bodies shoiihl be a permanent spring of cheering, if pensive, thought. There is first their won- drous beauty. Is it nothing to the happiness of man that God has suspended over his head this book of divine pictures, talking to him in their own low but miglity speech, spotting his nights with splendour, and filling his soul with an inspiring influence which no earthly object can coramunicate? Doubts and diilieul- ties may occupy part of the intervening time, but the first and the last feeling of humanity is, " Tliank.-^, endless and boundless, to Heaven for the stars." Secondly, They give us a sense of liberty wdiich no other external cause can do, and which must enhance the happiness of man. This was one great good of the discovery of America. It did not, when found, fulfil the dreams of navigators; it was not a cluster of fortunate isles, filled with happy spirits — the worst passions of man were found amongst the most beautiful scenery; but its discovery shivered the fetters of usage and prejudice, burst the old mamia mundi ; and man, the one-eyed giant, found himself groping and pawing, to say the least, in a wider dungeon, and breathing a freer air. But the modern astronomy has broken dovrn stronger walls, and made man's spirit free of the uinverse. What though he has good rea- son to believe that these many mansions of his Father's house are not, as yet, peopled witii the perfect and the happy! To him height and depth have unbared man}' of their secret marvels — new provinces, pointing to innumerable others behind, have ex- panded in the kingdom of the Infinite — every limit and barrier iiave fled away, and the surprised prisoner feels his soul at large, unbounded in a boundless universe. Surely the telescope, in in- fusing into tiie mind such a sense of freedom, has been a bene- factor to the heart of man, who may exclaim to it, in the lan- guage of the sword-song, " Joy-giver, I kiss thee." But, thirdly, the stars diffuse happiness through the thoughtful mind, as re- vealing a wdiole so vast that all our partial and gloomy views of it are straightway stamfjcd with iiii))erfection and imbecility. How little and idle our most plausible theories look under the weight of that beaming canopy ! Imagine the shell-fish, amidst its sludge, dreaming of the constitution of that world of waters which rolls above ! So insignificant appears a Locke, a Kant, or a Spinoza, exalted each some five or six feet above his grave, and theorising so dogmatically on the principles of the starry ocean. We seem to see the mighty mother bending down, listening to each tiny but pompous voice, smilingly measuring the size of the sage, and saying, in the irony of the gods, " And is this really thy opinion, my little iii-ro, and liast thou, within that pretty new thimble of thine, actually condensed the sea of trutii? Fcrge Puer." Thus tlie midnight sky teaches us at once the greatness and the littleness of man — his greiitness by comparison with iiis 170 PROFFSSOR NICHOL. past self — his littleness by comparison with the expanse of the universe, and with his future being; and by both lessons it sum- mons us to joy; because from the one we are obvious^ly advanc- ing upwards, and because from the other our doubts are seen to be as little as our resolution of them; our darkness yet pettier tlian our light. AVhy, lo one who could from a high point of view overlook the general scheme of things, the darkest and broadest shadow that ever crossed the mind of man — that ever made him dig for death, or leap howling into perdition — may ap- l^ear no larger than one dim speck upon a mountain of diamond. We stand up, therefore, with Leigh Hunt and Elmerson, versus Carlyle and Foster, for the old name — the happy stars; and Pro- fessor Nichol will come in and complete the majority. Without specially, or at large, arguing the question, he takes it for granted, and sees human immortality and infinite progress legibly in- scribed on the sky. The words " onwards" and " to come" are to him the rung changes of the sphere-music, and fearlessly, and as in dance, he follows them into the hoary deep. We admire, still more. Professor Nichol's spirit of reverence. Peligion as a human feeling is so natural a deduction from the spectacles of night, that we sometimes fancy, that, did man live constantly in a sunless world, and under a starry canopy, he would be a wiser and holier, if a sadder being. One cause, we imagine, wliy people in the country are often more serious than the same class in towns, is, that they are brought more frequently, Avith less interruption, and often alone, into contact with the night sky. " An undevout astronomer," says Young, "is mad." Nor Avill the case of La Place disprove this poetic adage — if we understand him to mean, by devotion, that general sense of the Infinite in the imagination which passes as worship into the heart, and comes out as praise upon the lips. In this sense, La Place was a worshipper — and that not merely, as Isaac Taylor intimates, of a law which had frozen into a vast icy idol, but of the warm crea- tion as it shone around him. Still, his worship did not reach the measure, or deserve the name, of piety; it was the worship of an effect, not of its living, personal, and iather-iike cause. Nichol, on the other hand, never loses sight of the universe as an instant, ever-rushing emanation of the Deity. " God," he says, quoting a friend of kindred spirit, "literally creates the universe every moment." Pie is led by Boscovich's theory of atoms to suppose an infinite Will, producing incessantly all force and motion. And thus the beauty of things seems to him, as it were, an im- mediate flush upon the cheek of the Maker, and their light a lustre in his eye, and their motion the circulation of his untiring energies ; and yet, withal, the woiks are never lost in the concep- tion of their Creator, nor the Creator pantheistically identified with the works. The mighty picture, and its mightier back- PROFESSOR NICHOL. 171 ground and source, are inseparably connected, but are never confused. He takes up, in short, pi-ecisely the view and the attitude of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in regard to the external universe. To them, that is just a bright or black screen concealing God. " Whither can they go from his Spirit? whither can they flee from his presence ?" At every step, and in every circumstance, they feel themselves God-enclosed, God-filled, God-breathing men, with a spiritual Presence lowering or smiling on them from the sky, sounding in wild tempest, or creeping in panic stillness across the surface of the earth; and if they turn within, lo ! it is there also — an Eye hung in the central darkness of their own heart. This sublime consciousness a cold science had in a great measure extinguished. Deity, for a season, was banished from the feeling of men; but we are mistaken if a higher and belter philosophy have not brought him back. Brought him back ! — brought back the sun to the earth, in bringing back sight to the blind! Say, rather, a better pliilosopliy, of which our author is not the least eloquent expounder, is bringing back man to a per- ception of the overhanging Deity. • On the relations which connect astronomy with revealed re- ligion, Professor Nichol, though not silent, is somewhat less ex- j)licit than we could have wished. In the absence of the power- fid light which he could have cast upon tliis topic, we must per- mit ourselves a few cursory remarks. The Christian Scriptures were, of course, never intended to teach astronomy, any more than to teacii botany, or zoology, or conchology, or any other ology, but theology; their main object is to bear a message of mercy to a fallen race, and their allusions to other subjects are necessarily incidental, brief, glancing for a moment to a passing topic, and then rapidly returning to the main and master theme. It follows, therefore, that, if we look into tliem for a systematic statement of truth on any secular subject, we may look long, and look in vain. Nay, we need not have been surprised, altliough they had in every point coincided with floating popular notions of physical subjects, {)rovided they did not fail, by tlieir wonted divine alchemy, to deduce from tliem eternal lessons of moral truth and wisdom. But, as even the mind of genius, in its higher hour, has rare glimpses of subjects lying round about, as well as within, tiie sphere of its thought, so, much more we might have expected that the divinely inspired soul should have hints and intimations, occasional and imperfect, of other fields Itesides its own. Working- in ecstasy, was tlie prophetic mind never to overleap its barriers? We affirm, and could, we think, prove the follow ing.]n-oj)Osi- tion^: 1st, We find in the Scripture writers not only a feeling of the grandeur of the heavenly bodies, but a sense, obscure, indeed. 1?2 PROFESSOR NICnOLe yet distinct, of their vast magnitude ; 2clly, No real contradic- tion to the leading principles of the modern astronomy ; 3dly, One or two hints, that, whether by revelation or otherwise, the true schenie of the universe was understood by more than one of their number ; 4thly, The recognition, especially, of the prin- ciple of a plurality of worlds ; and, 5thly, The recognition of the operation of decay, change, convulsion, and conflagration, among the stars. "He hangeth," says Job, "the earth upon nothing." What a clear and noble gleam of astronomical insight was this in that dark age ! In the deep wilderness of Edom did this truth, the germ of the Copernican hypothesis, flash upon the soul of the lonely herdsman, as he turned up his eye to a heaven of far more brilliance than ours, through whose serene and traiis- parent air night looked down in all her queen-like majesty. There wandering, the inspired herdsman, and seeing that those orbs which his heart told him were worlds, were suspended and balanced in the mere void, his mind leaped to the daring conclu- sion, that so, too, "was the firm earth beneath his feet; and with like enthusiasm to that of Archimedes, when he cried " Eureka! eiircha!" did he exclaim, "He hangetli the earth upon nothing, and stretcheth out the noi'th over the emptij place." We are aware that the magnitude and multitude of the stars have furnished a theme of objection to the sceptic, and have elsewliere attempted to show, that Dr Chalmers has not fully or satisfactorily answered that objection. His " Sei-mons on the Modern Astronomy" — certainly of this century the most brilliant contribution to the oratory of religion — are not distinguished by his frequent originality and force of argument. They repel as- sumptions by assumptions; and, in the exuberant tide of elo- quence, the sophism in question is lost sight of, but not drowned. The objection of the sceptic was — Would the Proprietor of a universe so vast have given his Son to die for a world so small? and, perhaps, tlie best reply might be condensed in three ques- tions asked in return to the infidel's one. 1st, What is material magnitude compared to mind ? 2dly, Can you prove that the vast magnitude on which you found your objection is peopled by moral beings? and, 3dly, What has magnitude to do with a moral question ? What, for instance, has the size of a city to do with the moral chai-acter of its inhabitants ? What has the extent of a country to do with the intellectual or moral interest which may or may not be connected with its plains ? Whether is Ben Mac- dhui or Bannockburn the dearer to the Scottish heart, though the one be the prince of Scottish hills, and the other only a poor plain, undistinguished save by an humble stone, and by the immortal memories of patriotism and courage which gather around that field, where "those Avho had wi' Wallace bled" bade " welcome to their gory bed, or to victory ?" Whether is more PROFESSOR NICHOL. 17"} glorious the gay city of Madrid, or the lonely cape of Trafalgar, where the guns of Nelson, from their iron lips, spake destrucliDU to the united fleets of France and Spain? Whether is INIoiit Blanc or Morgarteu tlie nobler object, though the one be the " Mouarch of mountains — Tbey crown'd him long ago, On a tbrone of rocks, in a robe of clouJ?, ^Yit^ a diaileiu of snow " — and the other only an humble field where the Swiss baffled their Austrian oppressors, and where "first in the shock with Xuri'.s spear was the arm of William Tell ?" Whfther is more beloved by the Christian's heart Caucasus or Calvary? and yet the one is the loftiest of Asia's mountains, and the other a little hill — a mere dot upon the surface of the globe. So, may there not issue from this remote eartli of ours — from the noble deeds it has wit- nessed — from tlie nobler aspirations wiiich have been breathed upon it — from the high thoughts which liave been thought upoij its surface — from the eloquent words which have stirred its air into music — from the poets who have wrought its language into undying song — from the philosophers who have explored the secrets of its laws — from the men of God who have knelt in its temples — from the angels who have touched its mountains — from the footsteps of Incarnate Deity, which have imprinted its plains — a burst of glory, before which the lustre of suns, con- stellations, and firmaments must pale, tremble, and melt avv^ay ? Another consideration is important and obvious. If the great- ness of the creation and of its God dwindles earth and man, it must dwindle also every separate section of the universe, and each separate family — for all sections and families, compared to in- finity, are less than nothing; and, if special circumstances in man's history called for a special interposition in his behalf, surely the urgency of the demand justifies the interference. And as to the question of condescension, the very term involves a false and human conception of God; or, if God did condescend to come down to man's condition, it was, in fact, little more than had he condescended to care for and die for angels — the gidf between both ranks of being and himself being boundless. Besides, if, as many suppose, misery and sin extend throughout the universe, may not the scheme of human redemption be only a part of a general process — as Chalmers says, " May not the redemption of many guilty worlds have been laid on the Kedcemer's shoulders?" or if, on tlu; other hand, ours be the sole world that has i'allen, would not this alone account for the importance attached to, and the sacrifices made for, it? Just as, let the meanest man in a kingdom commit a higli crime, his insignificance is forgotten — he rises instantly into importance — he is summoned to solemn trial, 17-1 PROFESSOR NICHOL. and on hi.s trial tlie interest and eyes of an entire nation are sus- pended; or let the tiniest hill in a country, so tiny that it was not thought worth wliile to give it a name, break out into a vol- cano, and that tire will become to it as a crown — men will flock from every quarter to see it — it will become the principal feature, the tongue of the region — and the old snow-clad mountains Avill appear diminished in its presence. So {this view Dr Chalmers lias admirably amplified, but has not sought to prove the premise on which it would require to be founded), if we should call earth the only blot on the fair page of God's universe, Ave can thus ac- count why angels have rested on its summits — the voice of God been heard in its groves — and the Son of God, for thirty-three years, ate its bread, walked on its surface, and at last died for its sins. But, in seeking partially to fill up Dr Nichol's blanks, let us not forget his redundant merits — the genial glow of his spirit — the exuberance of his language — his tremulous and prolonged sympathy with every note of his theme — the clear telescopic light he casts on what is dark — the fine chiaroscuro in which he often bathes what is clear — the choice flowers of poesy which he culls and wreaths around the drier and barer corners of his discourse — and the rich steam of pious feeling which rises irresistibly from each of his closes, as from a censer of incense. Such qualities we find not only in his first work, but even more finely displayed, we think, in his book on the " Solar system." "We would in- dite,' says Charles Lamb, "something on the solar systern. Betty, bring the candles." How the gentle Elia fared in this candle-light excureion, he does not inform us. In the absence of authentic details concerning this expedition, we have willingly accepted Dr Nichol's more scientific guidance. We have stood with him on the shining summits of the Moon, looked around on the glazed desolation, gone down into the dreader than Dora- daniel caverns, and, coming up, asked at the huge overhanging Earth and the stripped stony Sun the unanswered question — Is this a chaos or a ruin ? We have climbed the tall clitfs of Venus — been motes in Mercury, itself a mote in the near blaze of the Sun — pressed our footprints in the snows of Mars — swam across the star of Jove, so beautiful and large — paused, and wished t6 pause for ever, under the divine evenings of Saturn, wishing his j-ing that of eternity — saluted, from Herschel, the Sun, as the ".Star of Day," far, faint, diminished, discrowned— and from Nep- tune, as from a promontory, have looked out into the empire of a night like day, while behind us lay a day like night. A winged painter, WMth bold pinion and bolder pencil, did he lead us from world to world, and his Aving seemed to get stronger, and liis vision clearer, and his colours more vivid, the dimmer the region and the farther the flight. PROFESSOU NICHOL. 175 If we have, in speaking at sucli length of Dr Nlchol as a writer, left ourselves less room to descant on liis merits as a lecturer, our reason is, in both characters he is substantially the same. His writings are just undelivered lectures — his lectures are just spoken books. There are some in whom speaking develops new powers, and who are more at home behind the desk of the lec- ture-room than behind that of the study. There are others in whom speaking discovers new deficiencies, and who, from want of practice, or diffidence, or contempt for their audience, lecture below their general powers. Professor Nichol belongs to neither of those classes. Both in the study and the lecture-room, he is the same clear expounder, vivid describer, and tempered enthu- siast. His manner, without detracting'aught from, adds little or nothing to, the impression of his thought or style, of wliich it is simply the medium. Its principal quality is ease — an ease not materially impaired by a certain hesitation. Hesitation, we need scarcely say, has often a great charm. How fine sometimes it is accompanying the prattle of a beautiful child! And we know some popular divines who have stammered themselves into pulpit celebrity, proving that a fault dexterously managed is worth tuo merits left in a state of nature. Dr Nichol's hesitation is not great, is confined to his extempoi'e speech, and seems rather to spring from an excess than a deficiency of matter or words. Every little while, too, he resorts to his notes, and reads his fine passages with much gusto and effect. We must say, however, that we prefer him when carrying on his conversations — so lively, explicit, and entertaining — with his hearers. In this combined character of lecturer and popular writer, Dr Nichol has done more than any man living to release science from its mummy confinements, and to make it walk abroad as a free and living thing. And though he should never accomplish much in the walks of positive discovery, nor even build up any solid systematic treatise of scientific exposition, he shall not have laboured in vain, nor spent his strength for naught. He has, in his various works and progresses through the country, scattered the profuse seeds of what shall yet be an abundant harvest of astronomical enlightenment and enthusiasm. We have been amazed and delighted to witness the impression he contrives to make upon even humble minds, by the joint effect of his subject — his gorgeous style — his gigantic diagrams, and the enthusiasm which speaks through his pallid visage and large grey eyes; and how many "ready-made astronomers" he leaves behind him wherever he goes. At the couuncncement of this century, the popular literature of astronomy was in no very palmy condition. Fontenelle, in- deed, had defended, with much acuteness and elegance, the doc- trine of a " plurality of worlds." Addison, like a " child-angel," 176 TROFESSOR NICIIOL. liad pra'tlcd a wondrous prattle about the stars, in some of his Saturday " Spectators." But the real text-book of popular prose instruclion on this subject was " Hervey's Meditations"— a book written by a good man, but feeble Avriter, and chiefly distin- guished by its inane glitter. But now, not to speak of Dr Dick, whose lucid, interesting, and widely-read books have done so much to popularise the theme, the genius of Chalmers, Isaac Taylor, and others, has made up for the indifference of ages. Still, Nichol is the prose laureate of the stars. From his writings ascends hitherto the ricliest tribute of mingled intelligence of their laws — love for their beauty — admiration of their still strong ordei' — hope in the prospects of mankind, as reflected in their mirror — and sense, 'ever profound and near, of that unseen Power who counts their numbers, sustains their motions, and makes their thousand eyes the organs and the symbols of his omniscience. In some of the Professor's recent works, such as his " Obser- vations on the System of the World," and his Preface to Willm's " Education," we have been a little annoyed at the quantity of careless writing they contain — .at once loose, obscure, and incor- rect — and have been tempted to lay the blame now upon his printers, and now upon his own most incomprehensible and nebulous handwriting. We take our leave of this subject Avith considerable regret, both because we are always sorry to part irom a frank, friendly, and intelligent companion like Dr Nichol, and because we are even yet sorrier to leave a theme so fascinating, even to an un- scientific writer, as the " star-eyed science." We cannot close Avithout alluding to the death some time ago of Miss Herschel, long the associate of Sir William, in his midnight observations, and to whom our author pays an eloquent compliment, in his " Architecture of the Heavens." After long enjoying the bril- liant reputation of her brother, and the equally wide and true, if not so brilliant, reputation of her nephew— retaining, amid the chills of extreme age, all the ardour of her enthusiasm, and en- gaged, it is said, to the last in her favourite pursuit — she has fallen asleep. Every astronomer, surely, is ready to envy her fate, so far as her retaining to the end her post is concerned. To die at the telescope, is surely a nobler destiny than to die at the cannon, or on the throne. 177 MRS HEMANS. Fema-le authorship is, if not a great, certainly a singular fact. And if a singular fact in this century, what must it have been in the earlier ages of the world — Mheu it existed as certainly as now, and was more than now a phenomenon, standing often in- sulated and alone? If, even in this age, hhiefi are hlack-hn\\{n\, and homespun is still the "only wear," an.! music, grammar, and gramarye are the only three elements legitimately included and generally expected in the education of woman, in what light must the Aspasias and the Sapphos of the past have been re- garded? Probably as lusus natiaw, in whom a passionate attach- ment to literature was pardoned as a pleasant peccadillo or agreeable insanity; just as a slight squint in the eye of a beauty, or even a i'-dr-off faux pas in her reputation, is still not unfrequently forgiven. But alas! by and by, the exception is likely to be- come the rule — the lusus the law ; and, at all events, of female authorship the least gallant of critics is compelled now to take cognisance; and, without absolutely admitting this as our charac-- teristic, we must confess the diffidence as well as the good-will wherewith we approach a subject where respect for truth and respect for the sex are sometimes apt to jostle and jar. The works of British women have now taken up, not by cour- tesy but by right, a full and conspicuous place in our litei-ature. They constitute an elegant library in themselves; and there is hardly a department in science, in philosophy, in morals, in po- litics, in the belles lettres, in fiction, or in the fine arts, Ijut has been occupied, and ably occupied, by a lady. This certainly proclaims a high state of cultivation on the part of the many, which has thus flowered out into composition in the case of the few. It exhibits an extension and refinement of that element of female influence which, in the private intercourse of society, has been productive of such blessed effects — it mingles with the harsh tone of general literature, " as the lute pierceth through the cymbal's clash" — it blends with it a vein of delicate discrimina- tion, of mild charity, and of i)urity ol" morals — gives it a healthy and happy tone, the tone of the fireside; it is in the chamber of our literature, a quiet and lovely presence ; by its very gentle- ness, overawing as well as refining and beautifying it all. One principal characteristic of female writing in our age is its sterling sense. It is told of Coleridge, that he was accustomed, on im- portant emergencies, to consult a female friend, placing implicit confidence in her first instinctive suggestions. If she proceeded to add her reasons, he checked her immediately. " Leave these, madam, to me to find out." We find this rare and valuable 178 MRS HEMANS. sense — this shorthand reasoning — exemplified in our lady authors — producing, even in tlie absence of original genius, or of pro- found penetration, or of wide experience, a sense of perfect secu- rity, as we follow their gentle guidance. Indeed, on all questions affecting proprieties, decorums, what we may call the ethics of sentimentalistn, minor as well as major morals, their verdict may be considered oracular, and without appeal. We remark, too, in the writings of females, a tone of greater generosity than in those of men. They are more candid and amiable in their judgments of authors and of books. Commend us to female critics. They are not eternally consumed by the desire of being witty, astute, and severe, of carping at what they could not equal — of hewing down what they could or would not have byilt up. The principle, nil admirari, is none of theirs ; and, whether it be that a sneer disfigures their beautiful lips, it is seldom seen upon them. And, in correspondence with this, it is cui'ious that (in our judgments, and, we suspect, theirs) the worst critics are persons who dislike the sex, and whom the sex dislikes — musty, fusty old bachelors, such as Gifford, or certain pedantic prigs in the press of the pre- sent day. Ladies, on the other hand, are seldom severe judges of anything, except each other's dress and deportment ; and, in defect of profound principles, they are helped out by that fine native sense of theirs, which partakes of the genial nature, and verges upon genius itself. Passing from such preliminary remarks, we proceed to our theme. We have selected Mrs Hemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, not because we consider her the best, but be- cause we consider her by far the most feminine writer of the age. All the woman in her shines. You could not (unknowing of the author) open a page of her writings without feeling this is written by a lady. Her inspiration always pauses at the feminine point. It never "oversteps the modesty of nature," nor the dignity and decorum of womanhood. She is no sibyl, tossed to and fro in the tempest of furious excitement, but ever the calm mistress of the highest and stormiest of her emotions. The finest compli- ment we can pay her, perhaps the finest compliment that it is possible to pay to woman, as a moral being — is to compare her to " one of Shakspere's women," and to say, had Imogen, oi- Isabella, or Cornelia become an author, she had so written. Sometimes, indeed, Mrs Hemans herself seems seduced, through the warmth of her temperament, the facility and rapidity of her execution, and the intensely lyrical tone of her genius, to dream that the shadow of the Pythoness is waving behind her, and con- trolling the motions of her song. To herself she appears to be uttering oracular deliverances. But unfortunately her poetry, as to all effective utterance of original truth, is silent. It is emotion only that is audible to the sharpest ear that listens to MRS HEMANS. 179 her song. A bee wreathing round you in the warm summer morn her singing circle, gives you as niucli new insight into the universe as do the sweetest strains which have ever issued iVom tliis " voice of spring." We are reluctantly compelled, there- fore, to deny her, in its highest sense, the name of poet — a word often abused, often misapplied in mere compliment or courtesy, but which ought never to retain its stern and ori>:inal sifrnifica- tion, A maker she is not. What dream of childhood has she ever, to any imagination, reborn? whose slumbers has she ever peopled with new and terrible visions? what new form or figure has she annexed, like a second shadow, to our own idiosyncrasy, to track us on our way for ever? to Avhat mind has she given such a burning stamp of impression as it feels eternity itself un- able to eiFace? There is no such result from the poetry of Mrs Hemans. She is less a maker than a musician, and her works appear rather to rise to the airs of the piano than to that still sad music of humanity — the adequate instrument for the expression of which has not yet been invented by man. From the tremu- lous movement, the wailing cadences, the artistic pauses, and the conscious-swelling climaxes of her verse, we always figure her as modulating, inspiring, and controlling her thoughts and words to the tune of some fine instrument, which is less the vehicle than the creator of the strain. In her poetry, consequently, the music rather awakens the meaning, than does the meaning round and mellow off into the music. With what purpose does a lady, in whom perfect skill and practice have not altogether drowned enthusiasm, sit down to her harp, piano, or guitar? Not altogether for the purpose of dis- play — not at all for that of instruction to her audience — but in a great measure that she may develop, in a lawful form, the sensi- bilities of her own bosom. Thus sat Felicia Hemans before her lyre — not touching it w'ith awi'ul reverence, as though each string were a star, but regarding it as the soother and sus- tainer of her own high-wrought emotions — a graceful alias of herself. Spring, in its vague joj^ousness, has not a more appro- priate voice in the note of the cuckoo than feminine sensibility had in the more varied but hardly profounder song of the author before us. We wish not to be misunderstood. Mrs Hemans had some- thing more than the common belief of all poets in the existence of the beautiful. She was a genuine woman, and, therefore, the sequence (as we shall see speedily) is irresistible, imbued with a Christian spirit. Nor has she feared to set her creed to music in her poetry. But it was as a betrayal, rather than as a pur- pose, tliat she so did. Siie was more the organ of sentiment and sensibility than of high and solemn truth — more a golden morning mist, now glittering and then gone in the sun, than a 180 MRS HEMANS. Steady dial at once meekly reflecting and faithfully watching and measuring his beams. She was, as Lord Jeffrey well remarks, an admirable writer of occasional verses. She has caught, in her poetry, passing moods of her own mind — meditations of the sleepless night — transient glimpses of thought, visiting her in hersereuer hours — the "silver lining" of those cloudy feelings which preside over her dai'ker — and the impressions made upon her mind by the more remark- able events of her every-day life — and the more exciting passages of her reading. Her works are a versified journal of a quiet, ideal, and beautiful life — the lite at once of a woman and a poetess, with just enough, and no more, of romance to cast around it a mellow autumnal colouring. The songs, hymns, and odes in which this life is registered, are as soft and bright as atoms of the rainbow; like them, tears transmuted into glory, but no more than they, great or complete. In many poets we see the germ of greatness, which might, in happier circumstances, or in a more genial season, have been developed. But no such germ can the most microscopic survey discover in her, and we feel that at her death her beautiful but tiny task was done. Indeed, with such delicate organisation, and such intense susceptiveness as hers, the elaboration, the long reach of tliought, the slow cumulative advance, the deep- curbed yet cherished ambition which a great work requires and implies, are, we fear, incompatible. It follows naturally from this, that her largest are her worst productions. They labour under the fatal defect of tedium. They are a surfeit of sweets. Conceive an orchard of rose-trees. Who w^ould not, stupified and bewildered by excess and extrava- gance of beauty, prefer the old, sturdy, and well-laden boughs of the pear and pippen, and feel the truth of the adage — " The a/)/)/e- tree is the fairest tree in the wood?" Hence, few, comparatively, have taken refuge in her " Forest sanctuary;" reluctant and rare the ears which have listened to her " Vespers of Palermo;" her " Siege of Valencia " has stormed no hearts, and her " Sceptic" made, we fear, few converts. But who has not wept over her " Graves of a Household," or hushed his heart to hear her " Treasures of the deep," in which the old Sea himself seems to speak, or wished to take the left hand of the Hebrew child and' lead him up, along with his mother, to the temple service; or thrilled and shouted in the gorge of " Morgarten," or trembled at the stroke of her " Hour of Death?" Such poems are of the kind which win their way into every house, and every collection, and every heart. They secure for their authors a sweet garden plot of reputation, which is envied by none, and with which no one intermeddles. Thus flowers smile, unharmed, to the bolt which levels the pine beside them. Even a single sweet poem, flowing from a gentle mind in a happy hour, is as "ointment MBS HEMAMS. 181 pouretl forth," and carries an hurable name in fragrance far down into futurity, while the elaborate productions of loftier spirits rot upon the shelves. A Lucretius exhausts the riches of his mag- niticent mind in a stately poem, which is barely remembered, and never read, A Wolfe expresses the emotions of every heart atthe recital of Sir John Moore's funeral in a few rude rhymes, and becomes immortal. A Shelley, dipping his pen in the bloody sweat of liis lonely and agonised heart, traces voluminous lines of " red and burning" poetry, and his works are known only to some hardy explorers. A Michael Bruce transfers one spring- joy of his dying frame, stirred by the note of the cuckoo, to a brief and tear-stained page, and henceforth the voice of the bird seems vocal with his name, and wherever you hear its strange, nameless, tameless, wandering, unearthly voice, you think of the poet who sighed away his soul and gathered his fame in its praise. A Bayley constructs a work " before all ages," lavishes on it imagination that might suffice for a century of poets; and it lies, on some recherche tables, like a foreign curiosity, to be seen, shown, and lifted, rather tlian to be read and pondered. A William Miller sings, one gloaming, his " Wee Willie Winkie," and the nurseries of an entire nation re-echo the simple strain, and every Scottish mother blesses, in one breath, her babe and his poet. We mention this, not entirely to approve, but in part to wonder at it. It is not just that one strain from a lute or a Tan's pipe should survive a thunder-psalm — that effusions should eclipse works. Mrs Heraans's poems are strictly effusions ; and not a little of their charm springs fi'om their unstudied and extempore charac- ter. This, too, is in fine keeping Avith the sex of the writer. You are saved the ludicrous image of a double-dyed Blue, in papers and morning wrapper, sweating at some stupendous treatise or tragedy from morn to noon, and from noon to dewy eve — you see a graceful and gifted womaii, passing from the cares of her family and the enjoyments of society, to inscribe on her tablets some fine thought or feeling, which had throughout the day existed as a still sunshine upon her countenance, or per- haps as a quiet, unshed tear in her eye. In this case, the transi- tion is so natural and graceful, from the duties or delights of the day to the employments of the desk, that there is as little pe- dantry in Avriting a poem as in writing a letter, and the author appears only the lady in floiver. Indeed, to recur to a former re- mark, Mrs riemans is distinguished above all others by her in- tense womanliness ; and as lier own clniracter is so true to her sex, so her sympathies with her sex are very peculiar and pro- found. Of the joys and the sorrows, the difficulties and the duties, the trials and tiie temptations, the hopes and the fears, the proper sphere and mission of woman, and of those pecu iur 182 MRS HEMANS. consolations which the " world cannot give nor take away," that sustain her even when baffled, she has a true and thorough ap- preciation ; and her " Records of Woman," and her " Songs of the Affections," are just audible beatings of the deep female heart. In our judgment, Mrs P^Uis's idea of woman is trite, vul- gar, and limited, compared with that of " Egeria," as Miss Jews- bury used fondly to denote her beloved friend. What a gallery of Shakspere's female characters would the author of the " Mo- thers, Daughters, and Women of England," have painted ! What could she have said of Juliet? How would she have con- trived to twist Beatrice into a pattern Miss ? Perdita ! would she have sent her to a boarding-school ? or insisted on finishing the divine Miranda ? Of that pretty Pagan, Imogen, what would she make ? Imagine her criticism on Lady Macbeth, or on Ophelia's dying speech and confession, or her revelation of the "Family Secrets" of the " Merry AVives of Windsor!" Next to her pictures of the domestic affections, stand Mrs Ilemans's pictures of nature. These are less minute than pas- sionate, less sublime than beautiful, less studies than free, broad, and rapid sketches. Her favourite scenery was the woodland, a taste in which we can thoroughly sympathise. In the wood there are a fulness, a roundness, a rich harmony, and a comfort, which soothe and completely satisfy the imagination. There, too, there is much life and motion. The glens, the still moorlands, and the rugged hills, will not move, save to one master finger, the finger of the earthquake, who is chary of his great displays; but before each lightest touch of the breeze the complacent leaves of the woodland begin to stir, and the depth of solitude seems in- stantly peopled, and from perfect silence there comes a still small voice, so sweet and sudden, that it is as if every leaf were the tongue of a separate spirit. Her favourite season was the autumn, though her finest verses are dedicated to the spring. Here, too, we devoutly participate in her feelings. The shorten- ing day — the new outbursting from their veil of daylight of those, in summer, neglected tremblers, the stars — the yellow corn — the grey and pensive light— the joy of harvest— the fine firing of all the groves (not the " fading but the kindling of the leaf") — the frequent and moaning winds — the spiritual quiet in which, at other times, the stubble fields are bathed— the rekindling of the cheerful fires upon the hearth— the leaves falling to their own sad music— the rising stackyards— the wild fruit, ripened at the cold sun of the frost— the " ineffable gleams of light dropping upon favourite glens or rivers, or hills that shine out like the shoulder of Pelops"— the beseeching looks with which, trembling on the verge of winter, the belated season seems to say, " Love me well, I am the last of the sisterhood that you can love;" in short, that indescribable charm which breathes in its very air MRS HEMANS. 183 and colours its very light, and sheds its joy of grief over all things, have concurred with some sweet and some sad associa- tions to render autumn to us the loveliest and the dearest of all the seasons. As Mrs Hemans loved woodland scenery for its kindly "looks of shelter," so she loved the autumn principally for its correspondence with that fine melancholy which was the permanent atmosphere of her being. In one of her letters, speaking of an autumn day, she says, *' The day was one of a kind I like — soft, still, and grey, such as makes the earth appear ' a pensive but a happy place.'" We have sometimes thought that much of Wordsworth's poetry should always be read, and can never be so fully felt as in the autumn, when " Laodamia," at least, must liave been written. Should not poems, as well as pictures, have their peculiar light, in which alone they can pro- perly be seen ? Should not Scott be read in spring, Shelley in the fervid summer, Wordsworth in autumn, Cowper and Byron in winter, Shakspere all the year round? In many points, Mrs Hemans reminds us of a poet just named, and whom she passionately admired, namely, Shelley ? Like him, drooping, fragile, a reed shaken by the wind, a mighty wind, in sooth, too powerful for the tremulous reed on which it dis- coursed its music; like him, the victim of exquisite nervous or- ganisation ; like him, verse flowed on and from her, and the sweet sound often overpowered the meaning, kissing it, as it were, to death ; like him, she was melancholy, but the sadness of both was musical, tearful, active, not stony, silent, and motionless, still less misanthropical and disdainful ; like him, she was gentle, play- ful, tliey could both run about their prison garden, and dally with the dark chains which, they knew, bound them till death. Mrs Hemans, indeed, was not, like Shelley, a rates; she has never reached his heights nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister in one beautiful but delicate and dying family. Their very appearance must have been similar. How like must the girl, Felicia Doro- thea Browne, with the mantling bloom of her cheeks, her hair of a rich golden brown, and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes, have been to the noble boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, when he came first to Oxford, a fair-haired, bright-eyed enthu- siast, on whose cheek and brow, and in whose eye was already beginning to burn a fire, which ultimately enwra]iped his whole being in flames ! In Mrs Ilemans's melancholy, one "simple" was wanting, which was largely mixed in Shelley's — that of faithless despon- dency. Her spirit was cheered by faith — by a soft and noble form of the softest, noblest faith — a foi-m, reminding us much, from its bahince of human, poetical, and celestial elements, ol that of Jeremy Taylor — the " Shakspere of divines." Although, as ]84 MRS HEMANS. we have said, her poetry is not, of prepense and_ purpose, the ex- press image of her religious thought, yet it is a ricli illustration of the religious tendency of the female mind. Indeed, females may be called the natural guardians of morality and faith. These shall always be safe in the depths of the female intellect, and of the female heart — an intellect, the essence of which is worship — a heart; the element of which is love. Unhired, disinterested, spontaneous is tlie aid they give to the blessed cause ; leaning, indeed, in their lovely weakness, on the " worship of sorrow," they, at the same time, prop it up through the wide and holy in- fluences which they wield. Their piety, too, is no fierce and foul polemic flame — it "is that of the feelings — the quick instinctive sense of duty — the wonder-stricken soul and the loving heart — often it is not even a conscious emotion at all — but, in Words- worth's language, they lie in " Abraham's bosom all the year, Aud God is with them, wheu thoy know it cot." In ]\Irs rieinans's writings, you find this pious tendency of her sex unsoiled by. an atom of cant, or bigotry, or exclusiveness ; and shaded only by so much pensiveness as attests its divinity and its depth ; for as man's misery is said to spring from his greatness, so the gloom v>'hich often overhangs the earnest spirit arises from its more immediate proximity to the Infinite and the Eternal. And who would not be ready to sacrifice all the cheap sunshine of earthly success and satisfaction for even a touch of a shadow so sublime ? After all, the nature of this poetess is more interesting than her genius, or than its finest productions. These descend upon us like voices from a mountain side, suggesting to us an elevation of character far higher than themselves. If not, in a transcen- dent sense, a poet, her life was a poem. Poetry coloured all her existence with a golden light — poetry presided at her needlework poetry mingled with her domestic and her maternal duties — poetry sat down with her to her piano — poetry fluttered her hair and flushed her cheek in her mountain rambles — poetry quivered in her voice, which was a " sweet sad melody" — poetry accom- panied her to the orchard, as she read the " Talisman," in that long glorious summer day which she has made immortal — and poetry attended her to the house of God, and listened with her to the proud pealing organ, as to an echo from within the veil. Poetry performed for her a still tenderer ministry : it soothed the deep sorrows, on which we dare not enter, which shaded the tissue of her history — it mixed its richest cupful of the "joy of o-rief " for her selected lips — it lapped her in a dream of beauty, Through which the sad realities of life looked in, softened in the medium. What could poetry have done more for her, except, MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 1 So indeed, by giving' her that sight " as far as tlie incommunicable" — that supreme vision wliich she gives so rareh\ and which she bestows often as a curse, instead of a blessing? Mrs Hemans, on the other hand, was too favourite a cliikl of the Muse to receive any such baleful boon. Poetry beautified her life, blunted and perfumed the thorns of her anguish, softened the pillow of her sickness, and combined with her firm and most feminine faith to shed a gleam of soft and tearful glory upon her death. Thus lived, wrote, suffered, and died " Egeria." "Without farther seeking to weigh the worth., or settle the future place of her works, let us be thankful to have had her among us, and that she did what she could, in her bright, sorely-tried, yet triumphant passage. She grew in beauty ; was blasted where she grew ; rained around her poetry, like bright tears from her eyes ; learned in sutiering what she taught in song ; died, and all hearts to which she ever ministered delight, have obeyed the call of Wordsworth, to " Mourn rather for that holj' spisit. Mild as the spring, as ocean deep; For her who, ere her summer faded, Has sunk into a dreamless sleep." MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. In selecting Mrs Ilemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, we did so avowedly, because she seemed to us the most feminine writer of the day. We now select Mrs Browning for the opposite reason, that she is, or at least is said by many to be, the most masculine of our female writers. To settle the respective spheres and calibres of the male and female mind, is one of the most difficult of philosophical problems. To argue, merely, that because the mind of woman has never hitherto produced a " Paradise Lost," or a "Principia," it is there- fore for ever incapable of producing similar masterpieces, seems to us unfair, for various reasons. In the first place, how many ages elapsed e'er the male mind realised such prodigies of intel- lectual achievement? And do not they still stand unparalleled and almost unapproached ? And were it not as reasonable to as- sert that man as that woman can renew them no more ? Secondly, because the premise is granted — that woman has not — does tlie conclusion follow, that woman cannot excogitate an argument as great as the "Principia," or build up a rhyme as lofty as the " Paradise Lost?" Would it not have been as wise for one who 186 MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. knew Milton only as the Milton of " Lycidas" and " Arcades," to have contended that he was incapable of a great epic poem ? And is there nothing in Madame de Stael, in Rahel the Ger- maness, in Mary Somerville, and even in Mary Wollstonecraft, to suggest the idea of heights, fronting the very peaks of the " Principia" and the "Paradise," to which woman may yet attain ? Thirdly, has not woman understood and appreciated the greatest works of genius as fully as man? Then may she in time equal them; for what is true appreciation but the sowing of a germ in the mind, which shall ultimately bear similar fruit? There is nothing, says one, which the human mind can conceive which it cannot execute; we may add, there is nothing the human mind can understand which it cannot equal. Fourthly, let us never forget that woman, as to intellectual progress, is in a state of in- fancy. Changed as by malignant magic, now into an article of furniture, and now into a toy of pleasure, she is only as yet un- dergoing a better transmigration, and *' timidly expanding into life." Almost all that is valuable in female authorship has been pro- duced within the last half century, that is, since the female was generally recognised to be an intellectual creature ; and if she has, in such a short period, so progressed, what demi-Mahometan shall venture to set bounds to her future advancement ? Even though we should grant that woman, more from her bodily "con- stitution than her mental, is inferior to man, and that man hav- ing got, shall probably keep, liis start of centuries, we see nothing to prevent woman overtaking, and outstripping with ease, h'lsjjre- sent farthest point of intellectual progress. We do not look on such productions as "Lear," and the "Prometheus Vinctus," with despair; they are, after all, the masonry of men, and not the architecture of the gods ; and if man may surpass, why may not woman, " taken out of his side," equal them? Of woman, we may say, at least, that there are already pro- vinces where her power is incontested and supreme. And in proportion as civilisation advances, and as the darker and fiercer passions which constitute the /era natura subside, in the lull of that milder day, the voice of woman will become more audible, exert a wider magic, and be as the voice of spring to the opening year. We stay not to insist that the sex of genius is, feminine, and that those poets who are most profoundly impressing our young British minds, are those who, in tenderness and sensibility — in peculiar power, and in peculiar weakness — are all but females. And whatever maybe said of the effects of culture, in deadening the genius of man, we are mistaken if it has not always had the contrary effect upon that of woman, so that, on entering on the far more highly civilised periods which are manifestly approach- ing, she will but be breathing the atmosphere calculated to MnS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWMNG. 187 nourish and invigorate, instead of weakening and chilling, her mental life. MrDe Quincey has, we think, conceded even more than we require, in granting that woman can die more nobly than man.* For whether is the writing or the doing of a great tragedy the higher achievement? Poor the attitude even of Shakspere, wriUng Macbeth, to that of Joan of Arc, entering into the flames as into her wedding suit. What comparison be- tween the face inflamed of a Mirabeau or a Fox, as they thun- dered, and the blush on the cheek of Charlotte Corday, still extant, as her head was presented to the people? And who shall name the depicter of the death of Beatrice Cenci with that heroine herself; or with Madame Koland, whose conduct on the scaftbld might make one in " love w ith death ?" If to die nobly demand the highest concentration of the moral, intellectual, and even artistic powers — and if woman has^^rtr excellence exemplified such a concentration, there follows a conclusion to which we should be irresistibly led, were it not that we question the minor proposition in the argument — we hold that man has often as fully as woman risen to the dignity of death, and met him, not as a vassal, but as a superior. To say that Mrs Browning has more of the man than any female writer of the period, may appear rather an equivocal com- pliment ; and its truth even may be questioned. We may, how- ever, be permitted to say, that she has more of the heroine than her compeers. Hers is a high, heroic nature, which adopts for the motto at once of its life and of its poetry, " Perfect through suffering." Shelley says : — " Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in sutfering what they teach in song." But -wrong is not always the stern schoolmistress of song. There are sufferings springing from other sources — from intense sensibility from bodily ailment — from the loss of cherished ob- jects which also find in poetry their natural vent. And we do think that such poetry, if not so powerful, is infinitely more pleasing and more instructive than that which is inspired by real or imaginary grievance. The turbid torrent is not the proper mirror for reflecting the face of nature ; and none but the moody and the discontented will seek to see in it an aggravated and dis- torted edition of their own gloomy brows. The poetry of wrong is not the best and most permanent. It was not wrong alone that excited, though it unquestionably directed, the course of Dante's and Milton's vein. The poetry of Shakspere's wrong is con- densed in his sonnets— the poetry of his forbearance and forgive- • See in " Tait " a puper on Joan of Arc. 188 MRS ELIZABETH BAKRET BROWNING. ness, of his gratitude and his happiness, is in his dramas. The poetry of Pope's wrong (a scratch from a thoin hedge) is in liis " Dunciad," not in his '• Rape of the Lock." Tlie poetry of Wordsworth's wrong is in liis " Prefaces," not in his " Excur- sion." Tiie poetry of Byron's wrong is in tliose deep curses which sometimes disturb the harmony of his poems ; and that of Shelley's in the maniacal scream wliich occasionally interrupts the pteans of his song. But all these had probably been as great, or greater poets, had no wi'ong befallen tliem, or had it taught them another lesson, tiian either peevishly to proclaim or furiously to resent it. Mrs Browning has suffered, so far as we are aware, no wrong from the age. She might, indeed, for some time have spoken of neglect. But people of genius should now learn the truth, that neglect is not ivrong ; or, if it be, it is a wrong in which they often set the example. Neglecting the tastes of the majority, the ma- jority avenges itself by neglecting them. Standing and singing in a congregation of the deaf, they are senseless enough to com- plain that they are not heard. Or should they address the mul- titude, and should the multitude not listen, it never strikes them that the fault is their own : they ought to have compelled atten- tion. Orpheus was listened to: the thunder is: even the gentlest spring shower commands its audience. If neglect means wil- ful winking at claims which are felt, it is indeed a wrong ; but a wrong seldom if ever committed, and which complaint will not cure : if it means, merely, ignorance of claims which have never been presented or enforced, where and whose is the crimi- nality? To do Mrs Browning justice, she has not complained of neglect nor injury at all. But she has acknowledged herself inspired by the genius of suffering. And this seems to have exerted divers influences upon her poetry. It has, in the first place, taught her to rear for herself a spot of transcendental retreat, a city of re- fuge in the clouds. Scared away from her own heart, she has soared upwards, and found a rest elsewhere. To those flights of idealism in which she indulges, to those distant and daring themes which she selects, she is urged less, we think, through native tendency of mind, than to fill the vacuity of a sick and craving spirit. This is not peculiar to her. It may be called, indeed, the " Retreat of the Ten Thousand ;" though strong and daring must be those that can successfully accomplish it. Only the steps — we had almost said of despair — can climb such dizzy heights. The healthy and the happy mind selects subjects of a healthy and a happy sort, and which lie within the sphere of every-day life and every-day thought. But for minds which have been wrung and riven, there is a similar attraction in gloomy themes, as that which leads them to the side of dark rivers, MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 189 to the heart of deep forests, or into the centre of waste glens. " Whither shall I wander," seems Mrs Browning to have said to herself, " to-day to escape from my own sad thoughts, and to lose, to noble purpose, the sense of ray own identity? I will go eastward to Eden, where perfection and happiness once dwelt. I will pass, secure in virtue, the far-flashing sword of the cheru- bim ; I will knock at the door and enter. I will lie down in the forsaken garden ; I will pillow my head where Milton pillowed his, on the grass cool with the shadow of the Tree of Life ; and I will dream a vision of my own, of what this place once was, and of what it was to leave it for the wilderness." And she has passed the waving sword, and she has entered the awful garden, and she has dreamed a dream, and she has, awaking, told it as a " Drama of Exile." It were vain to deny that the dream is one full of genius — that it is entirely original ; and that it never once, except by antithesis, suggests a thought of Milton's more massive and palpable vision. Her Paradise is not a garden, it is a flush on a summer evening sky. Her Adam is not the fair large- fronted man, with all manlike qualities meeting unconsciously in his full clear nature — he is a German metaphysician. Her Eve is herself, an amiable and gifted blue-stocking, not the mere meek motherly woman, with what Aird beautifully calls the " broad, ripe, serene, and gracious composure of love about her." Her spirits ai'e neither cherubim nor seraphim — neither knowino-nor burning ones — they are fairies, not, however, of the Puck or Ariel species, but of a new metaphj'sical breed ; they do not ride on, but split hairs ; they do not dance, but reason ; or, if they dance, it is on the point of a needle, in cycles and epicycles of mystic and mazy motion. There is much beauty and power in passages of the poem, and a sweet inarticulate melody, like the fabled cry of mandrakes, in the lyrics. Still we do not see the taste of turning the sweet open garden of Eden into a maze — we do not approve of the daring precedent of trying conclusions with Milton on his own high field of victory — and we are, we must say, jealous of all encroachments upon that fair Paradise which has so long painted itself upon our imaginations — where all the luxuries of earth mingled in the feast with all the dainties of the heavens — where celestial plants grew under the same sun with terrestrial blossoms, and where the cadences of seraphic music filled up the pauses in the voice of God. Far diflferent, indeed, is Mrs Browning's from Dryden's disgusting inroad into Eden — as different, almost, as the advent of Raphael from the encroachment of Satan. But the poem professed to stand in the lustre of the fiery sword, and this should have burnt up some of its conceits, and silenced some of its meaner minstrelsies. And all such attempts we regard precisely as we do the beauties of R 190 MRS ELIZABETH BARKETT BROWNING. the Apocrypha, when compared to the beauties of the Bible. They are as certainly beauties, but beauties of an inferior order — they are Howers, but not the roses which grew along the banks of the Four Rivers, or caught in their crimson cups the " first sad drops wept at committing of the mortal sin." " One blossom of Eden outblooms them all." Having accepted from Mrs Browning's own hand sadness, or at least seriousness, as the key to her nature and genius, let us continue to apply it in our future remarks. This at once impels her to, and fits her for, the high position she has assumed, uttering the " Cry of the Human." And whom would the human race prefer as their earthly advocate, to a high-souled and gifted woman ? What voice but the female voice could so softly and strongly, so eloquently and meltingly, interpret to the ear of him whose name is Love the deep woes and deeper wants of "poor humanity's afiiicted will, struggling in vain with ruthless des- tiny?" Some may quarrel with the title, " The Human," as an affectation ; but, in the first place, if so, it is a very small one, and a small afiectation can never furnish matter for a great quarrel ; secondly, we are not disposed to make a man, and still less a woman, an offender for a word ; and, thirdly, we fancy we can discern a good reason for her use of the term. What is it that is crying aloud through her voice to Heaven ? It is not the feral or fiendish element in human nature ? That has found an organ in Byi'on — an echo in his bellowing verse. It is the human element in man — bruised, bleeding, all but dead under the pressure of evil circumstances, under the ten thousand tyrannies, mistakes, and delusions of the world, that has here ceased any longer to be silent, and is speaking in a sister's voice to Time and to Eternity — to Earth and Heaven. The poem may truly be called a prayer for the times, and no collect in the Eng- lish liturgy surpasses it in truth and tenderness, though some may think its tone daring to the brink of blasphemy, and piercing almost to anguish. Gracefully, from this proud and giddy pinnacle, where she had stood as the conscious and commissioned representative of the human race, she descends to the door of the factory, and pleads for the children enclosed in that crowded and busy hell. The " Cry of the Factory Children" moves you, because it is no poem at all — it is just a long sob, veiled and stifled as it ascends through the hoarse voices of the poor beings themselves. Since we read it we can scarcely pass a factory without seeming to hear this psalm issuing from the machinery, as if it were protesting against its own abused powers. But, to use the language of a writer quoted a little before, " The Fairy Queen is dead, shrouded in a yard of cotton stuif made by the spinning-jenny, and by that other piece of new improved machinery, tlie souls and bodies of MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. IQl British children, for which death alone holds the patent." From Mrs Browning, perhaps the most imaginative and intellectual of British females, down to a pale-fiiced, thick-voiced, degraded, hardly human, iactory girl, what a long and precipitous descent! But, though hardlv, she is human ; and availing herself of the small, trembling, but eternally indestructible link of connection implied in a common nature, our author can identify herself witli the cause, and incaimate her genius in the person, of the poor perishing child. How unspeakably more aftecting is a pleading in behalf of a particular portion of the race, than in behalf of the entire family! Mrs Browning might have uttered a hundred "cries of the human," and proved herself only a sentimental artist, and awakened little save an echo dying away in distant elfin laughter; but the cry of a factory child, coming through a woman's, has gone to a nation's heart. Although occupied thus with the sterner wants and sorrows of society, she is not devoid of interest in its minor miseries and disappointments. She can sit down beside little Ella (the mi- niature of Alnaschar), and watch the history of her day-dream beside the swan's nest among the reeds, and see in her dis- appointment a type of human hopes in general, even when tower- ing and radiant as summer clouds. P^lla's dream among the reeds! What else was Godwin's Political Justice? What else was St Simonianism? What else is Young Englandisni ? And what else are the hopes built by many now upon certain perfected schemes of education, which, freely translated, just mean the farther sharpening and furnishing of knaves and fools ? Shadowed by the same uniform seriousness are the only two poems of hers which we shall farther at present mention — we mean her " Vision of Poets," and her " Geraldine's Courtship." Tlie aim of the first is to present, in short compass, and almost in single lines, the characteristics of the greater poets of past and present times. This undertaking involved in it very consider- able difiiculties. For, in the first place, most great poets pos- sess more than one distinguishing peculiarity. To select a single differential point is always hazardous, and often decep- tive. 2dly, After you have selected the prominent characte- ristic of your author, it is no easy task to express it in a Avord, or in a line. To compress thus an Iliad in a nutsliell, to im- prison a giant genie in an iron pot, is more a feat of magic than an act of criticism. 3dly, It is especially difficult to express the differentia of a writer in a manner at once easy and natural, pic- turesque and poetical. In the very terms of such an attempt as Mrs Browning makes, it is implied that she not only define.*, but descril)es tlie particular writer. ]>ut to curdle up u charac- ter into one noble word, to describe Shakspere, for instance, in 192 MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. such compass, wliat sun-syllable shall suffice ; or must we renew Byron's wish? — " Could I unbosom and embody now That which is most within me ; could I wreak My thought upon expression! And that one word were Lightning, I would speak; But as it is, I live and die unheard, With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword." Accordingly, this style of portraiture has seldom been prose- cuted with much success. Ebenezer Elliot has a copy of verses after this fashion, not quite worth}' of him. What, for example, does the following line tell us of Shelley? — " Ill-fated Shelley, vainly great and brave." The same words might have been used about Sir John Moore, or Pompey. Mrs Browning's verses are far superior. Some- times, indeed, we see her clipping at a character, in order to tit it better into the place she has prepared for it. Sometimes she crams the half of an author into a verse, and has to leave out the rest for want of room. Sometimes over a familiar face she throws a veil of words and darkness. But often her one glance sees, and her one word shows, the very heart of an author's genius and character. Altogether, this style, as generally prosecuted, is a small one, not much better than anagrams and acrostics — ranks, indeed, not much higher than the ingenuity of the persons who transcribe the " Pleasures of Hope" on the breadth of a crown- piece, and should be resigned to such praiseworthy personages. By far the best specimen of it we remember, is the very clever list involving a running commentary of the works of Lord Byron, by Dr M'Ginn ; unless, indeed, it be Gay's " Catalogue Eaisonne" of the portentous poems of Sir Eichard Blackmore. Wlio shall embalm, in a similar way, the endless writings of James, Cooper, and Dickens? "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," as a transcript from the "red- leaved tablets of the heart" — as a tale of love, set to the richest music — as a picture of the subtle workings, the stern reasonings, and the terrible bursts of passion — is above praise. How like a volcano does the poet's heart at length explode ! How first all power is given him in the dreadful trance of silence, and then in the loosened tempest of speech ! What a wild, fierce logic flows forth from his lips, in which, as in that of Lear's madness, the foundations of society seem to quiver like reeds, and the moun- tains of conventionalism are no longer found ; and in the lull of that tempest, and in the returning sunshine, how beautiful, how almost superhuman, seem the figures of the two lovers, seen now and magnified through the mist of the reader's fast-flowing tears! ^ MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 193 It is a tale of successful love, and yet it melts you like a tragedy, and most melts you in the crisis of tlie triumpli. On Geraldine we had gazed as on a star, with dry-eyed and distant admiration ; but, when that star dissolves in showers at the feet of her poet lover, we weep forveiy joy. Truly, a tear is a sad yet beautiful thing ; it constitutes a link connecting us with distant countries, nay, connecting us with distant worlds. Gravitation has, amid all immensity, wrought no such lovely work as when she rounded a tear. From this beautiful poem alone, we might argue Mrs Brown- ing's capacity for producing a great domestic tragedy. We might argue it, also, from the various peculiarities of her genius — her far vision into the springs of human conduct — into those viewless veins of fire, or of poison, which wind within the human heart — her sympathy Avith dai'k bosoms — the instinct for truth, which pierces often the mist of her dimmer thought, like a flash of ir- repressible lightning — her fervid temperament, always glowing round her intellectual sight — and her queen-like dominion over imagery and language. We think, meanwhile, that she has mis- taken her sphere. In that rare atmosphere of transcendentalism which she has reached, she respires with difficulty and with pain. Slie is not "native and endued" into that element. We would warn her off the giddy region, where tempests may blow as well as clouds gather. Her sonnets in " Blackwood" are sad failures — the very light in them is darkness — thoughts, in them- selves as untangible as the films upon the window pane, are con- cealed in a woof of words, till thi'ir thin and shadowy meaning fades utterly away. Morbid weakness, she should remember, is not masculine strength. But can she not, through the rents in her cloudy tabernacle, discern, far below in the vale, fields of deep though homely beauty, where she might more gracefully and successfully exercise her exquisite genius? She has only to stoop to conquer. By and by we may — using unprofanely an expression originally profane — be tempted to say, as we look up tlie darkened mountain, with its flashes of fire hourly waxing fewer and feebler, " As for this poetess, we wot not what has be- come of her." While we are venturing on accents of warning, we might also remind her that there are in her style and manner peculiarities which a wicked world will j)ersist in calling aflectations. On the charge of aft'i;ctation, generally, we are disposed to lay little stress — it is a charge so easily got up, and which can be so readily swelled into a cuckoo cry ; it is often applied with such injustice, and it so generally attaches to singularitiits in manner, instead of insincerities in spirit and matter. But why should a true man, or a true woman, expose themselves needlessly to such a charge? We think, in general, that true taste in this, as in matters oi' dress 194 MRS SHELLET. and etiquette, dictates conformity to the present mode, provided that does not unduly crarap the freedom and the force of natural motions. There is, indeed, a class of writers who are chartered libertines — who deal with language as they please — who toss it about as the autumn wind leaves ; who, in the agony of their earnestness, or in the fury of their excitement, seize on rude and unpolished words, as Titans on rocks and mountains, and gain artistic triumplis in opposition to all the rules of art. Such are "Wilson and Carlyle, and such were Burke and Chalmers. These men we must just take as they are, and be thankful for them as they are. We must just give them their own way. And whether such a permission be given or not, it is likely to be taken. " Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? will he make many suppli- cations unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee? Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? canst thou bind him with his band in the furrow? will he harrow the valleys after thee ? Avilt thou believe that he will bring home thy seed, and gather into thy barn ? " No ; like the tameless crea- tures of the wilderness — like the chainless elements of the air — such men obey a law, and use a language, and follow a path of their own. But this rare privilege Mrs Browning can hardly claim. And she owes it to herself and to her admirers to simplify her manner— to sift her diction of whatever is harsh and barbarous — to speak whatever truth she has to tell, in the clear articulate language of men— and to quicken, as she well can, the dead forms of ordinary verbiage, by the spirit of her own super- abundant life. Then, but not till then, shall her voice break fully through the environment of coteries, cliques, and magazine readers, and fall upon the ear of the general public, like the sound, sweet in its sublimity, simple amid its complex elements,^ earthly in its cause and unearthly in its effect upon the soul, of a multitude of waters. MRS shellp:y. Much as we hear of Schools of Authors, there has, properly speaking, been but one in British literature — at least within this century. There was never, for example, any such thing as a Lake school. A school supposes certain conditions and circum- stances which are not to be found among the poets referred to. It supposes, first of all, a common master. Now, the Lake poets had no common master, either among themselves or others. They owned allegiance neither to Shakspere, nor Milton, nor MRS SHELLEY. 195 "Wordsworth, Each stood near, but eacli stood alone, like the stars composing one of the constellations. A school, again, implies a common creed. But we have no evidence, external or intemal, that, though the poetical diction of the Lakers bore a certain resemblance, their poetical creed was identical. Indeed, we are yet to learn that Southey had, of any depth or definitude, a poetical creed at all. A school, again, supposes a similar mode of training. But how ditferent the erratic education of Cole- ridge, from the slow, solemn, silent degrees by which arose, like a temple, the majestic structure of Wordsworth's mind! A school, besides, implies such strong and striking resemblances as shall serve to overpower the specific ditfei'ences between the writers who compose it. But we are mistaken if the dissimi- larities between AVordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey be not as great as the points in which they agree. Take, for example, the one quality of speculative intellect. That, in the mind of Cole- ridge, was restless, discontented, and daring — in Wordsworth, still, collected, brooding perpetually over narrow but protbund depths — in Southey, almost totally quiescent. The term Lake School, in short, applied at first in derision, has been retained, principally, because it is convenient — nay, suggests a pleasing image, and gives both the public and the critics " glimpses, that do make them less forlorn," of the blue peaks of Helvellyn and Skiddaw, and of the blue waters of Derwent and Winder- mere. The Cockney School was, if possible, a misnomer more absurd — striving, as it did, in vain to include, within one term, three spirits so essentially distinct as Hazlitt, Keats, and Leigh Hunt — the first a stern metaphysician, who had fallen into a hopeless passion for poetry ; the second, the purest specimen of the ideal — a ball of beautiful foam, " cut off from the water," and not adopted by the air ; the third, a fine tricksy medium between the poet and the wit, half a sylph and half an Ariel, now hovering round a lady's curl, and now stirring the fiery tresses of the sun — a fairy fluctuating link, connecting Pope with Shelley. We need not be at pains to cut out into little stars the Blackwood constellation, or dwell on the differences between a Wilson, a Lockhart, and a James Hogg. One school, however, there has appeared within the last fifty years, answering to all the characteristics we have enumerated, namely, the Godwin School, who, by a common master — the old man eloquent himself — a common philosophical as well as poetical belief, common training, that of warfare with society, and many specific resemblances in manner and style, are proclaimed to be one. This cluster includes the names of William Godwin, Mary "Wollstonecroft, Brockden Brown of America, Shelley, and Mrs Shelle3^ 196 MRS SHELLEY. Old Godwin scarcely got justice in " Tait's Magazine" from Mr De Quincey. Slow, cumbrous as he was, there was always a fine spirit animating his most elephantine movements. He was never contemptible — often commonplace, indeed, but often }rreat. 1'here w^as much in him of the German cast of mind — the same painful and plodding diligence, added to high imagina- tive qualities. His great merit at the time — and his great error, as it proved afterwards — lay in wedding a partial philosophic system with the universal truth of fiction. Hence the element whicli made the public drunk with his merits at first, rendered them oblivious afterwards. After all, what was the theory of Godwin but the mask of Christianity? Cloaking the leading principle of our religion, its disinterested benevolence, under a copy of the features of Helvetius and Volney, he went a mum- ming with it in the train of the philosophers of the Revolution. But when he approached the domain of actual life and of the human aflections, the ugly disguise dropped, and his fictions we hesitate not to characterise as among the noblest illustrations of the Sermon on the Mount. But to the public they seemed the reiterations of exploded and dangerous errors — such a load of prejudice and prepossession had been suspended to their author's skirts. And now, the excitement of dano;er and disgust havinji passed away from his theories, interest in the works Avhich pro- pounded them has also subsided. " Caleb Williams," once de- nounced by Hannah More as a cunning and popular preparation of the poison which the "Political Justice" had contained in a cruder form, is now forgotten, we suspect, by all but a very small class. "St Leon," " Fleetwood," " Mandeville," and " Cloudsley," with all their varied merits, never attracted attention, except through the reflex interest and terror excited by their author's former works. Thus political excitement has been at once a raising and a ruining influence to the writings of a great English author — ruining, we mean, at present — for the shade of neglect has yet to be created which can permanently conceal their ster- ling and imperishable worth. After the majority of the writings of Dickens have perished — after one-half of Bulwer's, and one- fourth of Scott's novels have been forgotten — shall some reflec- tive spirits be found following the fugitive steps of Caleb Wil- liams, or standing by the grave of Marguerite de Damville, or sympathising with the gloom of INIandeville, or of Bethlem Gabor, as they do well to be angry even unto death. If sincerity, sim- plicity, strength of thought, purity of feeling, and power of genius can secure immortality to any productions, it is to the fictions of Godwin. Mary W^ollstonecroft — since we saw her countenance prefixed to her husband's memoir — a face so sweet, so spiritual, so far withdrawn from earthly thoughts, steeped in an enthusiasm so MRS SHELLEY. 197 genuine — we have ceased to wonder at the passionate attacliment of Southey, Fuseli, and Godwin to the gifted being who bore it. It is the most feminine countenance we ever saw in picture. The " Eisrhts of Women" seem in it melted down into one deli- quium of love. Fuseli once, when asked if he believed in the immortality of the soul, replied in language rather too rough to be quoted vei'batim, " I don't know if i/ou have a soul, but I am sure that / have." We are certain that he believed in the exist- ence of at least one other immortal spirit — tiiat of the owner of the still, serene, and rapt countenance on which he hopelessly doted. It is curious that, on the first meeting of Godwin and his future wife, they " interdespised" — they recoiled from each other, like two enemies suddenly meeting on the street, and it required much after- intercourse to reconcile them, and ultimately to create that passion which led to their union. Mary Wollstonecroft shone most in conversation. From this to composition, she seemed to descend as from a throne. Cole- ridge describes her meeting and extinguishing some of Godwin's objections to her arguments with a light, easy, playful air. Her fan was a very falchion in debate. Her works — " History of the French Revolution," " Wanderer of Norway," " Rights of Women," &c. — have all perished. Her own career was chequered and unhappy — her end was premature — she died in childbed of Mrs Shelley (like the sun going down to reveal the evening star); but her name shall live as that of a deep, majestical, and high-souled woman — the Madame Roland of England — and who could, as well as she, have paused on her way to the scaffold, and wished for a pen to " record the strange thoughts that were arising in her mind." Peace to her ashes! How consoling to think that those who in life were restless and unhappy, sleep the sleep of death as soundly as others — nay, seem to sleep more soundly — to be hushed by a softer lullaby, and surrounded by a profounder peace, than the ordinary tenants of the grave. Yes, sweeter, deeper, and longer is the repose of the truant child, after his day of wandering is over, and the night of his rest is come. Another "wanderer o'er eternity" was Brockden Brown, the Godwin of America. And worse for him, he was a wanderer, not from, but among men. For Cain of old, it was a relief to go I'orth from his species into the virgin empty earth. The builders of the Tower of Babel must have rejoiced as they saw the sum- mit of their abortive building sinking down in the level plain ; they fled from it as a stony silent satire on their bafJled ambition, and as a memoi'ial of the confusion of their speech — it scourged them forth into the wihlerness, where they found peace and oblivion. A self-exiled Byron or Landor is ratlier to be envied ; furthough "how can your wandercrescape from his own shadow?" s 198 MRS SHELLEY. yet it is much if that shadow sweep forests and cataracts, fall large at morning or evening upon Alps and Apennines, or swell into the Demon of the Brockan. In this case, misery takes a prouder, loftier shape, and mounts a burning throne. But a man like Brockden Brown, forced to carry his sorrow into the press and thick of human society, nay, to coin it into the means of pro- curing daily bread, he is the true hero, even though he should fall in the struggle. To carry one's misery to market, and sell it to the highest bidder, v/hat a necessity for a proud and sensi- tive spirit! Assuredly Brown was a bi^ave struggler, if not a successful one. Amid poverty, neglect, non-appreciation, hard labour, and the thousand niaiseries of the crude country which America then was, he retained his integrity ; he wrote on^ at what Godwin calls his " story books ;" he sought inspiration from his ovv'n gloomy woods and silent fields ; and his works ap- pear, amid what are called " standard novels," like tall wind- swept American pines amid shrubbery and brushwood. His name, after his untimely death (at the age of thirty-nine), was returned upon his ungrateful country — from Britain, Avhere his writings first attained eminent distinction, while even yet Ame- ricans, generally, prefer the adventure and bustle of Cooper to the stern Dante-like cimplicity, the philosophical spirit, and the harrowing and ghost-like interest of Brown. Of Shelley, having spoken so often, what more can we say ? He seems 'm u.3 as though the most beautiful of beings had been struck blind. Mr De Quincey, in unconscious plagiarism from ourselves, compares him to a " lunatic angel." But perhaps, after all, his disease might be better denominated blindness. _ It was not because he sav/ falsely, but as if seeing and delaying to worship the glory of Christ and his religion, that delay was punished by v. sv/ifb and sudden darkness. Imagine the Apollo Belvidere, animated and fleshed, all his dream- like loveliness of form retained, but his eyes remaining shut! Thus blind and beautiful stood Shelley on his pedestal, or went wandering, an inspired sleep-walker, among his fellows, who, alas! not see- ing his melancholy plight, struck and spurned, instead of gently and soothingly trying to lead him into the right path. We still think, r.otwithGtanding Mr De Quincey's eloquent strictures in reply, that if pity r.nd kind-hearted ei:poslulatic:i had been em- ployed, they might ha^e had the effect, if r.ot of weaning him from his errors, at least of modifying his exprecsions and feel- ings — if not of opening his eyes, at least of rendering him more patient and hopeful under his eclipse. "What but a partial cloud- ing of his mind codd have prompted such a question as he asked upon the foUov/ing occasion? Haydon, the painter, met him once at a large dinner party in London. During the entertain- ment, a thin, cracked, shrieking voice was heard rrom the one end MUS SHELLEY. 199 of the table, " You don't believe, do you, Mr Haydon, in tliat execrable thing, Christianity ? " The voice was poor Shelley's, who could not be at rest with any new acquaintance till he ascer- tained his impressions on that one topic. Poets, perhaps all men, best understand themselves. Thus no word so true has been spoken of Shelley, as where he says of himself, that " an adamantine veil was built up between his mind and heart." His intellect led him in one direction — the true im- pulses of his heart in another. The one was with Spinosa; the other with John. The controversy raged between them like lire, and even at death was not decided. We rejoice, in contrast with the harsh treatment he met with while livin";, to notice the ten- derness which the most evangelical periodicals (witness a late number of the "North British Review") extend to the memory of this sincere, spiritual, and unearthly man. It is to us a proud reflection, that for at least seventeen years our opinion of him has remained unaltered. It is not at all to be wondered at, that two such spirits as Shelley and Mary Godwin, when they met, should become instantly at- tached. On his own doctrine of a state of pre-existence, we might say that the marriage had been determined long before, while yet the souls were waiting in the great antenatal antechamber ! They met at last, like two drops of water — like two llames of fire — like two beautiful clouds which have crossed the moon, the sky, and all its stars, to hold their midnight assignation over a favourite and lonely river. ]\lary Godwin was an enthusiast from her childhood. She passed, by her own account, part of her youth at Broughty Ferry, in sweet and sinless reverie among its cliffs. The place is, to us, familiar. It possesses some fine features — a bold promontory crowned with an ancient castle jutting far out the Tay, which here broadens into an arm of the ocean — a beach, in part smooth with sand, and in part paved with pebbles — cot- tages lying artlessly along the shore, clean, as if washed by the near sea — sandy hillocks rising behind — and westward, the river, like an inland lake, stretching around Dundee, with its fine har- bour and its surmounting Law, which, in its turn, is surmounted by the far blue shapes of the gigantic Stuicknachroan and Ben- voirlich. Did the bay of Spezia ever suggest to Mrs Shelley's mind the features of the Scottish scene? That scene, seen so often, seldom iails to bring before us her image — the child, and soon to be the bride, of genius. Was she ever, like Mirza, over- heard in her soliloquies, and did she bear the shame, accordingly, in blushes which still rekindle at the recollection? Did the rude fishermen of the place deem her wondrous wise, or did they deem her mad, with her wandering eye, her rapt and gleaming coun- tenance, her light step moving to the music of her Jiiaiden medi- tation ? The smooth sand retains no trace of her young feet — -00 MRS SHELLEY. to the present race she is altogether unknown ; hut we have more than once seen the man of genius, and its lover, turn round and look at the spot, with warmer interest, and with brightening eye, as Ave told them that she had been there. We have spoken of Mrs Shelley's similarity in genius to her husband — we by no means think her his equal. She has not his subtlety, swiftness, wealth of imagination, and is never caught lip into the same rushing whirlwind of inspiration. vShe has much, however, of his imaginative and of his speculative qualities — her tendency, like his, is to the romantic, the ethereal, and the ter- rible. The tie detaining her, as well as him, to the earth, is slen- der — her protest against society is his, copied out in a female hand — her style is carefully and successfully modelled upon his — she bears, in brief, to him, the resemblance which Laone did to Laon, which Astarte did to Manlred. Perhaps, indeed, inter- course with a being so peculiar, that those who came in contact with, either withdrew from him in hatred, or fell into the current of his being, vanquished and enthralled, has somewhat affected the originality and narrowed the extent of her own genius. In- dian widows used to fling themselves upon the funeral pyre of their husbands: she has thrown upon that of hers her mode of thought, her mould of style, her creed, her heart, her all. Her admiration of Shelley was, and is, an idolatry. Can we wonder at it? Separated from him in the prime of life, with all his faculties in the finest bloom of promise, with peace beginning to build in the crevices of his torn heart, and with fame hoverinjr ere it stooped upon his head — separated, too, in circumstances so sudden and cruel — can we be astonished that from the wounds of love came forth the blood of worship and sacrifice ? Wordsworth speaks of himself as feeling for " the Old Sea some reverential fear." But in the mind of "Mary " there must lurk a feeling of a still stronger kind toward that element which he, next to her- self, had of all things most passionately loved — which he trusted as a parent — to Avhich he exposed himself, defenceless (he could not swim — he could only soar) — v/hich he had sung in many a strain of matchless sweetness, but which betrayed and destroyed him — how can she, without horror, hear the boom of its waves, or look without a shudder either at its stormy or its smiling countenance ? What a picture she presents to our imagination, running with dishevelled hair along the sea-shore, questioning all she met if they could tell her of her husband — nay, shriek- ing out the dreadful question to the surges, which, like a dumb murderer, had done the deed, but could not utter the con- fession ! Mrs Shelley's genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and circumscribed — more so than even her father's — and, in this point, presents a strong contrast to her husband's, which could MRS SHELLEY. 201 run along every note of tlie gamut — be witty or wild, satirical or sentimental, didactic or dramatic, epic or lyrical, as it pleased him. She has no wit, nor humour — little dramatic talent. Strong, clear description of tlie gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the mind, or of those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work, somewhat laborious/^ creates, is lier forte. Hence lier reputation still rests cliiefiy upon "Frankenstein." She unquestionably made him; but, like a mule or a monster, he has had no progeny. Can any one have forgot the interesting account she gives of her first conception of that extraordinary story, when she had re- tired to rest, her fancy heated by hearing ghost tales ; and when the whole circumstances of tlie story appeared at once before her eye, as in a camera obscura? It is ever thus, we imagine, that truly original conceptions are produced. They are cast — not wrought. They come as wholes, and not in parts. It was thus that " Tam o' Shanter " completed, along Burns's mind, his wierd and tipsy gallop in a single hour. Thus Coleridge composed the outline of his " Ancient Mariner," in one evening walk near Nether Stowey. So rapidly rose " Frankenstein," which, as Moore well remarks, has been one of those striking conceptions which take hold of the public mind at once and for ever. The theme is morbid and disgusting enough. 'Jlie story is that of one who finds out the principle of life, constructs a mon- strous being, who, because his maker fails in forming a female companion to him, ultimately murders the dearest friend of his benefactor, and, in remox'se and despair, disappears amid the eternal snows of the North Pole. Nothing more preposterous than the meagre outline of the story exists in literature. But Mrs Shelley deserves great credit, nevertheless. In the first place, she has succeeded in her delineation ; she has painted tliis shapeless being upon the imagination of the world for ever ; and beside Caliban, and Hecate, and Deatli and Life, and all other wierd and gloomy creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involun- tary, gigantic unit stands. To succeed in an attempt so daring, proves at once the power of the author, and a certain value even in the original conception. To keep verging perpetually on the limit of the absurd, and to produce the while all the effects of the sublime, takes and tasks very high faculties indeed. Occa- sionally, we admit, she does overstep the mark. Thus the whole scene of the monster's education in the cottage, his overhearing the reading of the "Paradise Lost," the " Sorrows of Werter," &c., and in this way ac(iuiiing knowledge and refined sentiments, seems unspeakably ridiculous. A Caco-demon weeping in con- cert with Eve or Werter, is too ludicrous an idea. But it is wonderful how d'.-licately and gracefully Mrs Shelley has ma- naged the whole prodigious business. She touches pitch with a 202 MRS SHELLET. lady's glove, and is not defiled. From a whole forest of the " nettle danger " she extracts a sweet and plentiful supply of the " flower safity." AVith a fine female footing, she preserves the narrow path which divides the terrible from the disgusting. She unites, not in a junction of words alone, but in effect, the " liorribly beautiful." Her monster is not only as Caliban ap- peared to Trinculo — a very pretty monster, but somewhat poeti- cal and pathetic withal. You almost weep for him in his utter insulation. Alone! dread word, though it were to be alone in heaven ! Alone ! word hardly more dreadful if it were to be alone in hell! " Alone, all, all, alone, Alone on a wide, wide s"a ; And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony." "Wrapt around by his loneliness, does this gigantic creature run through the Avorld like a lion who has lost his mate, in a forest of tire, seeking for his kindred being, but seeking for ever in vain. He is not only alone, but alone because he has no being like him throughout the whole universe. AVhat a solitude within a soli- tude ! — solitude comparable only to that of the Alchemist in St Leon, when he buries his last tie to humanity in his wife's grave, and goes on his v/ay, "friendless, friendless, alone, alone." What a scene is the process of his creation, and especially the hour when he first began to breathe, to open his ill-favoured eyes, and to stretch his ill-shapen arms toward his terrified author, who, for the first time, becomes aware of the enormity of the mistake he has committed — who has had a giant's strength, and used it tyrannously like a giant, and v/ho shudders and shrinks back from his own horrible handiwork ! It is a type, whether intended or not, of the fate of genius, whenever it dares either to revile or to resist the common laws, and obligations, and conditions of man and the universe. Scarcely second to her description of the moment when, at midnight, and under the light of a waning moon, the monster was born, is his sudden apparition upon a glacier among the high Alps. This scene strikes us the more, as it seems the fulfilment of a fear which all have felt, who have found themselves alone among such desolate regiors. V/ho has not at times trembled lest those ghastlier and drearier places of nature, which abound in our own Highlands, should bear a different progeny from the ptarmigan, the sheep, the raven, o": theepgle — lest the mountain should suddenly crown itself v/ith a Titanic sceptre, and the mist, disparting, reveal demoniac forms, and the lonely moor discover its ugly dwarf, as if dropped down from the overhanging thunder- cloud and the forest of pines show unearthly shapes sailing among their shades — and the cataract overboil with its own wild MRS SEELLET. 203 creations? Thus fitly, amid scenerj' like that of some dream of nightmare, on a glacier as on a throne, stands up before the e3'e of his own maker, the miscreation, and he cries out, " Whence and what art thou, execrable shape !" In darkness and distance, at last, the being disappears, and the imagination dares liardly pursue him as he passes amid those congenial shapes of colossal size, terror, and mystery, which we fancy to haunt those outskirts of existence, with, behind them at midnight, " all Europe and Asia fast asleep, and before them the silent immensity and palace of the Eternal, to which our sun is but a porch-lamp." Altogethei', the vork is wonderful as the work of a girl of eighteen, ohe has never since fully equalled or approached it3 power, nor do we ever expect that she shall. One distinct addi- tion to cur original creations must be conceded her — and it is no little praise ; foi" there are few writers of fiction who have done so much out of Germany. V/hat are they, in this respect, to our painters — to Fuseii, with his quaint brain, so prodigal of un- earthly shapes — to John Martin, who has created over his head a whole dark, frcv:ning, but mcgmficent world — or to David Scott, our late dear friend, in v/hose studio, wliile standing surrounded by pict'ored poeins of such startling originality, such austere se- lection of then:e, r.nd such solemn dignity of treatment (forgetting nothimse];, the grave, mild, quiet, shadowy, enthusiast, with his slow, deep, sepulchral tones), you were almost tempted to ex- claim, " l^Gw dreadful is this place!" Cf on3 promised and anticipated task we must, ere we close, respectfully remind Mrs Chelley : it is of the life of her husband. That, even after Captain Medwyn's recent work, has evidently yet to be written. ITo hand but hers can write it well. Critics may anatomise hi3 qualities — she only can paint his likeness. In proclaiming his praise, exaggeration in her will be pardoned ; and, in unveiling his faults, tenderness may be expected from her ; she alone, we believe, after all, fully understands him; she alone fully knows the particulars of his outer and inner history; and we hope and beliove, that her biography will be a monument to liis memory, as lasting as the Euganean hills; and her lament over his loss as sweet as the everlasting dirge, sung in their " late remorse of love," by ths waterc cf the Italian sea.* • Since writing this, we have read more carefully the " Last Man." Though the gloomitst, most improbable, and most hopeless of books, it abounds in beautiful descriptions, has scenes of harrowing interest, and depicts delicately the character of Shelley, who is the hero of the story. — We need not inform our readers that Mrs Shelley has, since this sketch was written, departed this life. 204 WILLIAM COBBETT. William Cobbett, we may, without fear of contradiction, call the father of cheap literature. His self-styled " Twopenny Trash " was the strong seed whence a progeny has sprung, manifold and thick as the " leave-' of Vallatnbrosa ; " and a portion of whatever honour or shame attaches to our present cheap publications must redound to his credit or to his disgrace. And although he was by no means a timid or a squeamish man, we are certain that, could he now raise iiis head from the dust, it were to look with withering scorn and pity, not unmingled with remorse, upon those myriads of low and loathsome publications at present pouring from the English press — making up for their minuteness by their mischief — for their want of point, by their profanity — for their stupidity, by their licentiousness — absolutely monopolising millions of readers, and reminding us of that plague of frogs which swept Egypt, " till the land stank, so numerous was the fry." William Cobbett has been often ably, but never, we think, fully or satisfactorily, criticised. We do not refer merely to his political creed and character. These topics we propose to avoid, permitting ourselves, however, the general remark, that he was just as able and just as consistent a politician as some of his most formidable opponents (such as Burdett and Brougham) have since proved themselves to be. Of his literary merits, we remember only three striking pictures, all of which, however, slide into his political aspects. The first is that very eloquent, though some- what sketchy and one-sided character by Robert Hall, ending with the words — " a firebrand, not a luminary — the Polyphemus of the mob — the one-eyed monarch of the blind." Hall, we ima- gine, however, was too different a man from Cobbett to appre- ciate him entirely — too attentive to the construction of his sen- tences to relish Cobbett's easy, rambling style — too fastidious in his taste to bear with Cobbett's blunt picturesque expressions — too fond of the elegant abstractions of thought to sympathise with Cobbett's passion for, and power over, facts; still he must have often admired his vigorous dissections of character, and often chuckled, and even roared, over his rough native humour. An- other attempt to contain Cobbett in a crown-piece was made by Lockhart, in what, we think, Avas the last "Noctes" he contri- buted to " Blackwood," appearing somewhere about the close of the year 1832. It is put into the mouth of Jeffrey, and is very smart, snappish, and pointed, but is not peculiarly characteristic. It is rather an inventory than a picture; and such an inventory of this modern "man Mountain" as the Lilliputians made of Gulliver when they emptied his pocl-ets. It is not such a mas- terly fuU-lengtli as Lockhart could have executed, and as he has WILLIAM COBBETT. 205 executerl of a kindreil spirit, John Clerk. The third and best character is by Hazlitt, in his " Table-Talk," and is written with all his wonted discrimination. We remember that he calls him a " very honest man, Avith a total want of principle," speaks of his "Eesrister" as a "perpetual prospectus," and draws a striking parallel between him and Paine. Our object is somewhat more minutely and in detail to bring this brawniest of men before our readers. And, first, of his personal appearance. That was, as generally happens, a thorough, though not an ostentatious, index to his cha- racter. Those who expected to find in Cobbett a rude,' truculent barbarian, were, as they deserved to be, disappointed. They found, instead, a tall, stout, mild-faced, broad-shouldered, farmer- looking man, with a spice of humour lurking in his eye, but without one vestige of fierceness or malignity either in his look or demeanour. His private manners were simple, unaffected — almost gentlemanly. His mode of addressing an audience was quiet, clear, distinct, and conversational; and the fury and the fervour of the demagogue alike were wanting. The most sar- castic and provoking things oozed out at his lips like milk or honey. Add to this, perfect self-possession, his usual vein of humour somewhat subdued into keeping with his audience, and a certain cajolery in his manner, as the most notable features in his mode of public address. We heard him repeatedly in Edin- burgh, during his visit in 1832. He came to the Modern Athens with as much fear and trembling as could befall a man of his sturdy temperament. He expected, he said, ere he arrived, that the p]dinburgh people would " throw him into a ditch," but went away highly gratified with his reception. The truth is, they welcomed him as a curiosity, and went to see and hear him as a raree show. They showed no genuine appreciation of his talents; and, if they did not lift from the dirt and pelt him with the common calumnies, it was because they thought it not worth while. He came, tickled their midriflfs— they laughed, applaud- ed, and forgot him, as soon as liis back was turned. It is dangerous to seek to include a whole character in a single epithet, otherwise we might call William Cobbett " the genius of common sense." Common sense, possessed in an uncommon de- gree, and backed by powerful passion, often verges, in its effects and in its nature, on genius. Like genius, it works by intuition ; it does not creep, nor walk, but leaps to its conclusion. It is to genius an inferior system of shorthand — as swift, but not so beautiful; or it may be called genius applied to meaner subjects, and guided by impulses as free but less lofty. Such a honiespui\ but masculine spirit had perched upon tlie shoulder of Swift, and came directly from him to Cobbett. If ever man deserved, in a subordinate acceptation, the name '206 WILLIAM COBBETT. of " seer," it was the author of the " Register." He did not ratio- cinate or inquire; he saw, and saw at the first opening of his sa- gacious eye. Sometimes his sight was true, and sometimes false — sometimes healthy, and sometimes jaundiced — but it was al- ways sight, and not hearsay; and as well argue with the testi- mony of the eye as dispute with him his convictions. This was at once his power and his weakness; it accounted for his true and strong perception of public characters, and of the tendency and issues of public events; it accounted for his dogmatism, his inconsistency, and his caprice. It was this strong personal sight which made Cobbett maintain his ground against his many far more accomplished and learned rivals. While they were read- ing, reflecting, deflecting, and circumspecting, he was looking straight forward and right down into the very heart and marrow of his theme. Whilst they were wasting time in trying on pairs of spectacles belonging to others, he was using his own piercing pair of eyes. Thus, though taken at tremendous odds, the old Serjeant seldom failed of a complete triumph. We own it pleases us — it stirs our blood — to think that there has been, even in our time, native vigour enough, in a half-taught man of native power, to neutralise the most accomplished, to level the most learned, to " turn wise men backward and make diviners mad," to startle an age anxious to hide its weakness under the variety of its studies and the multiplicity of its accomphshments, by the tidings that there is yet something better than education — that an " ounce of mother wit" retains its original value — that genius still claims its ancient privileges — and that the breed of intellectual Spartaci and Toussaints is not extinct, amid all the cultivated iribbles and martinets of the day. Cobbett, if he wanted learning, possessed what was far more valuable — he possessed experience. How few writers have it 1 Voltaire speaks of some astonishingly wise young hero who seemed born with experience ; but, as Campbell remarks, " how few of our heads come into the world with this valuable article!" Most authors, indeed, go through a certain routine, which is dig- nified with this name. They pass through school and college ; write their first sonnet or epigram; fall in love — are receivedor rejected; publish their first volume — it is pufted or abused, ac- cording to the state of the critic's temper or stomach; fall into a sulk or a syncope — gradually cool and calm as they rise or fall totheir proper level; and this is called experience. Abused, out- raged term ! Has an author of almost Miltonic gift run the gauntlet of abusive or detracting criticism for many long years, and yet retained his integrity, his magnanimity, the calm purpose of his soul ? Then let him speak of experience, for assuredly experience has spoken to him. Or, has a man of lofty genius and loving heart been driven, for his conscientious convictions, WILLIAM COBBETT. 207 forth from the society of men, and died grey-haired and all but broken-hearted at twenty-nine? He might have spoken of ex- perience. And did one who could, from native talent, have led armies, cabinets, his country, spend years as a private soldier, visit various lands, and undergo many privations and hardships? What a different course of experience this — and it was Cobbett's — from the flea-bites of so-called criticism, or the nightmare of au unsold edition ! Our strong, burly Serjeant carried his eye with him into the ranks, in all his travels — in the choice of a wife. Wherever he went, he "saw and conquered" — (what need, after all, of this last word? To see, in the true sense, is always, in the true sense, to conquer. The want of sight is the same thing with the want of success; and thus Caesar, in his celebrated bulletin, " Veni, vidi, vice," was, for the first and last time, a tautologist) — and home he came, a giant furnished and trained, by an irregular but gigantic education, for becoming a " fourth estate" in the politi- cal and literary world. One quality strikingly manifest in Cobbett, and which had been nurtured by his training, is health. He was essentially a healthy man. He did not, it is true, want his peevish and peculiar humours, but the general tone of his mind as well as body was sound and clear. He signally exemplified the words, " Sana mens in sane corpore." Morbidity was a word he did not recog- nise as English. Mawkish sentimentalism, in all its shapes, he abhorred ; and cant found in him an inexorable foe. Hence we ac- count for his celebrated criticisms on Shakspere and Milton. In his heart, perhaps, he appreciated both, but was indignant at the false and wholly conventional admiration paid them by the mul- titude. Or, even granting that liis taste was bad, and that, from native inaptitude, he could not feel the more delicate and spiritual beauties of either poet, was he not better to avow it openly than to wear a "foolish face of praise," and pretend to what he had not? In his nonsense of abuse there is something infinitely more racy and refreshing than in others' nonsense of commendation. We prefer him making a football of the " Paradise Lost," and kicking at it with all his might — impotently, indeed, and to the damage of nothing but liis own toes — than to see it shining in illustrated editions in the libraries of those whose simpering im- becilities of affected entliusiasm convince you that they have neither understood nor really read it. Much as we admire Shak- spere and Milton, we are not disposed to sacrifice Cobbett as a whole burnt-offering at tlicir shrine. In keeping with tliis (juality of iiealth was that of good-humour. He was the best-natured of political writers. Even when abus- ing his opponents, there was a kindly twinkle in his eye, and you never were sure that he heartily hated them. His high animal 208 WILLIAM COBBETT. spirits, his fine constitution, and his undisturbed self-complacency, all served to carry off and qualify his rage. He dealt with his foes as a kitten with a mouse. They furnished him with so much amuse- ment, and he made others so merry with them, that he began rather to like them than otherwise. The most of them, besides, were so far his inferiors in intellect, that they exerted no magnetism suffi- cient to draw forth the full riches of his wrath. If he felt deep and deadly animosity to any, it was to Peel, Burdett, and Brougham. How different from Junius ! Cobbett at most hates; Junius loathes. Cobbett splashes pails of dirty water over his enemies; Junius deals in drops, but they are drops of prussic acid. Cobbett knocks down his opponents; Junius steps up and softly whispers in their ear a sentence, an insinuation, a syllable, which withers the very heart within them. To express, by a change of figure, a change of mood and manner in both, Cobbett often covers his enemy with nicknames, which stick but do not scorch: such toys are beneath the deep long hate of Junius : he scatters firebrands, arrows, and death. From health and good-humour, blended with a keen sense of the ridiculous, sprung his faculty of humour, one of the most curious of all his gifts. It is in him at one time the power of singling out minute absurdities in the conduct, character, style of writing, appearance, or names of his opponents, and by endless repetitions enlarging their ridiculous aspect, till you, the reader, become a mere alias of laughter holding both his sides. It is at an- other time produced by culling the oddest and lowest figures and allusions from the barnyard or the dunghill, and hanging those mud-garlands about the necks of dignitaries, prelates, statesmen, of majesty itself, till they look supremely ridiculous. Sometimes he secures his ludicrous efiects by the mere daring effrontery of his onset, as in his celebrated chapter, " Errors and Nonsense in a King's Speech;" often by the unexpected introduction of poli- tical or personal allusions amid serious or indifferent subjects; sometimes, as we have seen, by the dexterous use of nicknames and slang, and often by the sheer power of exuberant and daunt- less egotism. He had very little of what is strictly called wit, or the po^Ver of perceiving unexpected resemblances and contrasts, and no dry severe irony. Coleridge defined Swift as the soul of Rabelais in a dry place. Cobbett may perhaps be defined the soul of Swift in a softer, &unmiiY, sappier place. Swift's humour was mechanical: he himself derived neither good nor pleasure from the lavish mirth he distributed to others. Cobbett, on the contrary, was compelled by his own tickling sensations to tickle the whole world besides ; his humour was not a voluntary exercise of power, but a vent for surcharged emotion. His gift, as Shakspere has it, of " iteration " he turned to account for more purposes than WILLIAM COBBETT. 209 those of humour. His argumeuts, his facts, as well as his fa- vourite nicknames, such as tlie " AVen," " Old Bloody," the " Press-gang," &c., he repeated again and again. He sat, like a " starling," opposite the treasury and the bank, and hallooed out uhat he deemed offensive truths, and recounted untoward events, tJie more pertinaciously that the truths were offensive, and that the events had been untoward. And then, worst of all, his croak- ing was so unlike that of all other croakers, it was so funny, so far from a dull monotony, founded so much on fact, and so widely listened to, that government, between amusement and provoca- tion, were "perplexed in the extreme." 'Ihey durst neither openly laugh nor cry. For here was no hunger-bitten scribbler, no lean Cassius, no wild-eyed emaciated fanatic, but a joyous jolly prophet, six feet high and proportionably broad, whom it was difficult either to bribe or to kill, pouring out his endless predictions and warnings under the sign of a gridiron, on which it was quite as likely that they as that he should be roasted alive. "Was it from this practice of incessant repetition that there sprang that egotism with which he has been so often charged ? "Was it that, as he could not help talking about other things over and over again, so he could not help, much more, talking about himself? Cobbett, in fact, was not more an egotist than the ma- jority of writers, only he spoke of himself directly and not by im- plication. Some speak of themselves while praising their idols, and others while indulging their hobbies. But William Cobbett, a plain blunt man, instead of veiling his egotism under the guise of sentimental sonnets, or working it up into imaginary conversa- tions, or throwing it out into imaginery heroes, writes it down as plain " as downright Shippen or as old Montaigne." We must say we like this trait in his character, believing that there is often more of the spirit of egotism discovered in avoiding than in using its language. Why, the editorial word "we" contains in it the douhle-disuUed essence of egotism, modest as it looks. And how much intolerable self-conceit is concealed under the phrases " we humbly think," "it appears to us," and "our feeble voice," &c. Cobbett was as great an enemy to shams as Carlyle. He had a vast notion of himself, and he took every opportunity, proper and improper, of declaring it. Unlike the boy Tell, " he was great, and knew how great he was." His opinion, at any rate, was per- fectly sincere, and as such required, nay, demanded, expression. He I'elt himself, and was, a genuine man, among mewing and moping, painted and gilded, starred, gartered, and crowned phantoms, and wlio shall quarrel with him because ever and anon he touched his strong sides and brow with his strong arm, and said, " Here I am, this is solid, were all else the shadow of a shade." Bulwer, our readers are aware, thought proper, many years ago, to quarrel with the use of the anonyjuous in periodical 210 WILLIAM COBBETT. literature. We think that Cobbet had been a worthier champion for supporting this quarrel than .Sir Edward. No mask or visor would ever have become or fitted him. His personality seen at every turning in the lane, every opening in the hedge of his ar- gument, his abuse, or his humour, was his power. He was not a knight of chivalry, bearing no device upon his shield, and covering his face in the hollow of his helm, but a Tom Cribb or Spring, open-faced, strong, stripped, and ready to do battle with all comers. The anonymous seemed to him anti-English, and he resigned it to the Italians, the " Press-gang," and the author of Junius. As Scott seemed to draw into his single self the last national spirit of his country, as Byron was our last purely English poet, so Cobbett was our all but last purely English prose writer. He seemed, even more than Churchill, the most striking personifica- tion of John Bull. There were the brawny form, the swagger, the blustering temper, the broad humour, the pertinacity, the variability, the dogmatic prejudice, the rudeness, the common sense, the sagacity, the turbulence, the gulosity, and the pugna- city of a genuine Englishman as ever draidv beer, bolted bacon, or flourished singlestaff. How he could upon occasion flatter na- tional prejudices and prepossessions ! How he could stir up into absolute springtide the English blood ! How he used to pelt, when he pleased, the French and the Scotch ! What a chosen champion to the chaw-bacons ! It is not too much to say that he understood his countrymen as well as Napoleon did the French, and, had he possessed the fighting talent, could, in the event of a revolution, have led it and risen upon its wave. As it was, for a season he was the real king of the masses, and even after, through want of discretion, he lost his sovereignty, his rebel subjects, as often has happened in the history of rebellions, frequently felt their hearts palpitating, their eai's tingling, and their knees instinctively bend- ing to the voice of their ancient leader. A pleasing feature in Cobbett's character was his love for the country. We remember him, in one of his " Registers," express- ing his wonder that one like himself, who relished intensely all rural sights and sounds, should have passed so large a portion of his life amid the smoke, and din, and strife of cities. It was not, indeed, the great features of nature that he admired ; its more ethereal aspects, and that mysterious symbolic relation which it bears to the nature and history of man, he did not comprehend, and would have laughed at any one who pretended to do. We can fancy him thus criticising Emerson — " Wonders will never cease. Here comes a Yankee prophet — yes, a Yankee prophet — talking transcendental (query, transcendent?) nonsense by the yard, and trying to get that gullible goose John Bull to listen to him, at the rate of seven guineas for each hour's lecture He'd WILLIAM COBBF.TT. 211 better — for us, at any rate — have stopped at home, and fed his pigs, or prophesied to his henroost. jNIay 1 be roasted on a grid- iron, if there's not more sense in- this one number of the ' Two- penny Trash' than in all that this man Emerson ever wrote, or ever will write till his last breath. And yet who'll pay me seven guineas for each of my lectures? This half-crazy quack, I am told, pulls down the old prophets, Jeremy, Daniel, and the rest, and sets himself up in their stead as prophet Ralph Waldo. I venture to predict to prophet Ralph, that he wont see Boston Bay again ere his gulls would rather by twenty times have their guineas in their pockets than his lectures in their memories. But I beg Ralph's pardon, for it's not in the power of any mortal man, I'm told, to mind one word that Ralph says to them, or to come ofi" with anything but a general notion that they have been quacked out of their sixpences. They say that the fellow is rather sood-lookingr, a glib talker, and has a smattering of the German, but never gives his hearers one good round y(«e< in all his lectures; has no statistics or arguments either; and you would never guess, while hearing him, whether you were in America or England, the earth or the moon. But enough of prophet Raff. I hope I have settled his hash as effectually as I did lliat of a much cleverer fellow, squinting prophet Ned, of Hatton Garden." Thus Colibett would have thought and said. And yet, while utterly incapable of feeling, and of affecting to feel, a high ideal view of nature, he loved sincerely and passionately this green earth, its fresh breezes, its soft waters, and its spring sky, the blue bridal-curtain of the youthful season. He cared nothing for the stars; these, which are rather like paintings than works of nature, he disregarded nearly as much as he did the pictures of man's pencil; he loved the moon only as it lighted up the har- vest-held; but the hedgerows, the trees, and the corn-fields of merry England grew in his heart, and waved over, and cooled the stream of his life's blood. It is pleasant to come upon such passages in his pages. We linger and coo over them, like a breeze caught amid the woods which surround some spot of in- sulated loveliness. They raise and soften our opinion of the man ; and, whenever we are disposed to think or speak harshly of William Cobbett, we are calmed by remembering his dying moments, when he requested to be carried round his farm, that he might see for the last time the fields which he loved so dearly. The fact that this desire was so strong at death itself, proved that it, and no lower or fiercer feeling, was his ruling passion. From this love of homely, English nature, and from his minute habits of observation, sprang that abundant and picturesque ima- gery with which his writings abound. A I'resh breeze from the " farm" is always felt passing over his driest discussions, and mingling with his bitterest personalities. It is this which pre- 212 WILLIAM COBBETT. vents him from being ever vulgar; for, as Hazlitt has remarked, Cobbett is never vulgar, though often coarse. And why? Be- cause nature, though often coarse, is never vulgar — though often common, is never mean; and because Cobbett is never himself, and will never permit his reader to be, long or far away from the sweet, balmy breath of nature. Coleridge, in one of his little poems, speaks of trying, by abstruse research, to steal from him- self " all the natural man" — a process difficult, we suspect, in any case, but in Cobbett's, even had he made the attempt, im- possible; for he was nothing, if not natural. Like a still coarser subject, Caliban, he seems newly dug out, and smelling strongly of the virgin earth. Whall shall we say of his style ? That it was a forcible and lit expression to his thought — little more. It did not pretend to be elegant; it was not so accurate as it pretended to be. It were not ditficult retorting upon many passages of his own writing the lynx-eyed system of criticism which he directed against the slovenly compositions of Sidmouth and Wellington. In fact, no style can stand such criticism, just as the most beautiful coun- tenance shrinks before the eye of the juicroscope. And let Blair's contemptible cavillings at the style of Addison — whose very errors, like the blunders of a beautiful child, are graceful and interesting — stand a perpetual monument of the folly of going too near to the masterpieces of literature. Cobbett's style is composed of the purest Saxon, and proves, as well as Bunyan's (as Macaulay has remarked), what purposes that simple speech can serve. Subtle distinctions it could not have conveyed; but Cobbett had none such to convey. Under certain grandeurs of thought, it might, like Cliaron's boat, have creaked and trembled ; but Cobbett required it only to express clear, common-sense logic, strong facts, and strong passions; to beat down his foes, and to cut his own way — and for such work it never failed him. Its general tone was that of a long rambling conversation; its principal design seemed to be, to make every smallest shade of his meaning perfectly clear; its windings and turnings, so distinct and vivid in their variety, reminded you of the branching veins — with all the repetitions of a law-paper, it was as lively and inte- resting as a novel. You might grin over it, or frown at it, or fling it from you in a fit of fury; but it was impossible to sleep over it, or to yawn over it, or to refrain from thinking as you read it. While statesmen amused themselves with the " Kegister" (amusement reminding you of the games in Pandemonium!) at their breakfast-tables; while the "Press-gang," their lips the while smacking, and their eyes glistening with delight, proceeded to answer and abuse it, the country parson was reading it in his after dinner easy-chair, the Paisley weaver had it lying on his loom, and the weary ploughman in his cottage kept himself awake WILLIAM COBUETT. 213 with its quaint aiul rich humours. Since the. works of P)nrns, no writings were so much appreciated by all ranks and conditions of men. And the reason of this was to be found in their corre- sponding qualities. Clearness; simplicity; picturesque descri])- tion; racy, reckless humour; big-boned, brawny strength; con- tempt of conventionalisms; rugged, self-trained reason — in one word, nature — were common to both. The " hairbrained senti- mental trace," which was the peculiar poetic differentia of Burns, of course was wanting in Cobb*"tt. One curious but unquestionable cause of Cobbett's popularit}' we must also mention. It was his intense sympathy with that organ which those " masters of the mint," phrenologists, have, with their usual felicity of coinage, called " gustativeness." How he expands and rejoices in describing all sorts of savoury food ! The droppings of Hermon's dew or of Hybla's honey, are to him nothing compared to the droppings from the sausage-pan, or the roasting-jack of an English fireside ! With what lively logic he undertakes the quarrel of "beer versus tea!" with what a deep bass he trolls out the old stave — " Oh, the roast-beef of old Eng- land!" how profound and edifying his contempt for swipes and potatoes I how sublime he waxes over a sirloin! how pathetic his reminiscences of the good old days, when " mutton, veal, and lamb were the food of the commoner sort of people !" what a whet his " Register" made before dinner! and what a digestive after it ! Here, again, he resembles Burns — who describes the homely food of Caledonia — her " souple scones" — her " curny ingans, mixed wi' spice," and the other ingredients of the haggis, " great chieftain o' the puddin' race" — with such infinite gusto; and Scott, whose books are the best appetisers in the world, and whose good digestion constituted, we venture to say, one-half of his physical, and one-fourth of his mental powei*. In connection with this, we notice a vital defect in Cobbett's theory of man. He scarcely seems to have risen higher than thr> conception of him as an animal — a beef-bolting and beer-bibbing animal. If government, and his own strong hand, found him in those articles; and if William Cobbett were permitted to supply him with amusement, besides a little instruction in grammar, in arithmetic, and in the evil effects of priestcraft and potatoes, of gin and tea, he might consider himself satisfied. And this was his theory of human life! this his recipe for human woes! this his mode of filling the infinite cravings of the human heart ! And yet, ere laughing at this " Gospel, according to St Cobbett," and calling it a piggish panacea for a race of erect pigs, let us re- member that the fashionable utilitarians of onr own day, such as Combe and Chambers, do not rise niucli higher. They trace man's origin from the brutes; they, by implication, deny his natural superiority to the brutes; and, consecjuently, his natural T 214 WILLIAM COBBETT. immortality. Denying he was made in God's image, how can they conceive he is ever to reach it ? They systematically over- look his relation to his Maker. They would cut — the puny in- sects! — that awful tie which from the beginning has bound our race to the throne of the Eternal ! They would, with frantic but feeble hands, quench the only authentic fire of revelation which ever shone from heaven ! They would arrest, if they could, the wheels of that coming Jesus, before whose throne every knee shall bow, and whose authority every tongue shall confess! They would indeed clothe man with more accomplishments than Cob- bett's rude nature recognised; they would teach man (on the brink of anniliilation) to dance, and sing, and play, and recite verses, and babble of green fields, and chatter science, as well as to eat and to drink ; but no more than he would they have him to expand in the prospect, and to shine in the radiance, of the future destinies of his immortal being ! In fact, we value Cob- bett's theory as the reductio ad absurdum of the utilitarian view; and we fancy we hear the old Serjeant growling out to those bas- tards of Bentham — " If you believe that man is to perish at death, like a pig, why bother yourselves with teaching him lan- guages, music, and science ? Fill h's belli/, you fools, and send him to sleep." But we must not part in bad humour with Cobbett, nor with anybody else. Pity, after all, is the most appropriate feeling to entertain towards those who judge so meanly of man. And for Cobbett, especially, there are many grounds of excuse — from his early circumstances — from his want of a spiritual education — — from the sight of human nature, in its worst forms, which he had in the army — and from the scrambling and precarious life he was compelled to lead afterwards. Besides those separate works of his which are so well known, such as his " Cottage Economy," " Legacy to Parsons," his *' Life" of himself, and his " English and Erench Grammars," &c., we should like to see some judicious hand employed in mak- ing selections from the " Eegister." We despair, indeed, of ever finding the " Beauties of Cobbett" collected into such a nosegay as ladies would like to handle and to smell. Indeed, the term " Beauties of Cobbett" would seem sufiiciently affected and in- appropriate. But sonie one, surely, might give us a collection of Cobbett's ''good, strong, and tme tilings." Nay, let us have some of his shadows, as well as his lights ; some of his racier and more characteristic faults, a prudent selection from his vocabulary of slang, some of his richer passages of egotism, a few of his pre- dictions that have not, and others that have been fulfilled — such a book, in short, as he himself would liave acknowledged as a faith- ful likeness, and as should convey to posterity a just imiDression of a great English author. 215 JAMES MONTGOMERY. Some ten years ago, the inhabitants of a h^rge city in tlie north of Scotland were apprised, by handbills, that James Mont- gomery, Esq., of Sheffield, the poet, was to address a meet- ing on the subject of Moravian missions. This announcement, in the language of Dr Caius, '• did bring de water into our mouth." The thought of seeing a live poet, of European repu- tation, arriving at our very door, in a remote corner, was ab- solutely electrifying. "We went early to the chapel where he was announced to speak, and, ere the lion of the evening appeared, amused ourselves with watching and analysing the audience which his celebrity had collected. It was not very numerous, nor very select. Few of the grandees of the city had conde- scended to honour him by their presence. Stranger still, there was but a sparse supply of clergy, or of the prominent religionists of the town. The church was chiefly filled with females of a certain age, one or two stray " hero worshippers" like ourselves, a few young ladies who had read some of his minor poems, and whose eyes seemed lighted up with a gentle fire of pleasure in the prospect of seeing the author of those " beautiful verses on the Grave, and Prayei-," and two or three who had come from ten miles off to see and hear the celebrated poet. When he at length appeared, Ave continued to marvel at the aspect of the platform. Instead of being supported by the elite of the city, in- stead of forming a rallying centre of attraction and unity to all who had a sympathy with piety or with genius for leagues round it, a few obscure individuals presented themselves, who seemed rather anxious to catch a little eclat from him, than to delight to do him honour. The evening was rather advanced ere he rose to speak. His appearance, so far as we could catch it, was quite in keeping with the spiritual cast of his poetry. He was tall, thin, bald, with face of sharp outline, but mild expression; and we looked with no little reverence on the eye which had shot fire into the Pelican Island, and on the hand Cskinny enough, we ween) which had written " The Grave." He spoke in a low voice, sinking occasionally into an inaudible whisper; but his action was energetic, and his pantomime striking. In the course of his speech, he alluded, with considerable eflect, to the early heroic struggles of Moravianism, when she was yet alone in the death-grapple with the powers of heathen daikness, and closed (when did lie ever close a speech otherwise?) by quoting a few vigorous verses from himself. We left the meeting, we remember, with two wondering ques- tions in our ears: first, Is this fame? of Avhat value reputation, which, in a city of seventy thousand inhabitants, is so freezingly 216 JAMES MOSTGOMEKY. acknowledged ? "Would not any empty, mouthing charlatan, any " twopenny tear-mouth," any painted, stupid savage, any clever juggler, any dexterous player upon the fiery harp-strings of the popular passions, have enjoyed a better reception than this true, tender, and holy poet? But, secondly. Is not this true, tender, and holy poet partly himself to blame ? Has he not put him- self in a false position? Has he not too readily lent himself as an instrument of popular excitement ? Is this progress of his altogether a proper, a poet's progress ? Would Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth have submitted to it? And is it in good taste for him to eke out his orations by long extracts from his own poems? Homer, it is true, sang his own verses; but he did it lor food. Montgomery recites them, but it is for fame. We pass now gladly — as we did in thought then — from the progress to the poet-pilgrim himself. We have long admired and loved James Montgomery, and we wept under his spell ere we did either the one or the other. We will not soon forget the Sabbath evening — it was in golden summer tide — when we first heard his " Grave " repeated, and wept as we heard it. It seemed to come, as it professed to come, from the grave itself — a still small voice of comfort and of hope, even from that stern abyss. It was a fine and bold idea to turn the great enemy into a com- forter, and elicit such a reply, so tender and submissive, to the challenge, " O Grave, where is thy victory ? " Triumphing in prospect over the Sun himself, the grave proclaims the superiority and immunity of the soul — " The Sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky; But thou ! immortal as his SirC; Shalt never die." Surely no well in the wilderness ever sparkled out to the thirsty traveller a voice more musical, more tender, and more cheering, than this Avhich Montgomery educes from the jaws of the narrow house. Soon afterwards, we became acquainted with some of his other small pieces, which then seized, and which still occupy, the principal place in our regards. Indeed, it is on his little poems that the permanency of his fame is likely to rest, as it is into them that he has chiefly shed the peculiarity and the beauty of his genius. James Montgomery has little inventive or dramatic power; he cannot write an epic; none of his larger poems, while some are bulky, can be called great; but he is the best writer of hymns (understanding a hymn simply to mean a short religious etfusion) in the language. He catches the tran- sient emotions of the pious heart, which arise in the calm even- ing walk, where the saint, like Isaac, goes out into the fields to meditate; or under the still and star-fretted midnight; or on his JAMES MONTGOMERY. 217 "own delightful bed;" or in pensive contemplations of the "Common Lot;" or under the Swiss heaven, where evening hardly closes the eye of" Mont Blanc, and stirs Lake Leman's waters with a murmur like a sleeper's prayer: wherever, in short, piety kindles into the poetic feeling, such emotions he catches, refines, and embalms in his snatches of lyric song. As "Words- worth has expressed sentiments which the "solitary lover of nature was unable to utter, save with glistening eye and faltering tongue," so Montgomery has given poetic form and words to breathings and pantings of the Christian's spirit, whicli himself never suspected to be i)oetical at all, till he saw them reflected in verse. He has caught and crystallised the tear dro{)ping from the penitent's eye; he lias echoed the burden of the heart, sigh- ins with gratitude to Heaven; he has arrested and fixed in melody the " upward glancing of an eye, when none but God is near." In his verse, and in Cowner's, the poetry of ages of de- votion has broken silence, and spoken out. Religion, the most poetical of all things, had, for a long season, been divorced from song, or had mistaken pert jingle, impudent familiarity, and do^srerel, for its genuine voice. It was reserved for the bards of Olney and Sheffield to renew and to strengthen the lawful and holy wedlock. jNIontgomery, then, is a religious lyrist, and, as such, is distin- guished by many peculiar merits. His first quality is a certain quiet simplicity of language and of purpose. His is not the ela- borate and systematic simplicity of Wordsworth: it is unobtru- sive, and essential to the action of his mind. It is a simplicity which the diligent student of Scripture seldom fails to derive from its pages, particularly from its histories and its psalms. It is the simplicity of a spirit which religion has subdued as well as elevated, and wliich consciously spreads abroad the wings of its imagination, under the eye of God. As if each poem were a prayer, so is he sedulous that its words be few and well ordered. In short, his is not so much the simplicity of art, nor tlie simpli- city of nature, as it is the simplicity of faith. It is the virgin dress of one of the white-robed priests in tiie ancient temple. It is a sim[)licity wliich, by easy and rapid transition, mounts into bold and manly enthusiasm. One is reminded of the artless sinkings and soarings, lingerings and hurryings, of David's matchless minstrelsies. Profound insight is not peculiarly Mont- gomery's forte. He is rather a seraph than a cherub; rather a burning tiian a knowing one. He kneels; he looks u[)ward with rapt eye; he covers at times his face with his wing; but he does not ask solemn fjuestions, or cast strong though bafUcd ghinces into the soliil and intolerable glory. You can never apply to him the words of Gray. He never has " passed the bounds of flam- ing space, where angels tremble as they gaze." He has never 218 JAMES MONTGOMERY. invaded those lofty but dangerous regions of speculative thought, where some have dwelt till they have lost all of piety, save its grandeur and gloom. He does not reason, far less doubt, on the subject of religion at all; it is his only to wonder, to love, to weep, and to adore. Sometimes, but seldom, can he be called a sublime writer. In his " Wanderer of Switzerland," he blows a bold horn, but the echoes and the avalanches of the highest Alps will not answer or fall to his reveille. In his " Greenland," he expresses but faintly the poetry of Frost; and his line is often cold as a glacier. His " World before the Flood" is a misnomer. It is not the young virgin undrowned world it professes to be. In his " West Indies," there is more of the ardent emancipator than of the poet; you catch but dimly, through its correct and mea- sured verse, a glimpse of Ethiopia — the suppliant standing with one shackled foot on the rock of Gibraltar, and the other on the Cape of Good Hope, and " stretching forth her hands" to an avenging God. And although, in the horrors of the middle pas- sage, there were elements of poetry, yet it was a poetry which our author's geniu? is too gentle and timid fully to extract. As soon could he have added a storey to Ugolino's tower, or another circle to the Inferno, as have painted that pit of heat, hunger, and howling despair, the hold of a slave vessel. Let him have his praise, however, as the constant and eloquent friend of the negro, and as the laureate of his freedom. The high note struck at first by Cowper in his lines, " I would not have a slave," &c., it was reserved for Montgomery to echo and swell up, in reply to the full diapason of the liberty of Ham's children, proclaimed in all the isles which Britain claims as hers. And let us hope that he will be rewarded, before the close of his existence, by hear- ing, though it were in an ear half-shut in death, a louder, deeper, more victorious shout arising from emancipated America, and of saying, like Simeon of old, " Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The plan of " The Pelican Island" was an unfortunate one, precluding as it did almost entirely human interest, and rapid vicissitude of events; and resting its power principally upon the description of foreign objects, and of slow though majestic pro- cesses of nature. Once, and once only, in this and perhaps ifi any of his poems, does he rise into the rare region of the sublime. It is in the description of the sky of the south — a subject which, indeed, is itself inspiration. And yet, in that sky, the great con- stellations, hung up in the wondering evening air, the Dove, the Raven, the Ship of Heaven, "sailing from Eternity;" tlie Wolf, " with eyes of lightning watching the Centaur's spear;" the Altar blazing, "even at the footsteps of Jehovah's throne;" the Cross, " meek emblem of Redeeming love," which (bending at midnight as when they were taking down the Saviour of the world) greeted JAMES MONTGOMERY. 219 the eye of Humboldt as he sailed over the still Pacific, had so hung and so burned for ages, and no poet had sung their praises. Patience, ye glorious tremblers ! In a page of this " Pelican Island," a page bright as your own beams, and like them im- mortal, shall your splendours be yet inscribed. This passage, wliich floats the poem, and will long memorise JNIontgomery's name, is the more remarkable, as the poet never saw but in ima- gination that unspeakable southern midnight. And yet we are not sure but, of objects so transcendent, the " vision of our own" is the true vision, and the vision that ought to be perpetuated in song. For our parts, we, longing as we have ever done to see the Cross of the Soutli, would almost fear to have our longings gratified, and to find the reality, splendid as it must be, substi- tuted for that vast image of bright, quivering stars, which has so long loomed before our imagination, and so often visited our dreams. Indeed, it is a question, in reference to objects which must, even when seen, derive their interest from imagination, whether they be not best seen by its eye alone. Among Montgomery's smaller poems, the finest is the " Stanzas at Midnight," composed in Switzerland, and which we see in- serted in Longfellow's romance of " Hyperion," with no notice or apparent knowledge of their authorship. They describe a mood of his own mind while passing a night among the Alps, and con- tain a faithful transcript of the emotions which, thick and sombre as the shadows of the mountains, crossed his soul in its solitude. There are no words of Foster's which to us possess more meaning than that simple expression in his first essay, " solemn medita- tions of the night." Nothing in spiritual history is more inte- resting. What vast tracts of thought does the mind sometimes traverse when it cannot sleep ! What ideas, that had bashfully presented themselves in the light of day, now stand out in bold relief and authoritative dignity ! How vividly appear before us the memories of the past! How do past struggles and sins re- turn to recollection, rekindling on our cheeks their first fierce blushes unseen in the darkness! How new a liglit is cast upon the great subjects of spiritual contemplation ! What a " browner horror" falls upon the throne of death, and the pale kingdoms of the grave! What projects are then formed, what darings of purpose conceived, and how fully can we then understand the meaning of the poet — " In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, When the still nights were moonless, have I hwwn Joys that no tonrjue can tell ; my pale lip quivers When thought revisits them ! " And when, through the window, looks in on us one full glance of a clear large star, how startling it seems, like a conscious, 220 JAMES MONTGOMERY. mild, yet piercing eye; how soothingly it mingles with our raedi- tations, and, as with a pencil of fire, points them away into still remoter and more mysterious regions of thought ! Such a medi- tation Montgomery has embodied in these beautiful verses; but then HE is up amid the midnight and all its stars; he is out amid the Alps, and is catching on his brow the living breath of that rarest inspiration which moves amid them, then, and then alone. We mentioned Cowper in conjunction with Montgomery in a former sentence. They resemble each other in the pious purpose and general simplicity of their writings, but otherwise are en- tirely distinct. Cowpei-'s is a didactic, Montgomery's a romantic piety. Cowper's is a gloomy, Montgomery's a cheerful religion. Cowper has in him a fierce and bitter vein of satire, often irri- tating into invective; we find no traces of any such thing in all Montgomery's writings. Cowper's withering denunciations seem shreds of Elijah's mantle, torn off and set on fire in the whirl- wind; Montgomery is clothed in the softer garments, and breatlies the gentler genius, of the new economy. And as poets, Montgomery, with more imagination and elegance, is entirely destitute of the rugged strength of sentiment, the exquisite keen- ness of observation, the rich humour and the awful personal pathos of Cowper. Montgomery's hymns (properly so called) we do not much ad- mire. They are adapted, and seem written, for such an assem- blage of greasy worshippers, such lank- haired young men, such virgins wise and fooli!^h, such children small and great, as meet to lift up their " most sweet voices" within certain well-known sanctuaries. They have in them often a fals^e gallop of religious sentimentalism. Their unction has been kept too long, and has a savour not of the sweetest: they abound less, indeed, than many of their class, in such endearing epithets as " dear Lord," "dear Christ," "sweet Jesus," &c.; but are not entirely tree from these childish decorations. That one song, sung by the solitary Jewish maiden in " Ivanhoe" (surely the sweetest strain ever uttered since the spoilers of Judah did by Babel's streams require of its captives a song, and were answered in that melting melody which has drawn the tears and praises of all time), is worth all the hymn-books that were ever composed. Mont- gomery's true hymns are those which bear not the name, but which sing, and for ever will sing, their own quiet tune to simple and pious spirits. Of Montgomery's prose, we might say much that was favour- able. It is truly "Prose by a Poet," to borrow the title of one of his works. You see the poet every now and then dropping his mask, and showing himself in his true character. It is enough of itself to confute the vulgar prejudice against the prose of poets. "Who, indeed, but a poet has ever written, or can ever write, good JAMES MONTGOMERY. 221 pi-o?e — prose that will live ? AYhat prose, to take but one ex- ample, is comparable to the prose of Shakspere, many of whose very best passages — as Hamlet's description of man, FalstafTs death, the speech of Brutus, or that dreadful grace before meat of Tiraon, which is of misanthropy the quaintest and most appall- ing quintessence, and seems fit to have preceded a supper in Eblis — are not in verse ? Montgomery's prose criticism we value less for its exposition of principles, or for its originality, in which respects it is deficient, than for its generous and eloquent enthu- siasm. It is delightful to find in an author, who had so to struggle up his way to distinction, such a fresh and constant sympathy with the success and the merits of otliers. In this he does not remind us of the Lakers, whose tarn-like narrowness of critical spirit is the worst and weakest feature in their characters. Truly, a great mind never looks so contennptible as when, stooping from its pride of place, it exchanges its own higli aspirations after fame for poor mouse-like nibblings at the reputation of others. Many tributes have been paid of late years to the "Pilgrim's Progress." The lips of Coleridge have waxed eloquent in its praise ; Southey and INIacaulay have here embraced each other ; Cheever, from America, has uttered a powerful sound in procla- mation of its unmatched merits ; but we are mistaken if its finest panegyric be not that contained in Montgomery's preface, prefixed to the Glasgow edition.* In it all the thankfulness cherished from childhood, in a poet's and a Christian's heart, to- ward this benign and beautiful book, comes gushing forth; and he closes the tribute with the air of one who has relieved himself from a deep burden of gratitude. Indeed, this is the proper feel- ing to be entertained toward all works of genius; and an envious or malign criticism upon such is not so much a defect in the in- tellect as it is a sin of the heart. It is a blow struck in the face of a benefactor. A great author is one who presents us with a priceless treasure; and. if we at once reject the boon and spurn the giver, ours is not an error simply, it is a deadly crime. The mention of Bunyan and Montgomery in conjunction, irre- sistibly reminds us of a writer who much resembles the one, and into whom the spirit of the other seems absolutely to have trans- migrated—we mean, IMary Ilowitt. She resembles Montgomery princifially in the amiable light in which she presents the spirit of Christianity. Here the Moravian and the Friend are finely • We must not omit David Scott's illustrations — quite wortlij' of himselfj although connected with an edition which, while calling itself the " Pilgrim's Progress," contains only the first half of it, and tlie letterpress of which is KUpplied by a gontleinan who, ten years ago, discovered and proclaimed to the world, in the "United Secession Magazine," that Robert burns was no poet — proving this, we think, by quoting " Highland Mary." U 222 James Montgomery. at one. Their religion is no dire fatalism ; it is no gloomy reser- voir of all morbid and unhappy feelings, disappointed hopes, baffled purposes, despairing prospects, turning toward heaven, in their extremity, for comfort, as it is with a very numerous class of authors. It is a glad sunbeam from the womb of the morning, kindling all nature and life into smiles. It is a meek, woman-like presence in the chamber of earth, Avhich meanwhile beautifies, and shall yet redeem and restore it — by its very gentleness right- ing all its wrongs, curing all its evils, and wiping away all its tears. Had but this faith been shown more fully to the sick soul of Cowper ! Avere it but shown more widely to the sick soul of earth, " Soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again." And how like is Mary Howitt to Bunyan! Like him, she is the most sublime of the simple, and the most simple of the sublime ; the most literal and the most imaginative of writers. Hers and his are but a few quiet words : but they have the effect of " Open Sesame;" they conduct into deep caverns of feeling and of thought, to open which ten thousand mediocrists behind are bawling in vain. In " Marien's Pilgrimage" (thanks to the kind and gifted young friend who lately introduced us to this beauti- ful poem), we have a minor " Pilgrim's Progress," where Chris- tianity is represented as a child going forth on a mission to earth, mingling with and mitigating all its evils; and is left, at the close, still wandering on in this her high calling. The allegory is not, any more than in Bunyan, strictly preserved ; for Marien is at once Christianity personified and a Christian person, who alludes to Scripture events, and talks in Sci'ipture language; but the simplicity, the childlikeness, and the sweetness, are those of the gentle dreamer of Elstowe. We return to James Montgomery only to bid him farewell. He is one of the few lingering stars in a very rich constellation of poets. Byron, Coleridge, Southey, Crabbe, Campbell, Shel- ley, Keats, are gone ; some burst to shivers by their own impe- tuous motion; others, in the course of nature, have simply ceased to shine. Some of that cluster, including Montgomery, yet re- main. Let us, without absurdly and malignantly denying merit to our rising luminaries, with peculiar tenderness cherish these, both for their own sakes, and as still linking us to a period in our literary history so splendid. 223 SIDNEY SMITH. It is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, ' nay, almost simultaneously, our literai-y luminaries are disappearing from the sky. Every year another and another member of the bright clusters which arose about the close of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is fading from our view. Within a few years, what havoc, by the " insatiate archer," among tlie ruling spirits of the time ! Since 1831, Kobert Hall, Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier, Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge, Edward Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell, &c., have entered on the "silent land;" and more lately has dropped down one of the wittiest and shrewdest of them all — the pi-ojector of the " Edinburgh Review " — the author of " Peter Plymley's Letters " — the preacher, the politician, the brilliant conversei', the " mad wag" — Sidney Smith. It was the praise of Dryden, that he was the best reasoner in verse who ever wx-ote; let it be the encomium of Sidney Smith, that he was one of the best reasoners in wit of whom our country can boast. His intellect — strong, sharp, clear, and decided — wrought and moved in a rich medium of humour. Each thought, as it came forth from his brain, issued as " in dance," and amid a flood of inextinguishable laughter. The march of his mind through his subject resembled the procession of Bacchus from the conquest of India — joyous, splendid, straggling — to the sound of flutes and hautboys — rather a victory than a march — rather a revel than a contest. His logic seemed always hurrying into the arms of his wit. Some men argue in mathematical formula? ; others, like Burke, in the figures and flights of poetry ; others in the fire and fury of passion ; Sidney Smith in exuberant and riotous fun. And yet the matter of his reasoning was solid, and its inner spirit earnest and true. But, though his steel was strong and sharp, his hand steady, and his aim clear, the management of the motions of his weapon was always fantastic. He piled, in- deed, like a Titan, his Pelion on Ossa, but at the oddest of angles; he lifted and carried his load bravely, and like a man, but laughed as he did so ; and so carried it, that beholders forgot the strength of the arm in the strangeness of the attitude. He thus sometimes disarmed anger ; for his adversaries could scarcely believe that they had received a deadly wound while their foeman was roar- ing in their face. He thus did far greater execution ; for the flourishes of his weapon might distract his opponents, but never himself, from the direct and terrible line of the blow. His laughter sometimes stunned, like the cachinnation of the Cyclops, shaking the sides of his cave. In this mood — and it was liis common one — what scorn was he wont to pour upon the opponents of Catholic 224 SIDNEY SMITH. emancipation— upon the enemies of all change in legislation — upon any individual or party who sought to obstruct measures -which, in his judgment, were likely to beneiit the country! Under such, he could at any moment spring a mine of laughter; and what neither the fierce invective of Brougham nor the light and subtle raillery of Jelfrey could do, his contemptuous explosion effected, and, himself crying with mirth, saw them hoisted toward heaven in ten thousand comical splinters. Comparing him with other humorists of a similar class, we miglit say, that, while Swift's ridicule resembles something between a sneer and a s]>asm (half a sneer of mirth, half a spasm of misery)— while Cobbett's is a grin — Fonblanque's a light, but deep and most sig- nificant smile — JefYrey's a sneer, just perceptible on his fastidious lip Wilson's a strong, healthy, hearty laugh— Carlyle's a wild unearthly sound, like the neighing of a homeless steed — Sidney Smith's is a genuine guffaw, given forth with his whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Apart from his matchless humour, strong, rougli, instinctive, and knotty sense was the leading feature of his mind. Everything like mystification, sophistry, and humbug, fled before the first glance of his piercing eye ; everything in the shape of affectation excited in him a dis- gust " as implacable " as even a Cowper could feel. If possible, with still deeper aversion did his manly nature regard cant in its various forms and disguises ; and his motto in reference to it was, "spare no arrows." "But the mean, the low, the paltry, the dis- honourable, in nations or in individuals, moved all the fountains of his bile, and awakened all the energy of his invective. Always lively, generally witty, he is never eloquent, except when empty- in"- out\is vials of indignation upon baseness in all its shapes. His is the ire of a genuine " English gentleman, all of the olden time." It was in this spirit that he recently explained, in his own way, the old distinctions of Meura and Tuum to Brother Jonathan, when the latter was lamentably inclined to forget them. It was the same sting of generous indignation which, in the midst of his character of Mackintosh, prompted the memorable picture of that extraordinary being who, by his transcendent talents and his tortuous movements — his head of gold, and his feet of miry clay — has become the glory, the riddle, and the regret of his country, his age, and his species. As a writer. Smith is Httle more than a very clever, witty, and ingenious pamphleteer. He has elfected no ^cvmawQwi chef dmivre; he^has founded no school ; he has left little behind him that the "world will not willingly let die;" he has never drawn a tear from a human eye, nor excited a thrill of grandeur in a human bosom. His reviews are not preserved by the salt of original genius, nor are they pregnant with profound and comprehensive principle ; they have no resemblance to the sibylline leaves which SIDNEY SMITH. 225 Buike tore out from the vast volume of his mind, and scat- tered with imperial inditference among the nations ; they are not the illuminated indices of modern history, like the papers of Macaulay ; they are not specimens of pure and perfect English, set with modest but magnitlcent ornaments, like tiie criticisms of Jetfrey or of Hall ; nor are they the excerpts, rugged and rent away by violence, from the dark and iron tablet of au obscure and original mind, like the reviews of Foster ; but they are exquisite jeiJLx (Tesprit, admirable occasional pamphlets, which, though now they look to us like spent arrows, yet assuredly have done exe- cution, and have not been spent in vain. And as, after the lapse of a century and more, we can still read w^th pleasure Addison's " Old Whig" and " Freeholder," for the sake of the exquisite humour and inimitable style in which forgotten feuds and dead logomachies are embalmed, so may it be, a century still, with the articles on " Bentham's Fallacies," and on the " Game Laws," and with the letters of the witty and ingenious Peter Plymley. There is much, at least, in those singular productions— in their clear and manly sense — in their broad native fun — in their rapid, careless, and energetic style — and in their bold, honest, liberal, and thoroughly English spirit— to interest several succeeding generations, if not to secure the "rare and regal" palm of im- mortality. Sidney Smith was a writer of sermons, as well as of political squibs. Is not their memory eternised in one of John Foster's most ponderous pieces of sarcasm ? In an evil hour, the dexterous and witty critic came forth from behind the fastnesses of the "Edinburgh Review," whence, in perfect security, he had shot his quick glancing shafts at Methodists and Missions, at Chris- tian Observers and Eclectic Reviews, at Owens and Styles, and (what the more wary Jetfrey, in the day of his power, always avoided) became himself an author, and, mirahile dictu, an author of sermons. It was as if he wished to give his opponents their revenge ; and no sooner did his head peep forth from beneath the protection of its shell, than the elephantine foot of Foster was pre- pared to crush it in the dust. It was the precise position of Saladin with the Knight of the Leopard, in their memorable contest near the Diamond of the Desert. In the skirmish. Smith had it all his own way ; but when it came to close quarters, and when the heavy and mailed hand of the sturdy Baptist had con- firmed its grasp on his opponent, the disparity was prodigious, and the discomfiture of the light horseman complete. But why recall the memory of an obsolete quarrel and a forgotten field? The sermons — the causa belli — clever but dry, destitute of earnest- ness and unction — are long since dead and buried; and their re- view remains their only monument. Even when, within his own stronghold, our author intermeddled 226 SIDNEY SMITH. with theological topics, it was seldom with felicity or credit to himself. His onset on missions was a sad mistake ; and, in at- tacking the Methodists, and poor, pompous John Styles, he be- comes as filthy and foul-mouthed as Swift himself. His wit for- sakes him, and a rabid invective ill supplies its place ; instead of laughing, he raves and foams at the mouth. Indeed, although an eloquent and popular preacher, and in many respects an orna- ment to his cloth, there was one radical evil about Smith : he had mistaken his profession. He was intended for a barrister, or a lite- rary man, or a member of parliament, or some occupation into which he could have flung his whole soul and strength. As it was, but half his heart was in a profession which, of all others, would require the whole. He became, consequently, a rather awkward medley of buffoon, politician, preacher, litterateur, di- vine, and diner-out. Let us grant, however, that the ordeal was severe, and that, if a very few have weathered it better, many more have ignominiously broken down. No one coincides more fully than we do with Coleridge in thinking that every literary man should have a profession ; but, in the name of common sense, let it be one fitted for him, and for which he is fitted — one suited to his tastes as well as to his talents — to his habits as well as to his powers — to his heart as well as to his head. As a conversationist, Sidney Smith stood high among the highest a Saul among a tribe of Titans. His jokes were not rare and re- fined, like those of Eogers and Jekyll; tliey wanted the slyness of Theodore Hooke's inimitable equivoque ; they were not poured forth with the prodigal profusion of Hood's breathless and bicker- ing puns; they were rich, fat, unctuous, always bordering on farce, but always avoiding it by a hair's-breadth. No finer cream, certes, ever mantled at the feasts of Holland House than his fertile brain supplied; and, to quote himself, it would require a "forty-parson power" of lungs and language to do justice to his convivial merits. Sidney Smith we never saw, and his 'personnel, therefore, we cannot describe. We always figure him, however, to ourselves, as a " round, fat, oily man of God," with a strongly marked fore- head, and an unspeakable twinkle in his eye. How far this re- sembles the original, we leave others to determine. Altogether, " we could have better spared a better man." Did not his death " eclipse the gaiety of nations?" Did not a Fourth Estate of Fun expire from the midst of us? Did not even Brother Jonathan drop a tear when he thought that the scourge that so mercilessly lashed him was broken ? And shall not now all his admirers unite with us in inscribing upon his grave — " Alas ! poor Yorick!" 227 WILLIAM ANDERSON, GLASGOW. Amid our profusion of sketches, we have never yet permitted ourselves to draw a likeness of our venerable father, Samuel Gil- fiUan of Comrie. We feel at present a strong impulse to do so shortly; and we know Mr Anderson too well to doubt that he will stand aside gladly for a little, till we limn a yet dearer coun- tenance than his, and analyse a character equally upright and sincere. Our father was indeed a very remarkable man. He was not, per- haps, what this fastidious age would call a man of genius, learning, or eloquence; but for genius he had a genial and impulsive heart — for learning, extensive information — for eloquence, unequalled ease of plain, eftective address. His form was erect and manly — his brow lofty and marked — his eye quick to restlessness — his hair, as we remember it, tinged with grey — his whole aspect denoting the utmost activity of mind and ardour of character. Though naturally impetuous in his temper, and hasty in its expressions, he was one of the most delightful of companions. He was frank to excess — guile had been forgotten in his composition ; he had a childlike gaiety and warmth of manner, from which he rose gently — not, like some, rebounded violently — into dignity ; he was full of talk, and especially of anecdote and allusion, culled from a Avide extent of miscellaneous reading ; he had a knack, altogether his own, in bringing in his religious views, not like staring strangers, but like welcome and respected guests, into any company and any conversation. He was admirable, too, at adapting himself to all kinds of persons, and had one manner for the peasant, another for his brother-minister, a third for the literary man, a fourth for the religious and high-bred lady, and a fifth for the mere man of the world — yet all natural, easy, and ranking themselves grace- fully under the one idiosyncrasy of his character. As a husband and parent, he was aflcctionate to indulgence. His beaming eye betrayed his deep love — his faltering tones in his Sabbath-evening addresses to the little circle — the warm pressure of his welcoming hand, when any of his family came home from the distant city — his all but last look to us as, a few days before his death, he met us returning from the village-library with a precious volume of " Plutarch's Lives" in our hand — his walks with us through the ripe corn-fields of autumn, pouring out the while a stream of in- formation and interesting comment on the objects around — the hope and preference, but faintly disguised — even his occasional inequalities of temper, shall all be dear " while memory holds a seat on this distracted globe." As a preacher, he was plain, ear- nest, serious, always animated, sometimes vehement. All this is true of many preachers besides him ; but few possessed the in- 228 WILLIAM ANDERSON. expressible charm, the naivete, the exquisite power of adaptin;; his discourse to every little incident which occurred in the history of his audience, to every smallest surge which took place in its stream. He stood up as a plain, honest, well-informed, warm- hearted man, conversing on the level of his people, solemnly yet easily, about the matters of their eternity ; and, as the conversa- tion went on, allowing himself the widest range, now beseeching, now threatening, gathering illustrations from every remarkable aspect of the sky above, or any singular incident in his audience below — Iiere quoting a verse of poetry which evidently occurred at the moment, there applying an anecdote from his multifarious stores, and here again snatching a shaft from the newspapers of the day, watching the while every countenance, and obliging every one to return the eager glance ; and doing all this with such per- fect mastery, and in such evident good faith, as to secure undi- vided attention, when he did not, as was often the case, awaken deeper emotions — the tears of penitence, the thrill of conviction, the spasm of remorse, the eager light, forming itself on the up- turned countenance, of the "joy that is unspeakable and full of glory." As a writer, he enjoyed more extensive and valuable popu- larity than perhaps any man in his own body. His works, con- sisting of papers printed in the " Christian Magazine," and occa- sional small volumes on religious subjects, were read from Maidenkirk to John o'Groat's, welcomed in many an humble cot- tage as monthly mesc-engers of gladness, and, besides passing through a multitude of impressions in this country, translated into French, Dutch, and Russ. Nor was their popularity to be wondered at, considering their unostentatious and pleasing merits. They were somewhat loosely and illogically composed ; but so easy in their style, so lucid in their meaning, so short in their structure of sentence, so childlike and Bunyan-like in their tone, so evidently the eifusions of an earnest spirit, and sprinkled so knackily with anecdote, and allusion, and verse, and bits of his- toric lore, all steeped in genuine Gospel-savour, that we can at once account why readers of all classes and intellects perused them with pleasure and profit. They had no pretension to acute argumentation, or original imagery, or searching thought ; but, full of Gospel-marrow and alFectionate earnestness, won their way to thousands of pious hearts, and lighted up a Zoire of delight on many a cheek, bending at once over the ingle-bleeze and the pleasant page of Lcumas. 'J'his was his favourite signature, con- sisting of the letters of his Christian name reversed. His death we do well remember, and frequently roll over with melancholy pleasure. He had gone from Comrie to a countiy hamlet, on a diet (as those occasions were then called) of pastoral visitation. The good people had provided a basket oi' sloes, know- WILLIAM ANDERSOX. 229 ing his partiality for them. Of these he ate largely, and had scarcely reached home, till they affected his system in the shape of severe inflammation. This was on "Wednesday, the 11th of October, 1826. All Thursday and Friday he was in violent anguish, absolutely shouting for pain, expecting immediate dis- solution, and giving advices to his family with all the earnestness of a dying man. On Saturday, there was a delusive pause in the tragedy ; his pains subsided, though the foundation of the disease was not reached ; and he spent the day reading in bed. It was a quiet, grey autumn day, and we see him still, self-propped on his pillow, and with eager eye reading " Harvey's Letters," and the Bible. On Sabbath the loth, the dark disease returned to his charge, and would now permit no farther delay. Severe was the struggle, dire the tossings, deep the groans, of this strong man caught in the embrace of one stronger than he. The medi- cal men did their utmost. We remember seeing a basin of a father's blood, which they had drawn ; we remember overheai- ing a consultation among them, the result of which was, they could do no more; we remember the sad silence witii which they left the house ; we remember the entrance of members of the family, who had been summoned from a distance to see him ere he died, coming in with red eyes to swell the general grief; we remember his last exclamation to his nearest earthly relative — " You will be a widow, and a poor widow!" and her look of calm, speechless sorrow, like that of one seeing from the shore a friend rushing down a remorseless rapid, and his answering glance, expressing, long after he could not speak, a deep interest in her he was leaving, as if even more than his wonted love were glowing in his eye ; we remember the awful hush which reigned throughout the chamber till the presence of death was authen- tically proclaimed, and the wild sobs which burst out afterwards ; we remember turning round from the deathbed, and looking with a sick and strange emotion to the golden autumn day, the stubble- fields, the lonely hills, the solemn silence of th(; Sabbath, which seemed to lie in sympathy without ; we remember our first feel- ings, dreary and desolate beyond expression, on awakening the next morning, and finding ourselvesya^/^er/ess; and a burst of wild grief at the coffining, which shook our young being to its founda- tions ; and of turning round, in our agony, and gazing through a window northwards, and praying for and almost expecting to see his spirit ai)pearing amid tlie still moonlight. We need not re- cord how that tumultuous grief gradually subsided into a pensive recollection, seated in the heart as much as in the memory, of his dear image — an itnage which a thousand sunbeams, and showers, and shadows, and sorrows, and joys, have lei't uneffaced upon the soul. " It trembles, but it cannot pass away." Samuel GilfiUan was a broad-minded, kind-hearted, and 230 WILLIAM ANDERSON. thoroughly Christian being. To a greater extent than almost any contemporary in his own church, he had forgotten points of dis- tinction, and fastened on points of resemblance, between various bodies. Add to this, a love for literature, then, as now, rare among Scottish Dissenting ministers — a knowledge of many de- partments of the arts and sciences — an impetuous yet holy phi- lanthropy — a generous, self-forgetting enthusiasm — a sympathy with the poor, the sick, and the forlorn — the principles of a "Whig and something more" — the head, heart, and life of a man and a Christian, and you have the outline of Leumas. The parish kirk, near where he lies, is rather a striking object. It stands on a small knoll above the river Earn. It is a white- washed structure, and its churchyard commands a noble pi-ospect. This churchyard, however, would be greatly beautified by a circle of trees around it ; for although we do not greatly like the modern style of taste in burying-places — a taste transplanted from the country of Victor Hugo and Voltaire — a taste which has con- verted graveyards into gardens, sought in vain to disguise death and his horrors, and would allow Hervey, were he alive now, to carry on his "Meditations on a Flower-Garden" and on the " Tombs " in the same place, yet we do stand up for a diadem of trees as the crown of the departed, for a living company over the congregation of the dead, for a speaking as the guardians of a silent multitude — their very murmur in the wind, and the ever-renewing green of their spring garniture, pi^eaching better than a thousand homilies the truth of resurrection, and returning to the question, " Shall these dead live?" an emphatic and everlasting "Yea." Would that Comrie Kivkyard had its synod of trees to whisper this over his dust, whose memory is still cherished amid those pastoral regions with an enthusiasm which is attested by the beaming eye and kindling countenance with which his name is uttered — of one who in all I'espects realised the poetical pic- tures of " the good minister " — of one to whom we feel in his sepulchre all the tenderness of filial affection, and all the reve- rence of profound esteem — of one who, " having turned many to righteousness, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars, for ever and ever." William Anderson, like the author of this sketch, was born and brought up under the roof and amid the influences of a quiet country Dissenting manse, with this difference, that his excellent father is still alive, and that we lost ours while yet a boy. In Kilsyth, under the shadow of the Campsie Hills, Mr Anderson first breathed the air of life. Mr Anderson is a man who has many eccentricities, but all whose oddnesses are cognate with his nature, and do only slen- derly disguise it. It is vain to object to the queerness of the atti- tude or action by which the strong man levels you to the dust. AVILLIAM ANDERSON. 231 In such a case, the smile of laughter might contend with the grin of death. All Glasgow has felt and owned in William Anderson the presence of a strong, simple-minded, clear-visioncd, and ear- nest man, at whom fools might laugh, but whom cold men won- dered at, ardent men admired, and wise men understood. The Germans were wont to say of Jean Paul Eichter, that he was the only one. Among his class, connection, and contempo- raries, William Anderson is the onhj one. He stands beside or collaterally — quietly, collectedly, and modestly himself. Nor is he a mere made original — a modern antique ; he is one through whose mind all things and thoughts, as they pass, receive a dis- tinct and peculiar tinge, just as light flowing through a painted window accomplishes the prophecy of the medium, and becomes something finer than itself. William Anderson possesses the rare quality of power. If he does not mal:e, nor seek to make, he moves, often without seeking to move. There is sometimes a stormy force about him, which seems superfluous whenever you witness the calm of his better and higher manner, which seems to fold around his audience as com- pletely, irresistibly, and tenderly, as the sky over the mountains and the clouds. Artistic polish or beauty is not often his, but there shines out not unfrequently a stranger and a rarer beauty, that of holiness, from his pages. Something of the sacred fervour, and boldness, and fierceness of the ancient Hebrew mind, breathes and burns about him. He has more of the vehemence of the Baptist than of the charity and mildness of the new dispensation, save ever and except when children are concerned. Then the old love, which shone in the eye of the Saviour as he said, " Sufler the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," sparkles in his; and lo! it is one weaned child discoursing to other weaned children, and from the mouths of babes and sucklings seeking to perfect praise. When we speak of Anderson as having more of the old than of the new dispensation, we refer not so much to his views as to his spirit. His views are singularly wide and catholic, so far as the dark and disputed questions in theology are concerned. His heart, too, is warm and generous to a degree. But somehow or other, Avhether owing to the intense purity of his nature, or to the fervour of his temperament, he has fallen at times into out- rageous and violent extremes of abuse and invective against those unfortunate men who have been led astray by error or vice, particularly if they have published tlie results of their perverted powers, and has not unfrequently, instead of leaving them and their sins in the hands of their " Father and their God," burst across the limits of the world, anticipated their dooms, and sought to stir into fiercer energy the surge of Almighty vengeance, as if it were slow, sleepy, and reluctant in its movements. He 232 WILLIAM ANDERSON. loves, as Charles Lamb says of Southey, " to paint a given king in bliss, and a given chamberlain in torment, even to the eter- nising of a cast of the eye in the latter;" loves to stand by the burning lairs of Voltaire, Volney, Rousseau, Burns, and Byron, and interpret the wild Babel of their confused blasphemies and piercing lamentations. Now, this you might have expected in a fierce inquisitor, forgiven in the worn and desperate Dante, pitied in the narrow and stung Southey; but, in the robust, libe- ral, and kind-hearted William Anderson, you, or at least we, cannot account for and cannot away with. Let us grant, however, that, in thus dealing round damnation, he is quite impartial. Southey's " Vision of Judgment" is just a monstrous binding up of the " Court Calendar" with the Book of Life. Our hero does not go over the " Directory" of his city, and jot down his candidates for destruction or salvation, accord- ing to their streets or squares. He does not spare the rich trans- gressor for his wealth, nor the poor sinner for his poverty. Much as he adores genius, he will not permit its painted screen to stand, when it would shade the fierceness of the unquenchable fire — he hurls it down straightway. Since Edward Irving died, there has not been pouring from any pulpit such a stream of purged perdition. "It is fire and brimstone /rom the Lord out of heaven." Still we much prefer, what Mr Anderson also often distils upon his hearers, the soft-dropping dew of the Gospel Hermon. In many points, Anderson bears a resemblance to Edward Irving. His rich scripturality of quotation, his antique cast of phraseology, his long unmeasured sentences, his personal appeals, his sudden short bursts of eloquence, his fearless and sometimes fierce spirit blended with much gentleness, his mixture of cajolerie and real simplicity, his occasional wildness, his sincere and burn- ing enthusiasm, not to speak of his millennial views, render him a striking, though smaller, similitude of that " Shakspere of pi-eachers" — that embodied flame of meteoric fire, who, like the wondrous tent or temple of electric light we saw lately suspended in the sky, hung, broadened, fluctuated, shivered, faded, went out in darkness — the pride, wonder, and terror of our ecclesias- tical heavens. One quality Mr Anderson possesses, the want of which in Irving was pernicious — we mean, strong manly common sense. An old divine was wont to say, that if you wanted learning — if you wanted even the grace of God — if you wanted anything else, in short, you might get it; but if you want common sense, you will never get it. The most splendid endowments do not com- pensate for its want: the most extensive and bitter experience does not communicate it. T\m jjocket-map of man Mr Anderson always carries about with him; and next to the inestimable divine WILLIAM ANDERSON. 233 chart, which no man values more, it has been his most valuable directory, and has saved him harmless where many have sunk to ruin, either been inflated and burst by vanity, or stifTened into salt statues of pride, or gone down the difficult places of semi- spiritual semi-sensual destruction. In reading Mr Anderson's works, and particularly his volume of sermons issued a few years ao'o, their main characteristic appears to be akin to this — vigorous, independent, yet cautious judgment. The volume contains in it, besides many artistic merits and literary beauties, some highly- finished passages, both of reasoning, of fancy, of sarcasm, and of practical appeal. There is, for example, a description of the hypocrite, which might have come from Foster's pen. Passages of similar power has he sprinkled throughout his " Good Works," on the " Duty of Loving God," on the " Evil of Sin," and on the " Re-union of Christian Friends in the Heavenly World." From this last, throughout a piece of fine fancy and feeling, we quote the following touch of real genius: — " Many a mother will not find her son in heaven, and yet the Saviour will make her happy; there can be no grief in the Paradise of God, no not even ibr a perished son. She could not now endure him, and Christ will brinf her some other woman's child, who has been seeking for his mother in vain, and he will say, ' Woman, behold thy son,' and to him, ' Behold thy mother,' and the wounds of the hearts of both will be healed." Nothing can be a simpler, yet nothing a finer, application of our Saviour's dying words. We think, indeed, that if Mr Anderson, in his published works, had been less of a controversialist, and more of an utterer of sweet, musical, and poetical thoughts, such as this we have now quoted, his fame as a writer had been greater than it is. How soon polemical writings die ! No one seeks to preserve them, after a certain date, any more than to prop up a fallen thistle or thorn; but, let a flower or a hedge of roses begin to totter to its fall, every passing beggar will become its patron, and discover that there is in his heart some dim instinct of beauty unknown even to himself. Thus Clark's a 2mo7i argument (sup- posing its credit to fall) would fall amid utter silence, while an attack on the " Romeo and Juliet" of Shakspere would make un- known thousands eloquent. ]Many even of Protestants would mourn less the want of Ciiillingworth's work than that of some of the sublime hymns of the Catholic Litany, such as the Dies Irae; and so we would cheerfully have wanted some of Mr Anderson's defences against those who thought him heterodox on the points of the "organ" and the "personal reign," rather than those numerous tender and beautiful passages, wliicli illus- trate in an unconnnon way points common to all Christians. Mr Anderson, as a writer, is noted for nerve, contempt of con- ventionalities, and daring selection of all the words, thoughts, and 234 WILLIAM ANDERSON. images which will serve his purpose, culled be they from what- ever quarter — from earth, air, sea, heaven, or that " other place." You occasionally find him recollecting, but never imitating, other writers. They are in, but not on and over his eye. Strong and startling as he is sometimes in his expressions, he is seldom wrong in his conclusions. We hear of writers — " Ne'er so sure our favour to create, As when they tread the brink of all we hate." Mr Anderson is one of this class. He drives his chariot along the brink of a whole chain of precipices, with a success as perfect as the way is perilous. He seems to love that border-land be- tween truth and error. As you are about to call him an Arminian, he turns round and dashes a bit of Calvinism in your face; as you are about to charge him with leaning to " universal salva- tion," he so paints perdition, that you seem to hear the roar of its sleepless fires, and the tossing of the victims on the unmade beds of despair. He does not consider himself bound to reconcile apparently opposite truths, though he is bound to believe both. He cannot cast a bridge between Ayr and Arran, but he knows that some god or giant yet may. ]Mr Anderson, as a preacher, has a great variety of styles and manners. He can be, and is, either practical or profound — either minute or abstract — either too plain to be pleasant, or too rich and powerful to be plain — either calm or vehement — either commonplace or original. We assisted him lately, and were much interested in the whole services of the day. His congre- gation is very large, and is almost — thanks to him — the best singing congregation in Scotland. It was thrilling, almost to the sublime, to hear their morning psalm. His prayers were minute, comprehensive, and earnest; his sermon, though not in his highest vein, was interesting and forcible. But the most striking part was his table-service. During the consecration prayers, he holds the elements in his hand. While holding the cup, and praying for the coming of Christ — dark, solemn, swarthy as he stood — he reminded us of the " King's cup-bearer." The large assembly seemed eating and drinking consciously under the shadow of the coming chariot; and, if the morning psalm ap- proached the sublime, the evening anthem, sung by the whole congregation standing, exceeded it, and rose to the sublime of dreams, when our vision of the night is heaven. Mr Anderson's delivery does not add at all to the impression of his matter. It is rather slow and drawling; his accent and pronunciation are of Kilsyth in the last century; his tone is rather nasal, his gesture ungraceful. When he rises, however, into his true power, all this is forgotten in the animation, the forceful bursts, the impassioned truth of a genuine natural orator. AVILLIAM ANDERSON. 235 The air of Eld, too, which breathes around his style, language, appeai-ance, and address, adds a tart peculiarity to the whole, and you are carried back to the days of Cameron and Kenwick. What a hill-preacher would he have made, as the enemy was coming up, or as a thunderstorm was darkening over the heads of the assembly ! As a public and platform man, "William Anderson exerts great power in Glasgow. Every one believes him sincere, and every one knows him to be one of the ablest, readiest, and raciest of speakers. Here, too, all his strength, impetuosity, and earnest- ness, are under the control of discretion and sound judgment. His appearance is singular, if not fine. His features are plain, his {\\ce is slightly marked with the small-pox, his complexion is dark, but his eye, from its expression of blended sagacity and benevolence, redeems the whole. In private, he is homely, social, kindly, full of matter, especially of anecdote and incident illus- trative of life and character — proner to praise than blame — and, with all his sagacity, simple as a child. Music and infancy are the two mild hobbies he loves to ride, and long may he ride them ! Like many other men of mark, he has had to fight his way. He was long a wonder unto many. The foolish laughed at, the malignant defamed, the hypercritical underrated him, and from his peers he received little sympathy or support. But, like all the brave, he struggled on, and was rewarded with victory. His popularity, at first excited by the eccentricities, was at last allowed calmly to rest on the excellence, of his preaching and cha- racter. " Those who came to laugh remained to pray," personal and party prejudice was gradually subdued, his oddities mellowed and softened with time, and we may now as safely as we can conscientiously declare, that the United Presbyterian Church, ■with all its host of talented men, possesses scarcely one who equals in genius, and very few who surpass in talent, plain, strong, gifted William Anderson. We may just add, that Mr Anderson, although not distin- guished for pastoral visitation, is most exemplary in waiting on the sick-bed. We heard recently a rather amusing anecdote of him. Some person called, complaining that he had been eighteen years a member of his congregation, and had never been visited by his minister. " You should be very thankful," replied Mr Andei'son. " How that, sir?" rejoined Mr B. " 1 never visit any but those into whose houses God has entered by affliction. It seems you have been eighteen years without affliction in your family; few are so highly privileged. I trust other eighteen years may elapse ere I be in your house, sir. Good morning, Mr B." * • Mr Anderson has since issued a volume on ''Regeneration," which is quite worthy of him. 236 LEIGH HUNT. The present state of poetry is a subject on which a great deal of nonsense has been written, and on which a greater deal still of nonsense is every day spoken. " We have no poets now-a-days," is the chatter at many a tea-table — a chatter which a glance at a few of the present names " flaming on the forehead " of our literary sky is enough to confute. Beside such veterans as Wilson, Croly, Montgomery, and our present subject, Leigh Hunt, who are now rather honorary than active members of the corporation of Apollo, there are numerous aspirants of the laurel, of whom high hopes may be entertained. There is especially a little cluster of earrieH poets whom we are at all times delighted to honour, and some of ■whom we may now briefly characterise, as an introduction not inappropriate to a notice of one who long ago, and in days darker than these, set them a good example, and who then stood almost singular in adding the spirit of the martyr to the accomplish- ments of the Muses' son. We may name, then, Longfellow, Emerson, Bailey, Tennyson, and the Brownings, as the Dii Majorum Gentum of this modern class. We name first the American poet, Longfellow. We know no- thino- whatever of his theoretical creed, but we are not blind to the marks of sincerity and of high-minded aspiration which per- vade his poetry. He feels what Foster uniformly forgets or denies the worth of man. He looks at the ruins of the human soul in a certain rich moonlight, which softens many an asperity, fills up many a chasm, symmetrises many a disproportion, and sheds a soft golden film, a gossamer of the night, over the whole. His eye, too, is anointed to see innumerable fine and fairy hands repairing the desolation, as well as beautifying its decay. " It is a little thing to be a man." Yes, comparatively it is ; but -whence springs the smallness ? Surely from the greatness of the height whence we have fallen, and to which we are invited to aspire. Life and man, like the Jura in the presence of Mopt Blanc, dwindle before a greater, which greater in this case is the grandeur of man's ideal of himself and of God. It is little to be, it is far less to doubt of, man. Spring but this one leak, and what a black flood of scepticism rushes in — death is regarded with the avidity of a suicide, and it is well if the Foster does not darken into the Swift. Hear Longfellow : — Not enjoyment and not sorrow, Is our lieiog's destined way; But to live that each to-morrow Finds us farilier than to-day." LEIGH HUNT. 231 And again : "Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal : ♦ Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' Was not spoken of the soul." Such manly lines, rising clear, loud, and bold, like the notes of Chanticleer, dissipate a thousand dismal dreams and terrors of the night. They are not the day, but they are its promise. What we miss in Longfellow is a decided acknowledgment of the reali- sation which such sentiments as his find in Christianity. His verses are torn from their proper Christian context. Now, a few fresh leaves snapped from the bough may tell that spring has come, but we prefer the full tidings of the round tree itself. In Emerson we find, amid more power, originality, and per- haps equal sincerity, a more palpably vital defect. What the " hope set befoi-e" him in his melancholy gospel is, we cannot tell. In his " Threnody," he laments most sweetly and plaintively the loss of a favourite son, and hints at some obscure and mystic source of consolation, described in the words, that his child is "Lost in God, in Godhead found." Alas ! can he allow his child, with his glorious personality, to slide away into a vague, vast ocean, even as his own dreams among the " blackberry vines" did leave his soul, with no trace behind ? Can he part with a son as with a thought ? Can he believe that the soul which, as it looked through the " blue summer" of his child's eyes, seemed to " span the mystic gulf 'tween God and man," is henceforth an unconscious non- entity, somewhere in the eternal spaces, but with no spring of return to him, and no prospect of encounter with him, save in the cold commerce of the waves of the Pantheistic deep ? Or, if he has, apart from this dreary dream, a principle of hope and com- fort, is there no word in the ample tongue of Milton and Cole- ridge that can express this hope ? And, if there be, why does he delay to inform us what we are to substitute for the simple de- claration, " Them that sleep in Jesus shall the Lol'd bring with him?" Indeed, over all Emerson's poems, and over those of many of his followers, there hangs a deep gloom. Ills fun, when he attempts to be humorous, is dull and i'eeble. It is the drone of the " humble bee," which is quite as melancholy as it is mirth- ful. He is never so eloquent as when expressing the feelings of one who, from the pursuits of ambition, and the company of men, has sought a sad .solace in Nature, which yet, without a God, can only glare and glitter about his eye and imagination, but not touch his heart. His personal purity — which is that of a guarded dewdrop — has saved him from many pains and penalties ; but we do think that it is the subtlety which ."^o strangely mingles with the simplicity of his nature, like the eye of the basilisk looking X 238 LEIGH HUNT. out from the silvery plumage of the dove, which has veiled from many the fact that he is not a happy man. No wonder although, according to a certain rumour, Emei-- son does not fully sympathise with Bailey of " Festus." How can he ? How can a man, who manages his misery so artfully that the deep scar looks like a badge of honour upon his bosom — who can regulate, turn, and wind his madness like a watch — sympathise with one who, with the power and precipitation of a thunder- shower, expresses his Avhole soul to the world in tumultuous verse? How stiff and measured the extravagances (madness pre- pense) of Emerson look beside Bailey's unpremeditated halle- lujahs ! In Emerson, you hear a man crying " down " to the idea of a personal deity, which is for ever rising in his truly poetical heart; to Bailey, the universe is but a reflector for the face of a Saviour and God. In Emerson, you find a nature, originally poetic and even devout, chilled and strangled by the frost of an imperfect philosophy (as though an eagle on his way to the sun were killed by the cold of our upper atmosphere) ; in " Festus," faith is the philosophy, hope is the science, and love the logic of the strain. In Emerson's verse, truth lurks, like a guilty thing, in single lines, which are rather pinfolds than panoramas ; Bailey's broad nature luxuriates in long, interlinked, and magnificent pas- sages, which rise and rise till no wing short of that of imagina- tion can reach and rest upon their summit. Leaving comparisons, we may simply say that, in the two qualities of impulse and earnestness, we have seldom read a work to be compared with " Festus." We care nothing for its theory — admit its many and monstrous faults — are not careful to answer the charge of imitation in its plan — but the vigour of individual thought, the amplitude of general view, and wealth of imagery — the rough strength of language, and, above all, the deep, sparkling, " blood-power of spirit," so religious and so fervidly sincere, have compelled, like a captive, our at first unwilling admiration. It now resounds in our ears like the Pan-pipe of a belated Titan from his lonely rock, at once bewailing the past, and calling, in no measured strains, for the advent of the future. Of Browning, Mrs Browning, and Tennyson, we need hardly speak, so well are they known, and so thoroughly appreciated, by the lovers of poetry in Britain. Tennyson, of the three, is the most purely poetical, and perhaps the least prophetic in spirit or purpose. He may be compared to Ariel in the " Tempest." Ariel can pluck up cedars by the roots, but prefers swinging in the blossom which hangs I'rom the bough. He can back and bridle the fiery steed of the lightning, but prefers sucking in time and tune Avith the sucking bee. He can " flame amazement" over a crowded ship, but would rather fly on the bat's back in the still evenings of summer. From tasks at once mighty and delicate, LEIGH HUXT. 239 requiring botli infinite power and infinite tact, he springs gladly to the more congenial pursuits of an eternity of busy and merry idleness. So Tennyson, with powers which, as Carlyle once said, "might move the world," condescends sometimes to play tricks, to sing snatches, to waver in beautiful gyrations, like the down of the thistle, instead of going straight to his mark, like an arrow or a thunderbolt. In both the Brownings, but especially in the lady, we find a more powerful and condensed purpose, united to imagination of almost equal brilliance. There is in her no dallying with her theme — no drawing back from her pictures, as a painter does, to try the effect — no " staying her thunder in mid volley." She is in evident and deep earnest. Each theme sits before her, as a ghost might be supposed to sit before a limner — at once shuddering and admiring ; and you fancy her, at the close, falling back, exhausted and trembling, after her faculties had been tasked to their utmost in that unearthly sitting. Sel- dom has woman had a higher or more masculine message to de- liver. Yet sorrow liovers over the sublimity of her strains, " like the soft shadow of an angel's Aving," and the knowledge she has gained, and the power of moving us she exerts, have been bought at their weight, not in gold, but in/r«. It is pleasant, in some moods, to pass from these poets, with their passionate, or fierce, or heroic attitudes, to the blended ease and earnestness of Leigh Hunt. He stands among them like an oak amidst the surrounding pines, or birches, or sensitive plants, less tremulous, dark, drooj^ing, or defiant, to every breath of hea- ven, but greener, ampler, calmer, albeit ready always to resist strong aggression, as well as to shade unassuming merit. If they aspire to the rank of prophets, he is a patriarch, seated and utter- ing gentle yet profound responses at his tent-door. The highest compliment ever paid to Hunt is, perhaps, that of Byron, who, after a furious and vulgar diatribe against him, owns him to be a " good man." This may seem poor praise, but a cold shower-bath irom Hecla were less astonishing than the acknow- ledgment of any human virtue from the mouth of a man who had set himself elaborately to erase each vestige of goodness from his own character, and had Avell nigh succeeded — who had nearly completed an exchange between his heart and the "nether mill- stone" — and whose praises of all but his j^ersonal friends came forth reluctantly, as do the audible groans of his proud spirit. Hunt's goodness and talent he always admitted — and, Avith regard to the cliarge of vulgarity, which now, at this distance of time, is the vulgar person of the two ? Hunt's vulgarity is that of cir- cumstances and education ; Byron's was ingrained in his nature ; and neither the Highlands, with their grandeur, nor Holland House, with its varied and brilliant converse, nor Italy, with the recherche society of its better classes, were able to erase the original 240 LEIGH HUNT. Stamp of the degraded and blackguard lord, which had been ti'ansmitted from generations downwards, till it was fortunate, in his countenance, to meet and contend with the blaze of genius, and the pale impress of coming death. Had Hunt been a less sincere and simple-minded person than he has been, he might, we think, have been quite as popular a writer as Thomas Moore. He has the champagne qualities of that writer, without, indeed, so many or such brilliant bubbles of wit and fancy upon the top — and has a world more of body, soli- dity, and truth. It is his assuming the fairy shape, that has made some (ourselves at one time included) to underrate his powers. But why did he assume it ? Why did he, like the devils in Mil- ton, shrink his stature to gain admission to the halls of Pande- monium ? Why did he not rather, in dignified humility, wait without as he was, till the great main door was opened, and till, in full size and panoply, he entered in, and sat down, a giant among giants, a god amidst gods ? In such figured language, we convey our notion at once of Hunt's strength and weakness. He has been, partly owing to circumstances, and partly to himself, little other than a glorious trifler. He has smiled, or lounged, or teased, or translated, away faculties which, with proper concen- tration and a perpetual view toward one single object, had been incalculably beneficial to the general progress of literature and of man. Moore, again, seemed made for trifling. It was his element. The window-pane being his world, may we not call him the fly ? His love is skin-deep; his anger, too, is a mere itch on the surface; his patriotism is easy, beginning and ending at the piano ; his friendship all cozes out in a memoir of his departed friend ; his hatred is exhausted in a single satire ; and even his melody, while suiting the ivory keys of Lady Blessington's harpsichord, shrinks from the full diapason of the organ or the terrible unity of the fife : he had no powers which earnestness would much care to chal- lenge as her own. Hunt, on the contrary, has put martial facul- ties upon perpetual parade — they have walked to and fro to beauti- ful music, but they have rarely mounted the breach, or even seen the enemy. This has not sprung either from the want of power or of courage, but from a kind of amiable ease of temperament, and, perhaps, also, from a defect of constitutional stamina. A soul of fire has been yoked to a nervous and feeble constitution. We can hardly charge the author of forty volumes with having written little, but, perhaps, there is not one among all those vo- lumes to which you can point as entirely worthy, and fully re- flective, of the powers which are visible in alL Throughout them all you have a beautiful diffusion — over many of them hangs a certain Aveaiy languor — in some you are saluted with an explo- sion of wit like the crackers of a birth-night — and the others are THOMAS MOORE. 241 full of a pensive poetry, tremulous with seutiment, and starred with the strangest and most expressive epithets. Heart, geniality, humanity, and genius pervade the whole. Altogether, we cannot but look upon Hunt's present position as an enviable and fortunate one. He is in the evening of his days, but at evening time it is Hght with him ; he has outlived many a struggle ; he has survived a storm in which many larger ships were wrecked ; he has not now a single enemy ; his name is a household word throughout the world ; his fame is dear to every lover of poetry and of liberty ; the government of his country has appreciated and rewarded his services. Whatever of the tierce or bitter circumstances had infused into his mind lias now been extracted. Above all, milder and juster views of Christianity, its claims and character, seem entering his mind. We will not, therefore, close by wishing him happiness — it is his, we trust, already — but by wishing him long life to enjoy the meek and bright sunset of his chequered and troublous day.* THOMAS MOORE. To be the poet par excellence of Ireland, the cleverest man in the cleverest nation in the world, is to hold no mean position, and that position we claim for Thomas Moore. We do not, of course, mean that he was by many degrees the greatest poet of his day ; but, for sparkle, wit, and brilliance, his country's qualities, he is unsurpassed. The bard of the butterflies, he is restless, gay, and gorgeous as the beautiful creatures he delights to depict. It would require his own style adequately to describe itself. Puck putting a girdle round about the globe in forty minutes — Ariel doing his spiriting gently — the Scotch fairy footing it in the moonlight, the stillness of which seems intended to set off the lively and aerial motion — any of these figui-es may faintly express* to us the elegant activities of Moore's mind and fancy. We are never able to disconnect from his idea that of minuteness. Does he play in the " plighted clouds ?" It is as a " creature of the element," as tiny as he is tricksy. Does he flutter in the sun- beam ? It is as a bright mote. Does he hover over the form and face of beauty? It is as a sylph-like sprite, his little heart sur- charged, and his small wings trembling with passion. Does he • We owe our readers an apology for the brief notices this article contains of authors elsewhere in tlie book characterised at large. They belonged to the article, and we could not prevail on ourselves to erase them. 242 THOMAS MOORE. ever enter on a darker and more daring flight ? It is still rather the flight of a fire-fly than of a meteor or a comet. Does he as- sail powers and potentates ? It is with a sting rather than a spear — a sting small, sharp, bi'ight, and deadly. Thomas Moore was a poet by temperament, and by intellect a wit. He had the warmth and the fancy of the poet, but hardly his powerful passion, his high solemn imagination, or his severe unity of purpose. His verses, therefore, are rather the star-dust of poetry than the sublime thing itself. Every sentence is poetical, but the whole is not a poem. The dancing lightness of his motion affects you with very different feelings from those with which you contemplate the grave walk of didactic, or the stormy race of impassioned poetry. You are delighted, you are dazzled; you wonder at the rapidity of the movements, the ele- gance of the attitudes, the perfect self-command and mastery of the performer : you cry out, " Encore, encore," but you seldom weep ; you do not tremble or agonise ; you do not become silent. Did the reader ever feel the blinding and giddy effect of level winter sunbeams pouring through the intervals of a railing as he went along? This is precisely the effect which Moore's rapid and bickering brilliance produces. Our mental optics are dazzled, our brain reels, we almost sicken of the monotonous and inces- sant splendour, " distinct but distant, clear, but ah, how cold !" Our great quarrel with Moore's poetry, apart from its early sins against morality and good taste, is its want of deep earnest- ness and of high purpose. Not more trivial is the dance of a fairy in the pale shine of the moon, than are the majority of his poems. And, though he did belong to that beautiful family, he could not in his poetry meddle less with the great purposes, pas- sions, and destinies of humanity. What to him are the ongoings and future prospects of what Oberon so finely calls the " human mortals ?" He must have his dance and his song out. We believe that Thomas Moore was a sincere lover of his kind, and had a deep sympathy with their welfare and progress, but we could scarcely deduce this with any certainty from his serious poetry. Indeed, the term serious, as applied to his verse, is a total misnomer. Byron's poetry has often a sincerity of anguish about it which cannot be mistaken ; he howls out, like the blinded Cyclops, his agony to earth and heaven. The verse of Wordsworth and Cole- i-idge is a harmony solemn as that of the pines in the winter blast ; Elliott's earnestness is almost terrific ; but Moore flits, and flut- ters, and leaps, and runs, a very Peri, but who shall never be permitted to enter the paradise of highest song, and to whom the seventh heaven of invention is shut for ever. It were needless to dilate upon the beauties which he has scat- tered around him in this unprofitable career. His fancy is pro- digious in quantity and variety, and is as elegant as it is abun- THOMAS MOORF. 243 dant. Images dance down about us like hailstones, illustrations breathlessly run after and outrun illustrations, fine and delicate shades melt into others still finer and more delicate, and often the general effect of his verse is like that of a large tree alive with bees, where a thousand sweet and minute tones ai*e mingled in one hum of harmony. Add to this, his free flow of exquisite versi- fication, the richness of his luscious descriptions, the tenderness of many of his pictui'es, and the sunny glow, as of eastex'n day, which colours the whole, and you have the leading features of his poetical idiosyncrasy. But it is as a wit and a satirist that Moore must survive. There is no " horse play in his raillery." It is as delicate as it is deadly. Such a gay gladiator, such a smiling murderer as he is! How small his weapon — how elegant his flourishes — how light but sinewy his arm — and how soon is the blow given — the deed done — the victim prostrate ! His strokes are so keen, that, ere you have felt them, you have found death. He is an aristo- cratic satirist, not only in the objects, but in the manner of his attack. Coarse game would not feel that fine tremulous edge by which he dissects his high-bred and sensitive foes to the quick; We notice, too, in his sarcastic vein, and this very probably ex- plains its superiority, a much deeper and heartier earnestness. When he means to be serious, he trifles; when he trifles, it is that he is most sincere. His woi'k is play, his play is work. All his political feeling — all the moral indignation he possesses — all the hatred which, as an Irishman and a gentleman, he entertains for insincerity, humbug, and selfishness in high places — come out through the vale of his witty and elegant verse. Of a great satirist, only one element seems wanting in Moore, namely, that cool concentrated malignity which inspires Juvenal and Junius. He tickles his opponent to death, they tear him to pieces. His arrows are polished, theirs are poisoned. His malice is that of a man, theirs is that of a demon. His wish is to gain a great end over the bodies of his antagonists, their sole object is to destroy or blacken the persons of their foes. His is a public and gallant rencounter, theirs a sullen and solitary assassination. Moore may be regarded under the four phases of an amatory poet, a narrative poet, a satirical poet, and a prose writer. As an amatory poet, he assumed, every one knows, the nom-de- guerre of Tommy Little, and, as such, do not his merits and demerits live in the verse of Byron and in the prose of Jeffrey ? These poems, lively, gay, shallow, meretricious, were the sins of youth ; they were not, like " Don Juan," the deliberate abominations of guilty and hardened manhood. Their object was to crown vice, but not to deny the existence of virtue. They were unjustifiably warm in their tone and colouring, but they did not seek to pollute the human heart itself. It was reserved for a mightier and 244 THOMAS MOORE. darker spirit to make the desperate and infernal attempt, and to include in one " wide waft" of scorn and disbelief the existence of faithfulness in man and of innocence in woman. Little's lyrics, too, were neutralised by their general feebleness; they were pretty, but wanted body, unity, point, and power. Conse- quently, while they captivated idle lads and love-sick misses, tliey did comparatively little injury. It is indeed ludicrous, look- ing back through the vista of forty years, and thinking of the dire puddle and pother which such tiny transgressions produced among the critics and moralists of the time; they seem actually to have dreamed that the morality of Britain, which had survived the dramatists of Queen Elizabeth's day, the fouler fry of Charles II.'s playwrights, the novels of Fielding and Smollett, the nume- rous importations of iniquity from the Continent, was to fall be- fore a few madrigals and double-entendres. No; like " dewdrops from the lion's mane," it shook them off, and pursued its way. Whatever mischief was intended, little, we are sure, was done. As a narrative poet, Moore aimed at higher things, and, so far as praise and popularity went, with triumphant success. His " Lalla Rookh" came forth amid great and general expectation. It was rumoured that he had written a great epic poem; that Catullus had matured into Homer. These expectations were too sanguine to be realised. It was soon found that " Lalla Rookh'' was no epic — was not a great poem at all — that it was only a short series of Oriental tales, connected by a slight but exquisite framework. Catullus, though stripped of many of his voluptuous graces, and much of his false and florid taste, remained Catullus still. And the greatest admirer of the splendid diction, the airy verse, the melodramatic incident, the lavish fancy of the poem, could not but say, if the comparison came upon his mind at all — "Ye critics, say how poor was this to Homer's style!" The unity, the compactness, the interest growing to a climax, the heroic story, the bare and grand simplicity of style — all the qualities we expect in the epic, were wanting in " Lalla Rookh." It was not so much a poem, indeed, as a rhymed romance. Still, its popularity was instant and boundless. If it did not become a great, still, steadfast luminary in the heaven of song, it flashled before the eye of the world brief, beautiful, gorgeous, and frail — " A tearless rainbow, such as span The unclouded skies of Peristau." And even yet, after the lapse of twenty years, there are many who, admiring the fine moral of " Paradise and the Peri," or melted by the delicate pathos of the " Fire- worshippers," own the soft seductions of " Lalla Rookh," and in their hearts, if not in their understandings, prefer it to the chaster and more powerful poetry of the age. THOMAS MOORE. 245 The " Loves of the Angels" was a bolder but not a more suc- cessful flight. It was a tale of the "Arabian heaven;" and there is nothing, certainly, in these wondrous " thousand and one nights," more rich, beautiful, and dream-like in its imagina- tion and pathos, as in those impassioned stories. But it was only a castle in the clouds, after all — one of those brilliant but fadin"- pomps which the eye of the young dreamer sees " for ever flush- ing round a summer's sky." Its angels were mere winged dolls, compared to the " celestial ardours" whom Milton has portrayed, or even to those proud and impassioned beings whom Byron has drawn. In fact, the poem was unfortunate in appearing about the same time with Byron's " Heaven and Earth," which many besides us consider his finest production as a piece of art. Mere atoms of the rainbow fluttering round were the pinions of Mooi'e's angels, compared to the mighty wings of those burning ones who came down over Ararat, drawn by the loadstars which shone in the eyes of the " daughters of men," and for which, without a sigh, they " lost eternity." And what comparison between the female characters in the one poem and the two whom we see in the other, waiting with uplifted eyes and clasped hands for the descent of their celestial lovers, like angels for the advent of angels ? And what scene in Moore can -be named beside the deluge in Byron; with the gloomy silence of suspense which precedes it — the mysterious sounds heard among the hills at dead of night, which tell of its coming — the waters rising solemnly to their work of judgment, as if conscious of its justice and grandeur — the cries of despair, of fury, of blasphemy, as if the poet him- self were drowning in the surge — the milder and softer wail of resignation mingling with the sterner exclamations — the ark in the distance — the lost angels clasping their lost loves, and ascend- ing with them from the doom of the waters to what we feel and know must be a direr doom ? We have spoken already of Moore's character as a witty poet, and need only now refer to the titles of his principal humorous compositions, such as the " Fudge Family in Paris," the " Two- penny Post-Bag," " Cash, Corn, Currency, and Catholics." They constitute a perfect gallery of fun without ferocity, with- out indecency, and without more malice than serves to give them poignancy and point. From Moore's " Life of Sheridan," we might almost fancy that, though he had lisped in numbers, and early obtained a perfect command of the language and versification of poetry, yet that he was only beginning, or had but recently begun, to write prose. The juvenility, the immaturity, the false glare, the load of forced figure, tlie ambition and efiurt of that production, are amazing in such a man at such an age. It contains, of course, much line and forcible writing; but even Sheridan himself, in his most Y 246 THOMAS MOORE. ornate and adventurous prose, which was invariably his worst, is never more unsuccessful than is sometimes his biographer. Per- haps it was but fitting that the life of such a heartless, faithless, though brilliant charlatan, should be written in a style of elabo- rate falsetto and fudge. We have a very different opinion indeed of his " Life of Byron." It is not, we fear, a faithful or an honest record of that miserable and guilty mistake — the life of Byron. We have heard that Dr MacGinn, by no means a squeamish man, who was at first employed by Murray to write his biography, and had the materials put into his hands, refused, shrinking back dis- gusted at the masses of falsehood, treachery, heartlessness, malig- nity, and pollution which they revealed. The same materials were submitted to Moore, and from them he has constructed an image of his hero, bearing, we suspect, as correct a resemblance to his character as the ideal busts which abound do to his face. When will biographers learn that their business, their sole busi- ness, is to tell the truth or to be silent ? How long will the public continue to be deceived by such gilded falsehoods as form the staple of obituaries and memoirs ? It is high time that such were confined to the corners of newspapers and of churchyards. We like Moore's " Byron," not for its subject or its moral tone, but solely for its literary execution. It is written throughout in a clear, chaste, dignified, and manly manner; the criticism it contains is eloquent and discriminating, and the friendship it discovers for Byron, if genuine, speaks much for its author's generosity and heart. We must not speak of his other prose productions — his " Epi- curean," " History of Ireland," &c. The wittiest thing of his in prose we have read is an article in the " Edinburgh Review " on " Boyd's Lives of the Fathers," v/here, as in Gibbon, jests lurk under loads of learning, double-entendres disguise tliemselves in Greek, puns mount and crackle upon the backs of huge folios, and where you are at a loss whether most to chuckle at the wit, to detest the animus, or to admire the erudition. We had nearly omitted, which had been unpardonable, all mention of the " Irish Melodies" — those sweet and luscious strains which have hushed ten thousand drawing-rooms, and drawn millions of such tears as drawing-rooms shed, but which have seldom won their way to the breasts of simple unsophisti- cated humanity — which are to the songs of Burns what the lute is to the linnet — and which, in their title, are thus far unfortunate, that, however melodious, they are not the melodies of Ireland. It was not Moore, but Campbell, who wrote " Erin Mavourneen." " He," says Hazlitt, " has changed the wild harp of Erin into a musical snufi-box." Such is our ideal of Thomas Moore. If it do not come up to ISAAC TAYLOR. 247 the estimate of some of his admirers, it is faithful to our own im- pressions; and what more from a critic can be required? "We only add, that, admired by many as a poet, by all as a wit, he was as a man the object of universal regard; and we believe there is not one who knew him but would be ready to join in the words — " Were it the last drop in the well, 'Tis to thee that I would drink ; In that water as this wine, The libation I would pour Would be peace to thee and thine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore." ISAAC TAYLOR. Christianity has been much indebted to its lay supporters and defenders. Without professing to give a complete list of the illustrious laymen who have either advocated its evidences or ex- pounded its doctrines, we may simply remind the reader of the names of Milton, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Addison, Lord Lyttel- ton, Charles Leslie, Soame Jenyns, Dr Johnson, and Cowper, which belong to other ages than the present; while, as respects our own times, it may be enough to mention Coleridge, Southey, Douglas of Cavers, Thomas Erskine of Linlathan, Bowdler, "Wil- berforce, and Isaac Taylor. Of this latter list, Coleridge, partly in his other writings, but chiefly in his " Table-talk," illustrated the general and more remote bearings of Christianity, the points where it touches upon the other sciences. Southey has stood up bravely for its external bulwarks, and exemplified its consistent morals. Douglas, to use the language of another, " eagle-eyed and eloquent, has anticipated time, and, surveying the world, has laid down the laws of general amelioration." Erskine has ad- mirably expounded the internal evidences of Christianity. Bowdler has strewn chaste flowers and Addisonian graces around its softer and more spiritual aspects. Wilberforce has laid bare its practical bearings. And Isaac Taylor has applied to the ex- posure of its corruptions and counterfeits, the vigour of a more original genius, and the splendour of a richer, more varied, and more dazzling eloquence, as well as entered v/ith a firm yet gentle tread on some of its more mysterious provinces. Isaac Taylor styles himself, in the title of one of his own chapters, the " Recluse." He has long ago retired from the world into tiie sanctuary of his own ijunily and his own soul. There, apart, but not askance — separate, but not utterly secludeil 248 ISAAC TAYLOR. regarding the distant crowd more in sorrow than in anger, and more in love than in sorrow — he passes the " noiseless tenor" of his serene and busy days, " He hears the tumult and is stilL" His mind dwells habitually in a lone and lofty sphere. The cell of his soul is curiously constructed, elaborately adorned, hung with antique tapestry, decked with tlie rich paintings of the past, and steeped through its gorgeous windows in a dim religious light. There seated, he now muses with half-shut eye upon the history of bygone ages — now erects himself to lift the large folios of the Fathers — now swells with righteous indignation as he re- members the corruption and degeneracy which so soon and so long supplanted the first faith and love of the primitive age — now analyses the palpitating heart of the enthusiast, and now turns to the sterner task of baring the flinty spirit of fanaticism now maps out the future history of the church and world — and now sinks into sublime reverie, and in the trance of genius sees " Hell, hades, heaven — the eternal how and where — The glory of the dead, and their despair." The leading power of Taylor's mind is not argument, though he reasons often acutely and energetically — nor is it imagination, though he has much of this faculty too — nor is it original and native thought, though he strikes out many sparkles of intuition on his way — nor is it eloquence, though his words are often quick and powerful: it is meditation — that refined action of the mind which is softer than ratiocination, more sublime than thought, calmer than passion, and cooler than genius. He is inspired, not by the Muses nor by the Furies — is neither full of the demon nor of the god; but above him hangs the "cherub contemplation," and over him broods her still but radiant wing. He evidently emulates that serene motion, or rather, rest of intellect, in which Plato, under the skies of Greece, rejoiced, and which, beneath the profounder firmament of Palestine, "unloosed its golden couplets" over the head of the Essenes and the earlier Christian mystics. While keenly alive to, and indignant at, the errors and abuses of mysticism, he has very strong sympathies with its better spirit with its voluntary solitude — its abnegation of self — its habits of still, spiritual communion with its own soul, and with the works and word of God. He is, above most modern writers, an orientalist. That " land of the east — that clime of the sun," is the country of his adoption. His learning has been collected in the gardens of eastern literature. His imagination has an oriental vastness and brilliancy in its wings, and he strings his sentences with " orient pearl." His style, too, seems dyed in the colours of a hotter sun than that of his native land. His views of divine truth, often clear and definite, not unfrequently shade away into the dim, the unformed, and the obscure — into " regions ISAAC TAYLOR. 249 where light glances at an angle only, without diiFusing itself over the whole surface." He loves to linger, and it is only a stern sense of duty which prevents him from lingering always, in the dubious and debatable tracts which smround the clear and firm territory of Scripture truth. His piety, too, is peculiar. Though true and sound, it is not the simple, fervid devotion of his father or sister. It is more that of the burning seraph than of the kneeling sajnt; it is the rapt contemplation of the divine attri- butes, rather than the abasement of a spirit overwhelmed in the view of its own guilt and misery. Blended, however, with this native tendency toward the lofty, the enthusiastic, and the dan- gerous realms of speculation — a tendency fostered, besides, by the course of his studies and the circumstances of his lot — there are counteracting and balancing elements in his mind, habits of deep submission to the divine testimony, a strong basis of solid judgment and varied knowledge, a distinct though not very deep vein of sarcastic observation, added to all the advantages which natural good sense must ever derive from English blood, birth, and training. It is a curious fact in literary history, that many writers have surpassed themselves, both in power and popularity, Avhile writ- ing under the shelter of the anonymous. Swift's " Tale of a Tub," which he never acknowledged, so far surpasses his other writings in fertility of invention, richness of humour, and force of style, that Dr Johnson refused to believe it his. Junius was strong only within the circle of that mysterious shadow which even yet rests on his name. Pascal's " Provincial Letters," the best of his v/orks, were issued anonymously. So were those of Peter Plymley. The admirable newspaper criticisms of " Jonathan," and the eloquent diatribes of O. P. Q., owed not a little of their zest to the obscurity which rested on the names of the authors. P>en the Waverley tales lost nothing from the doubt in which their authorship was for a season involved. We cannot tell how much of their power reviewers owe to their posi- tion — how much the masking adds to the momentum of their battery. And within a few years we have witnessed a book, written, indeed, in an easy and agreeable style, but developing an absurd theory, and swarming with blunders (the " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation"), rising into popularity upon the twin wings of the mischief of its intention and the mystery of its authorsliip. Whetlier this be owing to the greater liberty an anonymous writer enjoys — to the ideal position Avhich, pro- jected, as it were, out of himself, he for a season occupies — or to the twofold effect of mystification, in stimulating the mind of the writer, and provoking the curiosity of the reader — we do not stop to inquire. And perhaps it was in order to take advantage of this principle, that the subject of the present sketch, after hav- 250 ISAAC TAYLOR. ing to little purpose wooed the attention of the world in propria persona, determined to disguise himself, and walked forth at length in the graceful mask of the author of the " Natural History of Enthusiasm." The issue justified his most sanguine hopes of success. The book was fortunate in the time of its appearance. It came forth when the rage of Rovvism and Irvingism was at its height — when, in eveiy corner of the land, our old men, and women too, were seeing visions, and our young men and maidens were dreaming dreams. To analyse the subtle steam of enthu- siasm when it was rushing from the boiler — to detect and expose its distinct proportions of false and true — was an attempt daring, hazardous, but useful, and loudly demanded by the urgencies of the time. It required, too, peculiar qualifications, which seemed all possessed by the anonymous author: learning — he was mani- festly a ripe and good scholar; piety — his work glowed with it; eloquence — it heaved in every sentence; a vantage-ground lift- ing him above sectarian bias — the most acute were unable to tell to what denomination he belonged; soundness of religious senti- ment — the strain of the whole work was strictly evangelical; and last, not least, a sympathy with true enthusiasm, while he exposed and reprobated the false— and the book was no cold analysis, no stern and callous anatomy. The work, besides, was written in an elaborate and ornate style ; and though some of the more fas- tidious objected to its taste, and some of the more lynx-eyed de- tected marks of a manner affected, and a diction studiously dis- guised, yet, on the whole, the exclamation of the Christian church was " Behold, a master risen in Israel !" And straightway the question rose and ran, " Who is he?" Some bethought them- selves of Douglas of Cavers as the probable author, in despite of the most marked difference in sentiment, style, manner, and cast of thought. Others, even less acute, fancied that here was Foster shaking off his giant sleep, and arising a new man— a new man indeed ! — with a new intellect, a new learning, a new tempera- ment, and a new vocabulary. In certain circles, there were fre- quent rumours of some great Christian unknown — some gentler Junius — some wondrous young Titan — who was to astonish, if not revolutionise, the religious world. And, if here and there a solitary finger pointed to the " Recluse" of Stamford Rivers as the real author, the scornful rejoinder was, " What has he done hitherto — what proportion is there between the 'Elements of Thought' and the ' History of Enthusiasm?' Such a lion-like man of God could never have issued from the still parsonage of Ongar." Popular meanwhile the book became, particularly among students, who did their best to imitate its style, or with greater success to imbibe its spirit. Its main leading proposition, That the difference between true and false enthusiasm is a differ- ence of kind, not of degree— its rich and racy illustration — its ISAAC TAYLOR. 251 familiarity with the primitive and darker ages of the Church — its grand insulated pictures, as of the Romish hierarchy and the monastic system — its cheerful, sanguine, religious spirit — the rose-coloured glow which rested on its every page — and not less, with some, its blazing faults and deliberate innovations of lan- guage — were among the elements of its first success; and even yet, we believe, in popular estimation, retain it at the head of its author's works. Dearer to us, however, we confess, is his second woi-k, the " Saturday Evening." It is a series of sublime meditations, bound together by a certain shadowy tie, involving a multitude of topics nearest and dearest to the author's heart, and tinged with the sweet and solemn hues of the approaching Sabbath. " Dreams" they will be, they have been, called by the sceptical and the cold; but such an epithet, while it fails fully to express, fails entirely to damage their character. They open up, to the pious and imaginative, tracts of thought, like golden furrows in an evening sea, or like those glorious vistas which endlessly ex- pand in an evening heaven. They are dreams, but dreams of night, of heaven, of immensity, and eternity; and if the dream be there, the ladder whose top reached unto the sky is not far oiF. Philosophical views of the present and the past are not wanting; but the mind of the contemplatist is perpetually, as if on the wings of the evening, borne away up through the wilderness of worlds above his head — or on to those bright pages of the earth's story which remain to be turned over — or in amid the starry circles of the heavenly hosts — nay, at times, a step or two, but no more, up towards " The sapphire throne — the living blaze, Where angels tremble as they gaze." And yet, from the most daring of his excursions, he returns un- dazzled, and with lessons of practical truth, to his native home- stead of earth. We like especially his glimpses of the coming Sabbath of the world, which, like a red western heaven seen through trees, perpetually interposes its splendid boundary to the stages of his thought. Next to this, we like his " Vastness of the Material Creation," where to " him the book of night is opened ■wide" — and where he finds that a page thick with suns is not more true or glorious than one leaf of his Bible, where " voices from the depths of space proclaim a marvel and a secret;" but he discovers the marvel to be the old mystery of godliness, the secret to be only that of the Lord, which " is with them that fear him." By a strange association, this book of " Saturday Evening" suggests to us the Saturday i)apers of the " Spectator." They are "alike, but oh, how different!" Their subjects are the aame: night, the stars, immortality, God, and heaven. But, 252 ISAAC TAYLOR. since Addison's time, how much nearer have the stars approached ! and yet, in another sense, how much farther off have they re- ceded ! At what a ratio of more than geometric increase, has the universe been multiplying to our eyes ! And, witli regard to the other topics, in what deeper channels do the modern's thoughts flow than those of the gentle " Spectator!" Their language is the same; but how different the classic coolness, the careless but inimitable graces, the modest but inestimable ornaments, the ease and sweet simplicity of Addison's English, from the feverish heat and the rich tropical exuberance of Taylor's ! Their religion is the same; but how different the faint though true glow of Chris- tianity in Addison's page from that seraphic flame which burns in Taylor's! In what different ages written! The one a low and languid age — feeble in faith, feebler in love, feeblest of all in liope — in which Addison's sanctified genius shines as a sweet solitary star; the other a "juncture of eras" — a period of bustle, and heat, and hope, and progress, and anxious uncertainty, and listening silence; for do not most men expect the crisis of the earth to be coming soon — and do not " all creatures sigh to be renewed ?" We must permit ourselves a few observations upon " Fanati- cism," and the " Physical Theory of a Future Life." " Fanati- cism" was unfortunate in its subject. From the black and male- volent passions, even when portrayed by the hand of a master, men in general shrink. To dissect deformity, is a thankless task. And although it is said that the laws of disease are as beautiful as those of health, yet few have the patience or courage to wait till they are initiated into that terrible kind of beauty. Fanati- cism, also, was a topic too like enthusiasm to be susceptible of much novelty in the mode of treatment. And here and there you could detect traces of that mannerism and self-imitation which betray in authors their feai-, at least, that their vein is nearly exhausted — a fear reminding us of the reluctance of the mariner to take soundings in a suspected shallow. The style, too, had not improved from the date of his former work — nay, it bore marks of great effort, was uneven and uneasy, and sinned often against the laws of clearness, simplicity, and good taste. Something of the cloudy character of the theme seemed to have infected the writer; and the language was swollen, as if under the " fanaticism of the scourge." Still the book had bold bursts and splendid sweeping pictures; and it were worth while con- trasting its estimate of Mahometanism with that of Carlyle, and wondering by what strange possibility a system which appears to the one a vast and virulent ulcer should appear to the other a needful and healthful volcano, and through what transfiguring mairic IMahomet the monster of the one becomes Mahomet the hero of the other. ISAAC TAYLOR. 253 "We hinted, a little before, that there was in Taylor's mind a strong but subdued tendency toward the mystic and supernatural. In all his works, he seems standing on the confines of the spiri- tual world, leaning over the great precipice, and, with beseech- ino- looks, essaying to commune with the tremendous secrets of the final state. Entirely satisfied with the declarations of Scrip- ture, that there is immortality for man, he yet must " ask that dreadful question at the hills which look eternal" — at the streams which " lucid flow for ever" — at the stars, those bright and pure watchers — at the deepest metaphysics of the human mind— and find in them something more than a faltering perhaps, in addition to the loud, confident, and commanding, " Thus saith the Lord." Nay, in the " Physical Theory of Another Life," he fairly bursts across the barriers, enters like a " permitted guest" within the mighty curtain which divides the living and the dead, and with infinite ingenuity maps out the dim provinces and expounds the mysterious conditions of that strange world. The intention of the work has been often misapprehended. It is no dogmatic dream, like the visions of Swedenborg — no " rushing in where angels fear to tread." Nor is it the mere mechanical fancy dis- porting itself on the theme, as in the reveries of Tucker (to whom Tayloi-, however, is considerably indebted) ; it is a long philoso- phical, modest, and earnest conjecture — a trial, as it were, how far the human mind can go in that shadowy direction, and how far it is possible, by combining psychological principles with Scripture hints, to build up a probable and life-like scheme of the future existence. How far he has been successful in this attempt we shall, of course, never know till we enter on that solemn state ourselves. But, in the meantime, it is curious to think of this writer's spirit hereafter, from the height of eternity, looking back and comparing the continent of glory he has reached with the meagre yet memorable map he drew of it, in the infancy of his being. And yet more curious it were to imagine an actual denizen of that sublime world smiling a gentle smile over this effort of the unborn child to conceive of the green earth, the gay sun, and the ever-burning stars ! The reader would be richly rewarded who should sit down and compare the Visions of heaven and hell ascribed to Bunyan with Taylor's theory of a future life. Both are rich, eloquent, and imaginative dreams — but how different in spirit, manner, style, and scientific construction ! Between the two, what an interval has the religious mind traversed, at least in the mode of express- ing its tlioughts ! What a difference between the " melted gold" and coarse material torments of the one author, and the Ariel- like agonies of Taylor's supposed spirit, thrust out naked amid the quick agencies of an angry universe, where the silent light surrounds it as in a sea of fire, and where, through a thousand 254 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. avenues, rushes in upon it the wrath of Heaven. And yet the author of these Visions (Bunyan he certainly was not) was not only a man of high genius, as some magnificent passages prove, but a thorough scholar; for its frequent literary allusions and use of scholastic terms sufficiently evince that he was quite up to, if not before, the spirit and learning of his times. How little, after all, do the revolutions of time and the advancement of the human mind add to our real knowledge, however they may modify our feelings and language, in respect to the awful futurity before us ! The path of human progress, on one side so free and boundless, on another is soon met by its uttermost confine on earth, as by a wall of black, solid, and frowning marble ! Isaac Taylor is of " virtuous father, virtuous son." The praise of Taylor of Ongar was in " all the churches." His daughter, Jane Taylor, a woman of a highly cultivated and most feminine intellect, author of several well-known works, has been lona: dead. Isaac, at first designed for the Dissenting pulpit, became a barrister in preference, but has for many years resided in re- tirement at Stamford Kivers, educating his family, and prosecut- ing his own delightful and holy studies. A writer in the " Edinburgh Review" (Sir James Stephen) has given a descrip- tion of his early feelings and his present habits of life, displaying at once the warmth of personal friendship and the sympathy of kindred intellect and kindred sentiments. We learn with inte- rest from it, that Taylor is an expert and eager angler, as well as the far-famed author of the " Natural History of Enthusiasm;" that he spends his Saturday mornings in directing the sports of his dear children; while his Saturday evenings are devoted to the loftiest meditations which can engross the soul of mortal. Alto- gether, we deem him the most accomplished of modern religious authors, and heartily wish him life and strength to fulfil that great work of his life, from which the tractarian controversy has for a season drawn him aside — the history of the various corrup- tions of Christianity, which, if worthily completed, as it has been worthily commenced, shall assuredly and honourably preserve his name. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. America has been long looking for its Poet, and has been taught by many sages to believe that hitherto it has been looking in vain. Each new aspirant to the laurel has been scanned with a watchfulness and jealousy, proportioned to the height of expec- HEXRY WADSWOUTH LONGFELLOW. 255 tation which had been excited, and to the length of time during which that expectation has been deferred; and because the risen Poet did not supply the vacuum of centuries — did not clear all the space by which Britain had got the start of her daughter — did not include in his single self the essence of Shakspere, Spenser, Milton, and Byron — his genius was pronounced a failure, and his works naught. Tests were proposed to him, from which our home authors would have recoiled. Originalities were demanded of him, which few of ourselves, in this imitative age, have been able to exemplify. As in Macbeth, not the " child's," but the " armed head," was expected to rise first from the vacant abyss. American literature must walk before creeping, and fly before walking. Not unfrequently our British journals contained pro- grammes of the genius and writings of the anticipated Poet, differing not more from common sense, than from each other. " He must be intensely national," said one authority. " He must be broadly Catholic — of no country," said a second. " He mui«t be profoundly meditative, as his own solitary woods," said a third. " He must be bustling and fiery, as his own railways," said a fourth. One sighed for an American Milton; another predicted the uprise of another Goethe, " Giant of the Western Star;" and a third modestly confined his wishes within the compass of a second Shakspere. Pernicious as, in some measure, such inordinate expectations must have proved to all timid and vacillating minds in America, it did not prevent its bolder and more earnest sprits from taking their own way — by grafting, upon the stock of imported poetry, many graceful and lovely shoots of native song. In spite of the penumbra of prejudice against American verse, more fugitive floating poetry of real merit exists in its literature than in almost any other. Dana has united many of the qualities of Crabbe to a portion of the wierd and haggard power of Coleridge's muse. Percival has recalled Wordsworth to our minds, by the pensive and tremulous depth of his strains. Bryant, without a trace of imitation, has become the American Campbell — equally select, simple, chary, and memorable. In reply to Mrs Hemans, have been uttered a perfect chorus of voices — " Sweet and melancholy sounds, Like music on the waters." Emerson has poured forth notes, sweet now as the murmur of bees, and now strong as the roar of torrents ; here cheerful as the pipings of Arcadia, and there mournfully melodious as the groana of Ariel, from the centre of his cloven pine. And with a voice of wide compass, clear articulation, and most musical tones, has Longfellow sung his manifold and melting numbers. The distinguishing qualities of Longfellow seem to be beauty 256 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. of imagination, delicacy of taste, wide sympathy, and mild earnest- ness, expressing themselves sometimes in forms of quaint and fan- tastic fancy, but always in chaste and simple language. His ima- gination sympathises more with the correct, the classical, and the refined, than with the outer and sterner world, where dwell the dreary, the rude, the fierce, and the terrible shapes of things. The scenery he describes best is the storied richness of the Rhine, or the golden glories of the Indian summer, or the environs of the old Nova Scotian village, or the wide billowing prairie ; and not those vast forests, where a path for the sunbeams must be hewn, nor those wildernesses of snow, where the storm and the wing of the condor divide the sovereignty. In the midst of such dreadful solitudes, his genius rather shivers and cowers, than rises and reigns. He is a spirit of the Beautiful, more than of the Sublime ; he has lain on the lap of Loveliness, and not been dandled, like a lion-cub, on the knees of Terror. The magic he wields, though soft, is true and strong. If not a prophet, torn by a secret burden, and uttering it in wild, tumultuous strains, he is a genuine poet, who has sought for, and found, inspiration, now in the story and scenery of his own contry, and now in the lays and legends of other lands, whose native vein, in itself ex- quisite, has been highly cultivated and delicately cherished. It is to us a proof of Longfellow's originality, that he bears so well and meekly his load of accomplishments and acquirements. His ornaments have not crushed him, nor impeded the motions of his own mind. He has transmuted a lore, gathered from many languages, into a quick and rich flame, which we feel to be the flame of Genius. It is evident that his principal obligations are due to German literature, which over him, as over so many at the present day, exerts a certain wild witchery, and is tasted with all the sweet- ness of the forbidden fruit. No writer in America has more steeped his soul in the spirit of German poetry, its blended home- liness and romance, its simplicity and fantastic emphasis, than Longfellow ; and, if he does not often trust himself amidst the weltering chaos of its philosophies, you see him, lured by their fascination, hanging over their brink, and rapt in wonder at their strange, gigantic, and ever shifting forms. Indeed, his " Hype- rion" contains two or three most exquisite bits of transcen- dentalism. Longfellow is rather a romantic and sentimental, than a philo- sophical poet. He throws into verse the feelings, moods, and fancies of the young or female mind of genius, not the mature cogitations of profound philosophy. His song is woven of moon- light, not of strong summer sunshine. To glorify abstractions, to flush clear, naked truth into beauty, to "build" up poems slowly and solidly, as though he were piling pyramids, is neither HENRT WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 257 his aim nor his attainment. He gathers, on the contrary, roses and lilies — the roses of the hedge and lilies of the field, as well as those of the garden — and wreathes them into chaplets for the brow and neck of the beautiful. His poetry is that of sentiment, rather than of thought. But the sentiment is never false, nor strained, nor mawkish. It is always mild, generally manly, and sometimes it approaches the sublime. It touches both the female part of man's mind and the masculine part of woman's. He can at one time start unwonted tears in the eyes of men, and at an- other kindle on the cheeks of women a glorious glow of emotion, which the term blush cannot adequately measure ; as far superior to it as is the splendour of a sunset to the bloom of a peach. "We have been struck with the variety of Longfellow's poems. He has written hitherto no large, recondite work. His poems are all short — effusions, not efforts. He has exhibited no traces of a comic vein. His sphere is that of sentiment, moralising ele- gantly upon many objects. And yet, within that sphere there is little mannerism, repetition, or self-imitation. His sentiment as- sumes a great variety of aspects. Now it is tender to tears, and now heroic to daring ; now it muses, and now it dreams ; now it is a reverie, and now a rapture ; now it is an allegory, now a psalm, and again a song ; everything, in short, save a monotony. Nor is this the many-sidedness of a mocking-bird. The sentiment of the varied song, as well as the song of the varied sentiment, is ever his own. One of the most pleasing characteristics of this writer's works is their intense humanity. A man's heart beats in his every line. His writings all " Take a sober colour from the eye, That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." He loves, pities, and feels with, as Avell as for, his fellow " human mortal." Hence his writing is blood-warm. He is a brother, speaking to men as brothers, and as brothers are they responding to his voice. Byron addressed men as reptiles or fiends ; Words- worth and others soliloquise, careless whether their voice be lis- tened to or not. But no poet can be so much loved who does not speak from the broad level of humanity. If we dare apply the language, " he must be touched with a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, and have been tempted in all jjoints as we are." He must have fallen and risen, been sick and sad, been joyful and pensive, drank of the full cup of man's lot, ere he can so write that man will take his writings to his heart, and appropriate them as part of the great general human stock. A prophet may wrap himself uj) in austere and mysterious solitude ; a poet must come "eating and drinking." Thus came 8haksi)ere, Drydtn, Burns, Scott, Goethe ; and thus have come in our day Hood and Long- fellow. 258 HENKT WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Besides this quality of generous, genial nianliood, Longfellow is distinguished by a mild religious earnestness. "VVe do not vouch for the orthodoxy of his creed, but we do vouch for the fine Christianity of his spirit. No poet has more beautifully expressed the depth of his conviction, that life is an earnest reality — a some- thing with eternal issues and dependencies ; that this earth is no scene of revelry, or market of sale, but an arena of contest. This is the inspiration of his " Psalm of Life ;" than which we have few things finer, in moral tone, since those odes by which the millions of Israel tuned their march across the Avilderness, and to which the fiery pillar seemed to listen with complacency, and to glow out a deeper crimson in silent praise. To man's now wilder, more straggling, but still God-guided and hopeful progress towards a land of fairer promise, Longfellow's " Psalm " is a noble accom- paniment : — "Life is rea], Life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal : ' Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment and not sorrow, Is our being's destined way ; But to act that each to-morrow Finds us farther than to-day. In the world's broad field of battle. In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle I Be a hero in the strife I Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! Let the dead Past bury its dead I Act — act in the living Present ! Heart within, and God o'erhead ! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time, — Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing. With a heart for any fate ; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait." Glancing again critically at Longfellow's poems, we find that his genius is essentially lyrical. Neither the severity of epic power IIEXRY -WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 259 nor the subtlety of the dramatic genius, are his. But how swiftly and surely does he respond to those passing impulses which come upon his soul, like winds from the forest, and which, like sudden gusts, are brief, musical— now swelling into high rapture, and now dying away in tremulous pathos! Mrs Hemans and Sir "Walter Scott once coincided in remarking, that each tree gives forth a peculiar cadence to the wind ; and we have ourselves noticed, that from the willow there issues a dry, hissing, eery sound ; from the sycamore, a full murmur, as if the tree were one vast bee-hive ; from the pine, a deep, mellow, lingering tone, as though each cone were an ivory key ; and from the oak a strong, sturdy, reluctant rustle, as if it were an unwilHng instrument in the hand of the blast. Thus do Longfellow's liner poems play themselves otf upon the autumn trees of the Western forest, as upon harps of^gold — one being sad and stern — another, quiet and full, as of many murmurs rounded into one calm — a third, soft and long-drawn — and a fourth, rough, abrupt, and tormented into music. Ere speaking of some of his poems in detail, we must permit ourselves a word on the only prose work of his with which we are acquainted — " Hyperion." We shall never forget the circum- stances of its first perusal. We took it, as our pocket companion, with us, on our first walk down the Tweed, by Peebles, Inver- leithen, Clovenford, Ashestiel, and Abbotsford. It was fine, at any special bend of the stream, or any beautiful spot along its brink, taking it out, and finding in it a conductor to our own surcharged emotions. In our solitude, we felt " we are not alone, for these pages can sympathise with us." The course of " Hype- rion," indeed, is that of a river, winding at its own sweet will — now laughing and singing to itself, in its sparkling progress, and now slumbering in still, deep pools ; here laving corn-fields and vineyards, and there lost in wooded and sounding glens. In- terest it has much — incident, little ; its charm is partly in the " Excelsior " progress of the hero's mind, partly in the sketches of the great German authors, and principally in the sparkling imagery and waving, billowy language of the book. Longfellow, in this work, is Jean Paul Kichter, without his grotesque extra- vagances, or riotous humour, or turbulent force. He seems a lesser and more simple form of the same genus, sprung from him, as the elephant from the mammoth. We have just alluded to "Excelsior," one of those happy thoughts which seem to drop down, like fine days, from some serener region, which meet instantly the ideal of all minds, and run on afterwards, and for ever, in the current of the human heart. We can now no more conceive of a world without "Ex- celsior," than of a world without the " Iliad," the " Comus," or the " Midsummer Night's Dream." It has expressed in the hap- 260 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. piest and briefest way what many minds in the age had been try- ing in vain to express. Thousands, therefore, were ready to cry out, " That's my thought ; that's my desire; that's myself; I bear that banner ; I fear not to die that death!" " Excelsior" typifles all that is heroic, and high, and disinterested in the age. " Ex- celsior!" cries the student, as he climbs the steep ascent of science. "Excelsior!" cries the poet, who takes up Parnassus as but a little thing. " Excelsior!" cries the thinker; "I have passed the transcendental, let me have at the divine." " Excel- sior ! " cries the liver ; " let me reach virtue, not merely as a law, but as a life." "Excelsior!" cries everywhere the young time; "let us onward and upward, though it be into the regions of the storm ; we are weary of the past, let us try what the future will do for us." "Excelsior !" cry the dying, who feel that death is but a door into the infinite ; " let us up and breathe the atmos- phere of the stars." More than one brave spirit has departed singing this noble song-burst of " Excelsior!" "Excelsior" is Life and its ¥sa\m jjersonijied. Longfellow has written in it his glowing hopes of the future, as well as his theory of the past. That figure, climbing the evening Alps, in defiance of danger, of man's remonstrance, and the far deeper fascination of woman's love, is a type of man struggling, triumphing, purified by suffering, perfected in death. And it insinuates strongly the poet's belief in that coming ei-a in human history, when the worth and grandeur of man's regenerated life will cast a calm and beauty, at present inconceivable, around his death, and when the roses, and chaplets, and premature rejoicings of his bridal, shall more worthily await his marriage with the infinite. Who pants and prays not for the arrival of such a day, when the sting of death shall thus be taken out — when its grand meaning and porch- like position shall be fully disclosed and vividly realised ? Next to "Excelsior" and the "Psalm of Life," we are dis- posed to rank " Evangeline." Indeed, as a w^ork of art, it is superior to both, and to all that Longfellow has written in verse. Save " Hyperion," it is his onli/ piece of pure and elaborate art. We began to read it under a certain degree of prejudice at the measure, which has been so vulgarised by Southey, in his la- mentable " Vision of Judgment." But soon Southey, " Vision of Judgment," and all, were forgotten. Acadia — Arcadia it might be called — and the sweet moonlight of Evangeline's face, crowded the whole sky of our imagination. Nothing can be more truly conceived, or more tenderly expressed, than the picture of that primitive Nova Scotia, and its warm-hearted, hospitable, happy, and pious inhabitants. We feel the air of the "Fore- world" around us. The light of the Golden Age — itself joy, music, and poetry — is shining above. There are evenings of summer or autumn tide so exquisitely beautiful, so complete in their own HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 261 charms, that the entrance of the moon is felt ahiiost as a painful and supertiiious addition ; it is like a candle dispelling the wierd darkness of a twiliglit room. So we feel at first, as if Evange- line, when introduced, were an excess of loveliness — an amiable eclipser of the surrounding beauties. But even as the moon, by and by, vindicates her intrusion, and creates her own " holier day," so with the delicate and lovely heroine of this simple story — she becomes the centre of the entire scene. She is that noblest of characters, a lady in grain. She has borrowed her motions and attitudes from the wind-bent trees; her looks have kindled at the stars ; her steps she has unwittingly learned from the moving shadows of the clouds. On her way home from confession, " when she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." Thus should all lives be led, all steps be tuned ; and thus they shall, whenever Love, instead of Law, shall lead the great dance of human life. Purest of virgins, art thou to be sacrificed! Finest of vessels, art thou to be dashed in pieces ! It seems almost cruel in the poet to try her so painfully, and to send her to seek her sole redress iu heaven. "We think every reader must feel that the first part of " Evan- geline" is far superior to the second. Evangeline's search after her lover is beautifully described, but becomes at last oppressive and painful. AVe cry out, in our sorrow and disappointment, for Acadia, with its crowing cocks, bursting barns, flowery meadows, and happy hearts back again. The descriptions of American scenery in " Evangeline" are, in general, extremely picturesque and beautiful. AVitness this, for example : — " Now had the season return'cl, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating Sun tlie sign of the Scorpion enters; Birds of passage sail'd through the leaden air from the icebound Desohite northern bays, to the shores of the tropical islands. Harvests were gather'd in ; and, wild with the winds of September, AVrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel." The picture of the Indian summer is finer still, with the ex- ception of the conceit with which it closes : — " Array'd in its robes of russet, and scarlet, and yellow; Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forctt Flash'd like the plane-tree the Persian adorn'd with mantles and jewels." This last line contains a poor and forced memory. Wliat an injury to the glorious forest-tree to compare it to the foolif^h and contemptible freak referred to. The simile is alike far-fetched and worthless. " I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." z 262 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, By a similar conceit (a mode of writing quite unusual with liiin), has he spoiled one of his finest j)assages : — "Meanwhile, apart in the twilight-gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers, and whispering together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea, and the silvery mist of the meadows, Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossom'd the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels." Next to the spectacle of a man destroying a noble constitution, or marring fine faculties, is that of an author deliberately spoil- ing a passage which otherwise had touched or trembled on per- fection. It is a case of literary felo de se. What business had the idea of a forget-me-not at such a moment ? Gabriel Lajeunesse himself, we are certain, enamoured as he was, and even in that most imaginative hour, never could dream of seeing an angel with a knot of stars on his breast while visiting his true love. Such faults are rare in this writer. Once or twice, indeed, he approaches the brink of the bathos, and snatches one of those few, perilous, and precious flowers which bloom along it. Thus, in " Hyperion," he compares a glacier to a gauntlet of ice, thrown down by winter, in deliance of the sun ; a thought so beautiful, that you forget the danger which he has encountered and escaped in finding it for you. A striking little copy of verses he has entitled " The Light of Stars." His " bright particular star" is not the " star of Jove, so beautiful and large," nor the star of lovers. Yen us, nor the star of suicides, Saturn. It is the star of warriors, " the red light of Mars." We share with him in his feelings. Mars has, to men, more points of interest and sympathy than almost any other planet. One frozen band at least binds us to it. One white signal has been hung out by this near vessel ; snow and winter are there. And if, as analogy would plead, there be in- habitants, these inhabitants must be somewhat like ourselves. There are Jii'cs, there are hearths, there are homes in Mars! There is struggle, there may be sin, there may be death — there is contest, there is mystery, there may be victory ! What home sounds, what thrilling tones, what an array oi' signals, what a slieaf of telegraphic rays, from that red planet ! Hear Long- fellow — "Earnest tlioughts within me rise, Wht-n I behold afar, Suspended in the evening skies, The shield of that red star. star of strength ! I see thee stand, And smile upon my pain; 'ihou beckonest with thy mailed hand, And I am strong again. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 263 Within my breast there is no light, But the cold light of stars; I give the first watch of the night To the red planet Mars." "We must not overlook a poem entitled " Footsteps of Angels." "Who are the angels Avho visit and imprint his heart? Xo cherubim — dim to him amid all their blaze of intelligence. Ko strange seraphs — cold to him amid all their flames of fire. They are the friends of his youth — the loved of his early heart — now sons and daughters of the grave. The eye of his heart sees them ; the ear of his heart hears their soft footsteps, and their voices so low and sweet. Have all of us not at times such angel visits? Are we not at this moment summoned to look up, and see and hear them? Ah! we know that strong, deep-furrowed face, that lofty brow, those locks sprinkled with grey, that eye restless with the fire of intelligence, and with the liglit of pater- nal affection. We know too, too well, that young form, that step light as the roe's upon the mountains, that clear blue eye, that brown curling head, that forehead so high, that face so pale and beautiful, over which, ere her ten winters had passed, death had spread a ghastlier paleness — it is our Agnes, at once sister and child ! And we cry, " Oh God ! if it be thus, and thou Art not a madness and a mockery, We yet might be most happy." Longfellow's writings are in general prophetic of, and prepa- ratory for, the grand reconciliation of man, both as regards man the individual, and man the species. In his " Arsenal," and hi.s " Occultation of Orion," he shadows forth the " coming of the milder day," when there is " Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise." And both in " Hyperion" and " Evangeline," the agency of sorrow, in purging the eye, subduing the senses, Avatering all the stronger plants in the soul's garden, is abundantly recog- nised. "NVe cannot linger much longer with this delightful writer. He lias scattered many other delicious drops of song along his course. Such are — " llain in Summer," " To a Child," " To the Driving Cloud," and " The Old Clock on tlic Stairs." 'J'hese are all amiable carols, inspirited with poetic life, decorated with chaste image, and shadowed with pensive sentiment, like the hand of manhood laid gently upon the billowing head of a child. 264 HENRT WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. The character of a translator's own genius may be gathered with considerable accuracy from his selection of pieces to trans- late. In general, the gi'aceful bends to the graceful, the pensive sighs back to the pensive, and the strong shadows the strong. Longfellow has not dared any lofty heights, or sounded any dark hollows, of foreign poetry. The exquisite patriarchal simplicities of the Swedish ballad have attracted his kindi-ed spirit. It is not " deep calling unto deep." It is one corn-field responding to another, across the hedge, under one soft westerly breeze. Need we do more than allude to " The Children of the Lord's Supper," which, both in verse and spirit, is the model of "Evangeline." Thus he characterises himself as a translator : — " The translation is literal, perhaps to a fault. In no instance have I done the author a wrong, by introducing into his work any supposed im- provements or embellishments of my own. I have preserved even the measure, that inexorable hexameter in which, it must be confessed, the motions of the English muse are not unhke those of a prisoner dancing to the music of his chains ; and per- haps, as Dr Johnson said of the dancing dog, ' the wonder is not that she should do it so Avell, but that she should do it at all.'" We close our paper with feelings of gratitude and respect for our transatlantic author. It is pleasant, in this melancholy world, to " light upon such certain places," where beautiful dreams, and lofty, generous aspirations, lift us up, on a ladder, into ideal regions, which are yet to become real ; for every such aspiration is a distinct step upwards to meet our expected New •Jerusalem of man, "coming down as a bride adorned for her husband." Every volume of genuine poetry, besides, constitutes a cool grotto of retreat, with the altar of a bloodless sacrifice standing in the midst. We love, too, even better than the poetry of this volume, its sunny, genial, human, and hopeful spirit. Perhaps there are more depth and ])ower, certainly there are more peculiarity and strangeness, in Emerson's volume, but over many parts of it is suspended a dry, rainless cloud of gloom, which chills and withers you. You become, it may be, a wiser, but certainly a sadder man. Longfellow sheds a chequered autumnal light, under which your soul, like a river, flows for- ward, serene, glad, strong, and singing as it flows — " Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate ; Still achie-ving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait." 265 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. These sketches are by no means intended as a complete literary history of the age ; yet we believe that in our two " G-allerie-: " few names of great note will be found altogetiier omitted. We have not, indeed, analysed at length such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, Home, Robert Browning, or INIarston, partly be- cause we are not fully acquainted with their works, and partly because they have been thoroughly treated by other writers. To omit, however, a distinct notice of such a phenomenon as " Festus," were unpardonable, and to this we now address our- selves. " Festus" is, indeed, a phenomenon. '* When I read ' Festus,'" said poor David Scott to us, " I was astonished to lind such work going on in a mind of the present day." It seemed to him, as Edinburgh on first view was called by Haydon, a "giant's dream." Indeed, it much I'esembles one of Scott's own vast uneartlily pictures, the archetypes of which he may have recognised now in that world of shadows, of which he was born and lived a denizen ; for surely, if ever walked a " phantom amongst men," it was the creator of " Vasco," " Sarpedon," and the " Resurrection of the Cross." The first feeling which affected many besides us at the perusal of " Festus," was a shock of surprise, mixed with pain, and not free from a shade of disgust. If we did not " believe," we trembled ; if we did not sympathise, we shuddered. Everything was so strange, that the whole seemed monstrous. We can com- pare our feelings to nothing else than Cain's flight with Lucifer through the stars. We found ourselves caught up on dark and mighty wings, tlirough wildernesses of dim and shadowy objects, worlds unpeopled, w^orlds half-created, worlds peopled by forms so monstrous that solitude seemed sweet in the comparison — " gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire." But just as disgust and terror were about to drive us away from this weltering chaos, a light appeared, softer than sunlight, warmer than moon- light — the light of genius — whicli beckoned us on, and in which, at last, all the abortionul shapes and unearthly scenery became beautiful as the landscapes of a dream. It was an angel after all, and not an eccentric demon, who was our conductor, and we yielded ourselves gladly to his gentle guidance, although the path lay over all prodigious and unspeakable regions. We want words to express tlie wonder which grew upon us, as each page opened like a new star, and we felt that the riches of thought, and inuigcry, and language, scattered through the j)oem, were absolutely " iineless," and that the poet's mind was a.s vast as his theme. That vague but thrilling wonder has sub- 266 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. sided into a calm but profound sense of tlie various elements of power and beauty which compose the "one and indivisible" " Festus." It is, first of all, an original production. Some, indeed, have called it a mere cento from Goethe, Byron, and Slielley. We srant at once that it bears a strikinir resemblance to some of the productions of those great three ; but the resemblance is only that of a kindred subject and a kindred elevation. It is a new comet in an old sky. As well call " Manfred" a copy of " Faust," or " Faust" of Job, as trace " Festus" to a slavish imitation of any preceding poem. It takes its place instantly as the lawful member of a family of sublime eccentrics, who have pierced more or less boldly into forbidden regions "beyond the solar path and milky-way," and whose fiery tresses tell on their return that they have neared the ardours now of the light that is full of glory, and now of the flames that shall never be quenched. In all these, however, the argument and object are different. Job, as we mean to show elsewhere, contains a solution of the grand problem of the reconciliation of individual man to God, and to the difficulties of the universe, through a divine medium. " Faust" is a fragmentary attempt to settle the same question, apart from supernatural aid, " Manfred" howls back to both, that such reconciliation is impossible, and that the riddle of the universe is absolutely illegible by man. Shelley's " Prometheus" is the argument of the " Faust" extended from man the indi- vidual to man the species ; while Bailey's " Festus" is the argu- ment of Job applied, in like manner, to the whole human family. He takes a similar view to that which Blake has so beautifully developed in his illustrations of the book of Job. " Festus" is to the one as Job to the other — a type of the fall and recovery of all men. The scene of "Faust" and of "Prometheus" is in earth; that of Job and of " Festus" is (essentially) in eter- nity. That the book of Job is intended to teach universal restoration, we do not, notwithstanding Blake, believe. But one principal object of " Festus" is to promulgate this dream. A lovely dream, verily, it is. That the surprise of a final deliverance should pierce into the darkness of the second death — that heads bowed down on the pillows of despair should be raised up to look and be lightened by the third advent of a more glorious " star of Lethe" than was ever Mercury as he descended into the Pagan .shades — that "faces faded in the fire" should glow with the freshness of eternal youth — that the prey should be taken out of the hands of such mighty ones, and the captives from a fate so terrible, that the spring of a sublimer resurrection should reach the remote Hecla of hell, substituting flowers for flames, and for ice sunshine — that the words of the " Devil's Dream" should THILIP JAMES BAILEY. 267 be fulfilled even in the case of the eldest born of Anarchy and Sin — " Thou shalt walk in soft white light, with kings and priests nbroad, And thou shfiU. summer high in bliss upon the hills of God" — is a most captivating notion, and might be credited, had it the sliglitest ground in the Word of God, or anywhere but in the poetic fancy or the wild wish of man. As it is, it rises up be- fore us, a brilliant but unsubstantial and fading pomp, like a splendid evening sky ; or if it die not altogether away, it must be from its connection with the imperishable fame of " Festus." We could have wished that the author of this poem had severed its masses of beauty from a moral or theological system. All such unions are dangerous to poems. Milton, indeed, has sur- mounted the difficulty; and while we spurn Shelley's assertion that the system of Christianity shall by and by only be remem- bered in Milton's poem, we grant that the " Paradise Lost" is a subordinate evidence of its truth, as well as a rich halo around its central and solid greatness. To Pollok's work, again, his high Calvinism has proved partly a blessing and partly a bane — inwrought as it is, into the entire structure of the poem, it has created either blind partisans or bitter enemies ; only a few have been able to look tlirough the "fire-mist" into the poetical beauties wdiich are hid beneath it. In like manner, while Festus has been adoi)ted and fondled by the large sect (large at least in America) calling itself Universalists, its doctrines have repelled many of the ortiiodox, who otherwise would have rejoiced in the " wilderness of sweets" and the foi-est of grandeurs, Avhich its circuit includes. Nor must Mr Bailey imagine that he has, by his notion of a universal restoration, in any effectual way re- commended religion to the sceptical of the present day. Eternal punisliment, fifty years ago, was a great stumbling-block to un- quiet spirits. Such have generally now travelled on so far to- wards Naturalism or Pantheism, that they will not return at the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely — they will laugh at the fine dream, as a man wonh\ at the offer of sugar-plums ibr food — and walk on their own ungovernable way. They will ask, must not the reason for a hell at all be an injlnite one, and, if so, is it not likely to be an eternal reason too? Jn every great house, is there not a furnace for the dross, as well as a light in the drawing-room ? If sin be of an expansive; character, will not punishment ex[)and along with it? or, if God means to destroy sin hereafter, why does he not begin by abolishing it here? And what need, they will ask again, of any hell afterwards, when jus- tice is done now? And, again, your theory may prove the book human, but does it prove it divine? Thus innocuously will the milk and rose-water of Bailey's 268 PHILIP JAMES BAILET. doctrine drop upon the iron scales of modern scepticism, which seeks now not so much to object to our special form of revela- tion, as to deny revelation altogether. Bailey's originality is not merely that of plan, but of thought and style. He "hath a demon," He speaks as immediately told from behind. All conventionalisms are spumed — all oppo- sites paired — all contradictions reconciled — all elements mingled — all tenses lost in the holy and glorious hubbub of '• Festus." He is evidently a boy at blood-heat, but an inspired boy. We have been as much ainazed to find critics treating "Festus" — sometimes with praise, sometimes with blame — as an elaborate piece of art, as Byron was to find his " Don Juan" — the child of gin and sin — treated by the Germans as an artistic work. But Bailey's book is the effect of the intoxication of youth — a power- ful and lawful stimulant, which the poor jaded hack of the " Examiner" or " Athenajum," or any such small critic, is as in- capable of sympathising with as he is now of imbibing. These miserable effigies of critics, when they approach books like " Festus," should really read the " Eiot Act ;" for certainly such works do rebel against all arbitrary authority, and do stir the air and load the wind with extravagant liberties of thought and word, which neither they nor their fathers (Rymer, Dennis, &c.) were able to bear. We have, within the last few years, witnessed (through such critics) the strange phenomena of a Dickens deified and a Christopher North (save in Scotland) for- gotten, a Warren's "Now and Then" in its third edition, and Aird's "Poems" scarcely out of their first, Macaulay crowned with the richest laurels of the historic muse, and Thomas de Quincey, with a genius, an intellect, and a learning qualifying him for an historian as far superior to the ex-Edinburgh member as was Tacitus to Suetonius, having "nowhere to lay his head" a "Course of Time" and a "Silent Love" in their teens of editions, and " Festus," after ten years, in its third ; phenomena somewhat substantiating the assertion of an old clever clergyman about the march of intellect, " It has certainly been very rapid of late — it has marched out of sight.'' The poem of " Festus," however, has by no means lost its re- ward. Its evident earnestness — its holy yet charitable spirit — its inexhaustible fountain of imagery — its individual thoughts of splendour, like spots of sunshine amid the dark forests around — its long sweeping passages, which seem to grow visibly and audibly before you — its infinite variety — the spirit and music of its songs — the living aspect of its characters — the bold but strik- ing generality of its descriptions — the simplicity, or force, or beauty, or languor, of its language — the broad picture of life it presents — prove it, apart from its theological pretensions, the poem of the age's hope, even as " Sartor Resartus" is the prose rniLIP JAMES BAILEY. 269 record of the age's experience. "We sliould, perhaps, forbear to add, that, besides the warm verdict of the thinking youth of tlie country, it has gained the praise of Bulwer, Montgomery, Wilson Tennyson, Binney, David Scott, Professor Nichol, Samuel Brown, and others of equal note. Partial, or insincere, or inte- rested praise (althougli we by no means apply these terms to the above), and also malicious censure, may be told here to stand aside, inasmuch as " Festus" has Avritten its own indelible im- press upon a very broad, true, and responsive section of the in- tellectual world. " You may know it by its fruits." " The young mind of the age!" What a multitude of thoughts crowd on us when we utter tiiese simple words! What mingled hope and fear — what tremulous anticipations rush in, as ^ve think of what it is, and of what it may become — of the work it has to do, and the sutteiings it has to endure! Never was there an age when there were so many young, ardent, and gifted spirits — never w\as there an age when they moi-e required wise guidance. The desideratum may be thus expressed, " Wanted, a tutor to the rising age ; he must be a creedless Christian — full of faith, but full of charity — wise in head and large in heart — a poet and a priest — an ' eternal child,' as well as a thoroughly furnished man." This advertisement has not yet been fully answered. The work of Carlyle and Emerson has been principally negative, and it seems now nearly perfected. We wait a new teacher, who, by uniting the spirit of Christianity to that of philosophy, shall present us with a satisfactory whole — with nothing less than which our eager incjuirers will rest contented. May all the quick and cunning forces of nature combine in forming such an august spirit ! Yet are we not at all sanguine of his speedy ad- vent. Things, we fear, must be worse ere they are better. And, perhaps, the deepest hour of the darkness may be cloven by no earthly radiance, but by the wide wings of that advent for which the weary Cluircli and the wearier world are beginning to pant, witli unutterable groanings. Meanwhile, many gifted spirits, besides Bailey, are working a good work. Some poets of uncommon promise are ever and anon appearing. Among these we may mention the author of " Nimrod," a work contain- ing much fine description and exquisitely developed cliaracter. Aytoun has given us one admirable ballad on " Montrose," al- thougli his vein is not of the deepest; Henry Sutton, A. J. Symington, Strype, and William Allingiiam, are all gifted and promising persons. But our greatest hope is fixed on Sydney Yendys, of Cheltenham ; tiiis young gentleman lias wi-itten a drama entitled " The lioman," still in MS., of which Shelley himself would not have been ashamed. With something of tlie diffusion and exaggeration of youth, it has a richness of thought, 2 a 270 JOHN STERLI^•G. a felicity of language, a copiousness of imagery, a music of ver- sification, not easy in any first effort to be paralleled. It con- tains passages of beauty or power wliich absolutely startle you, and specimens of every variety of excellence, from the lofty de- clamation to the melting ballad. We stake whatever critical reputation we have on the prediction, that no recent poem, save " Festus," shall make a profounder impression upon the lovers of poetry when it appears, than " The Roman." It is a very conflagration of genius, as well as in many parts a high triumph of art.* JOHN STERLING. The removal of a young man of high performance and still liigher promise, is in all circumstances melancholy. It is more so, if with the youth has expired either a new vein of poetry or a new view of truth; and it is scarcely less so when the youth has been unconsciously the type of a large class of cultivated and earnest minds, and when his partial successes, baffled endeavours — bis admitted struggles, and his premature fate — have been in some measure vicarious. These three short and simple sentences appear to us to include, positively and negatively, the essence of the late John Sterling, and shall form the leading heads in our after remarks on his genius and character. He was, in the j udgraent of all Avho knew or had carefully read him, a person of very distinguished abili- ties, and of still more singular promise. He did not, in oirr view of him, exhibit indications of original insight or of creative genius. But he has, from his peculiar circumstances, from his speculative and practical history, from his exquisitely-tuned symphonies with his age and its progressive minds, acquired a double portion of interest and importance; his experience seems that of multitudes, and in that final look of disappointed yet sub- missive inquiry which he casts up to heaven, he is but the fore- most in a long, fluctuating, and motley file. The external evidences of his powers and acquirements are numerous and irresistible. In his boyhood, he discovered strik- * Since the above was written, the " Roman " has appeared, and its recep- lion has fully justified our expectations. Critics of all sorts and sizes have vied in doing it homage. Its author, like Byron, "awoke one morning and found himself famous." He is destined yet to do greater works than this — yea, the very greatest. JOUX STERLING. 271 inz tokens of a mind keen, sensitive, and turned in the direction ofthose liigli s[)eciilations from wliicli his eye, till death, was never entirely diverted. While barely eight, " he distinctly remembered having speculated on points of pliilosophy, and espe- cially on the idea of duty, which presented itself to him in this way — If I could save my papa and mamma from being killed, [ know 1 should at once do it. Now, why ? To be killed would be very painful, and yet I should give ray own consent to being killed.'*' The solution presented itself as " a dim awestrickeu feeling of unknown obligation." When about nine, " he was much struck by his master's telling him that the word sincere was derived from the practice of filling up tlaws in furniture with wax, wlience sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up."^ Tliis explanation, he said, gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory, as having first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as in other things. When a boy, he read through the whole " Edinburgh Review," of which his biographer says, •' a diet than which hardly any could yield less wholesome food for a young mind, and which could scarcely fail to pufl' it up with the wind o'f self-conceit." We doubt the validity of this dictum. We conceive that, to a fresh elastic mind, the crossing of such varied territories of thought, the coming in contact with so many vigorous minds, the acquiring such stores of miscellaneous infor- mation, the mere reading of such a mass of masculine English, as the perusal of the entire " Edinburgh Review" implies, must have been beneficial, and tended to awaken curiosity, to kindle ambition, to stifle mannerism of style, and, as the likely result of the many severe criticisms in which the book abounds, to allay instead of fanning the feeling of self-conceit. Who but com- mends the industry of the boy who reads all the Engish essayists a course of reading certainly much more dissipating; or the youth who reads all liayle's " Dictionary" — a course of reading much more dangerous tiian the " Edinburgh Review ?" Let the hoy read at his pleasure — the youth will study, and the man think and act. At Cambridge, Sterling did not greatly distinguish himself, nor did he bear any violent affection to his ahna mater. For mathematics he had little taste; the classics he rather relished than thoroughly knew. He early commenced the study of philo- sophy, deeming it at once the key to a scientific theology and to a lofty literature, although latterly he all but left the cold and perilous crags of speculation for the fiowcry meadows of poetry and aesthetics. At the feet of Coleridge no one ever sat with a feeling of more entire and child-like submission; the house at Highgate was to him the shrine of a god, and his biographer re- grets liiat he "did not preserve an account of Coleridge's con- versations, for he was capable of representing their depth, their 272 JOHN STERLING. ever- varying hues, their sparkling lights, their oceanic ebb and flow." He began soon to empty out his teeming mind, in the forms both of verse and prose. In the course of his short life we find him connected, more or less intimately, with the following periodicals : the " Athenffium," " Blackwood's Magazine," the " Quarterly," and the London and Westminster " Reviews." At a peculiarly dull period in the history of " Maga," he appeared, amid a flourish of trumpets, as a "new contributor," and did succeed in shooting a little new blood into her withered veins. In the " Quarterly," he wrote a paper on Tennyson, which was attributed at the time to Henry Nelson Coleridge. Differing as he did in many material points from the new school of Radicals who conducted the " Westminster," he seemed more at home in their company than in that of the knights of the Noctes; and his contributions to their journal are all characteristic. These articles have been reprinted by Dr Hare, and, along with the poems, his tragedy of " Stafibrd," a few letters, and other remains, consti- tute all his written claims to consideration. He has certainly in them raised no very great or compact basis for future fame ; but we are entitled to adduce, in addition, the testimony of his friends, who all speak with rapture of the possi- bilities of his mind — of his talent as a debater — and of his ready, vivid, and brilliant talk. In him alone Thomas Carlyle met his conversational match ; he alone ventured to face him in single combat, and nothing like their rencontres seems to have been witnessed since those of Johnson and Burke. Even in his " Re- mains," we may find faint yet distinct indications of all the prin- cipal features of his intellectual character. These, we think, may be classed under the three general characteristics of sympathij, sincerity, and culture. We do not mean that these sum up the whole of his idiosyncrasy, but simply that they are the qualities which have struck us most forcibly in the perusal of his works. He had, besides, as a writer, a fine inventiveness, a rich and varied stock of figures, a power of arresting and fixing in perma- nent shapes the thinnest gossamer abstractions, and the command of a diction remarkable more for its copiousness, flexibility, and strength, than for grace, clearness, or felicitous condensation. Perhaps his principal claim to reputation rests on his criticisms, and their power and charm lie in genial and self- forgetting sym- pathy. It is too customary to speak of this as a subordinate qua- lity in a critic, as a veil over his eyes, and nearly inconsistent with the exercise of analytic sagacity. Those who talk in this manner are not so much guilty of a mistake as of a stupid blun- der. Sympathy is closely connected with sight. It is a medium Avhich, like water poured into a bowl, enables you to see objects previously invisible. It, and it alone, opens a window into the breast and the brain of genius, and shows the marvellous pro- JOHN STERLING. 273 cesses which are jroins on within. It is not merely that the heart often sees farther than the intellect, but it is that sympathy cleanses and sharpens even the intellectual eye. Love, and you will understand. Besides, the possession of powerful sympathy with intellect and genius, implies a certain similitude of mind on the part of the sympathiser. The blind cannot sympathise with descriptions of scenery, and the lively motion and music of a mountain-stream sound like a satire to the lame who limp beside it. To feel with, you must sXwwy?, find yourself in, the subject or the person. Adam Smith doubtless was wrong when he ex- plained every moral phenomenon by sympathy; it were a more probable paradox to maintain that a man's intellectual power en- tirely depends upon the depth, width, and warmth of his sym- pathies, and that Shakspere was the greatest of men, because he was the widest of sympathisers. Waiving, at this stage of our paper, such speculations, we claim a high place for Sterling, as possessed of catholic and clear-headed sympathy. Merely to copy the names of a few of the characters whom he has analysed with justice and praised with generosity, is enough to prove this. He has painted Alexander the Greats and Wickliffe, Joan of Arc and Gustavus Adolphus, Milton and Burns, Columbus and Coleridge, Simonides and Carlyle, Napier and Tennyson. We find him, too, on friendly terms at once with " Blackwood's Magazine," and the " Westminster Review;" writing in the " Quarterly," and calling Shelley a " generous heroic being;" and in his "Tales" and "Apologues" imitating the imaginative peculiarities, now of the Gothic, now of the Gre- cian, and now of the German school. We love this spirit much, not merely as proclaiming a warm heart, but as evincing a wide, keen, and open intellect. We contrast it favourably with a por- tion of the very class to whom Sterling belonged, whose fastidi- ousness is fast becoming frantic, who are loathing literature it- self, although it is by it alone that themselves have risen, and whose hasty, splenetic, and contradictory judgments tend to exert a damping and discouraging influence upon youthful aspirants. Sterling, on the contrary, loved literature for its own sake, and had a true appreciation of its infinite worth and beauty. He was not like Byron, and one or two others we might name, who looked upon literature partly as a means for gratifying an ambition to which other avenues were closed, and partly as an outlet for the waste energy and superfiuous fury of their natures, when their passions had not entirely exhausted them, and who, upon the first disapi)ointment and chagrin, wei'c ready to rush into another field ; nor did he resemble a class who have mistaken their pro- fession, and expended })o\vers, which might have led them to the highest distinction, in action, in travelling, parliament, or arms, on gaining a dubious literary success, which is despised by them- 274 JOHN STERLING. selves ; nor did he rank with the men whose love to literature is confined to an appreciation of those who resemble, or who fol- low, their peculiar style. His circumstances saved him from the miserable condition of a hack author, and from all the heart- burnings, jealousies, and disgusts wliich degrade the noble pur- suit of literature in his eyes, and turn its beautiful moon into the clouded lantern of a low, lurid, precarious life. Sterling, in his wide and trembling sympathies with literary excellence, and in his devoted enthusiasm for the varied expressions of the beauti- ful, as well as in the hectic heat and eagerness of his tempera- ment, bore a striking likeness to Shelley, although possessing a better balanced nature. While freely conceding him such qualities, we protest against some of liis critical commissions, as well as omissions. We are astonished at his silence in reference to John Foster, whose sturdy genius ought to have been known to him, and whose mind was moving more slowly and uneasily through the same process of speculative change with his own. We cannot at all under- stand his admiration for Montaigne, wlio appears to have been a very slight sublimation of sensual indifterence, and not more ho- nest than the sensual-indiiferent wealthy usually are. Ilowgrossly unjust he is to Rousseau and Hazlitt, when he calls them " de- claimers and dealers in rhetorical falsehood ! " Grant that Rousseau was personally a poor scrannell, tortuous, and broken pipe, who can deny that a power, call it his genius or his demon, discoursed at times upon him sweet and powerful music, to which nations listened because they could not refrain, and which no term like rhetoric, or even oratory, nor any inierior to poetry, touch- ing the verge of prophecj^, can at all measure? No such utter- ances have come I'rom Hazlitt; but, if he resembled Rousseau in occasional bursts of vanity, he was certainly, on the whole, a sin- cerer man : he egotises at his proper cost and peril. For down- right honesty, and for masses of plain sense and native acuteness, we are not afraid to compare and prefer many of his essays to those of the old Gascon, and, with all his faults and deficiencies, his match as a masculine and eloquent critic has yet to be ni^de. What verbose afluirs do even Jeffrey's criticisms, when collected, appear beside the lectures of Hazlitt, who often expresses the es- sence of an author by the dash of his pen, and settles a literary controversy by an epithet. Initiation into the mysteries of German philosophy and litera- ture produced in Sterling a considerable degree of indifference towards the English classics. To Addison's essays — those cool, clear, whispering leaves of summer, so native and so refreshing — he never alludes, and we cannot conceive him, like Burke, hush- ing himself to his last slumber, by hearing read the papers in the " Spectator" on the immortality of the soul. And against Dr JOHN STEllMNG. 275 Johnson he has committed himself in a set attack, of ^vhich we must speak more particularly. An author of celebrity maintains that no person can be a man of talent wiio does not admire " Dr Johnson, and that all men of eminent ability do admire him." Without pressing the application of this assertion, we do think tliat those who, in the present age, find in him a hero, discover both candour and penetration — candour to admit and pass by his bulky faults as a writer, and penetration to see his bulky though disguised merits as a writer and a man. For one to call him a mere " prejudiced empliatic pedant," is simply to write down one's self an ass. For Coleridge to call him the " overrated man of his age" (liow could the age avoid rating him highly, since he was, save Burke, the greatest man it had?) is ibr Coleridge to prove himself a privileged person, who said whatever he ciiose. Sterling's charges may be classified thus : — Ur Johnson's produc- tions are "loud and swollen" — he could say nothing of poetry, and has said nothing of Shakspere " worth listening to" — lie had no " serene joy" — and he wanted it because he had no " capacity for the higher kinds of thought." To the proof. 1st, His language was "loud and swollen." Granted. So is a torrent, or a river in flood. So are Thomson's " Seasons," Young's " Night Thoughts," Scliiller's " Kobbers," Coleridge's "Hymn to Mont Blanc" and " Keligious Musings," Sterling's "Lycian Painter" and "Last of the Giants," all productions of genuine merit and meaning, and yet all stilted eitlier in style or manner, or both. Johnson is often loud, but seldom lofis — he can beat the drum, but he can shiver the castle-gate with his axe, too. If his arm be sometimes "swollen" with indolence, it is as often swollen with heavy blows aimed, and not in vain, at the heads of his enemies. He swings in an easy chair, which many that mock hira could not move. You may laugh at the elephant picking up the pin, but not ejaculating you, brained and battered, toward the skies. 2diy, He has said nothing of Shakspere or poetry worth listen- ing to. AVhat ! Is his dissertation in Waller on sacred poetry, be it true or false, not worth listening to? or his panegyric on the "Paradise Lost?" or his character of the "Night Thoughts?" or his comparison between Pope and Dryden ? or his picture of a poet in "Kasselas?" or iiis unanswered ovcu'tuin of the unities in his essay on Shakspere? or several other portions of that "ponderous mass of i'utilities ?" or his famous critical lines on Shakspere? Mark, we are not asserting that all such jjassages are of the highest order of philosoj)hical criticism, but we are as- serting their intrinsic value, and their immeasurable superiority to the vague, empty, pointless, misty, and pseudo-German discjui- sitions which stnll'juany of our ])riiicij)al magazines and reviews in tlie present day. We are not prei)urcd to sacrifice the poorest 276 JOH\ STERLING. passages in the " Lives of the Poets" — nay, not even his notes on Shakspere (which make Fanny Kemble swear — off the stage), for such a piece of elaborate and recondite nonsense, as recently was permitted to appear in the " North British Review," as a paper on Tennyson's " Princess," and was yet not the worst speci- men of the kind of criticism referred to. But vSterling accuses Johnson of wanting "serene joy;" an accusation, alas ! too true. But, how could he have attained this, in the first place, under the pressure of that " vile body" — that huge mass of disease, bad humours, and semi-blindness, which he carried about with him, and under which he struggled and writhed like a giant below Etna ? In the victim of old, yoked consciously to a putrefying carcass, we may conceive stern submission, but hardly serene joy. We can account for a man like William Cob- bett, high in health, clear in eye, and with a system answering, like the crystal mirror of a stream, to every feature of his intellectual faculties, reproaching Johnson with gloom, but must think it a sad mistake, if not an atfectation, on the part of a philosophic valetudinarian like John Sterling. Besides, as it has been said that the laws of disease are as beautiful as those of health, the intuitions of disease are as ttnie as those of health. In none of them is the whole truth found; but, even as the jaundiced view is only a partial rendering of the creation and of man, so the view of one in perfect health and strength, with a sanguine temperament, and in circumstances of signal prosperity, is equally imperfect. The one may be called a black or yellow, the other a w^'/^'^e lie. Surely the Cockney we have elsewhere commemorated, as sitting with Carlyle in a railway carriage, rubbing his hands, and saying to the grim stranger — " Successful world this, isn't it, sir?" was as far astray as the author of " Sartor " glaring through the gloomy, bile-spotted splendour of the atmosphere which usually surrounds his spirit. And whether are more trustworthy the feelings of the man standing before his fire watching the partu- rition of a pudding, and the simmering of a pot of mulled porter, and exclaiming, "How comfortable 1" or those of a traveller perishing among the midnight snows ? There is truth, and equal truth, in all such angular aspects — there is the whole truth in none of them, nor even in any conceivable mixture of them all. And it were difficult to imagine a man in tempei'ament like Johnson forming essentially another view than what rushed in on him from every orifice of his distempered system. There is a cant in the present day — a cant which Sterling was above — about health, healthy systems, healthy vievvs, healthy regulation of body, as producing a healthy tone of mind, as if the soul and stomach were identical, as if good digestion were the same thing with happiness, as if all gloomy and distressing thoughts sprung from bile, as if one had only to lie down under JOHN STERLING. 277 the "wet sheet" to understand the origin of evil, to solve all the cognate, tremendous problems of the universe, and to obtain that " reconciliation" after Avhicli all earnest spirits aspire. Easy the process now for obtaining " the peace which passeth understand- ing ! " Poor John Bunyan, why didst thou struggle, writhe, and madden, wade through hells of tire and seas of blood, to gain a result to which cold bathing and barks would have led thee in a month ? Foolish Thomas Carlyle, why all that pother about ever- lasting noes and yeas, instead of anticipating Bulwer in the bap- tismal regeneration of the cold-water cure ? Our modern utili- tarians hold, that, if they had had Dante and Byron in their hands, they would have made them happy men, and writers so sweet and so practical, and can hardly credit you when you tell them that John Foster observed all the "natural laws," and was a gloomy " son of thunder," and that others break them daily, and are as merry as the day is long. It is vain to speak to them of temperament, of hereditary melancholy, of mental penetration so piercing as to amount to distemper, of visions of evil so vivid as to haunt every movement of the spirit, of hectic sensibility, of doubts so strong as to threaten to strangle piety and render de- votion at times a torment — let the man but give up tobacco, and he will and must be happy ! Foster evidently did not take enough of exercise, Carlyle smokes, and Cowper went to excess, it is avcU known, in the " cup that cheers but not inebriates." Ilinc illae lachnjmae ! Now, it is of course conceded that a well-regulated physical life will in some measure modify both mental views and mental happiness. But, in the first place, there are constitutions for whom a well-regulated means a generous mode of living. Such was that of Slielley, who, according to the testimony of his friends, was never so well or happy as when, at rare intervals, he depart- ed from his usual fare of vegetables and water. Secondly, " Be- cause thou art virtuous," is there no more vice in the world, no more misery — is every dark problem solved — are the old enigmas of death and sin made one whit plainer? nay, in proportion to the degree of personal purity, is not the feeling of sorrow and dis- gust at the follies and foulnesses of the world likely to gain strength ? "We fear, the utmost that the cleanest outward life can do is to produce in some minds a feeling that they have evaded, although not met, the grand dijiiculty, to produce in others a sel- fish self-complacency and forgetfulness, springing irom a state of health so unnaturally constant as to be in reality a disease, and on minds of tlie higlier order to produce little permanent etfect at all. From another source must help come. From above, from the regions of spiritual trutli, must descend that baptism of fire which confers ardent hope, if not ha])piness — tiiat feeling wliicii is higher and better, even in its imperfection and chequered 278 JOHN STERLING. light, than the unthinking cahn or mechanical gladness of the best regulated animalism. l>iit Johnson, according to Sterling, wanted serene joy, not merely from the peculiarity of his tem- perament, nor merely from the state of his age and the degree of his culture, as atFecting his impressions, but from his incapacity for the higher kinds of thought — as if all possessed of this capa- city, as if Coleridge, for instance, or Schiller, or Carlyle, whom Sterling always ranks in the first class, have been serene, and as if this explanation of Johnson's want of peace were not disproved by a hundred instances of men who, less entitled than he to the praise of the highest original or inventive genius — for example, Hall, Southey, Chalmer.-:, and the lately deceased Hamilton of Leeds — have been distinguished by buoyant and child-like feli- city. No ! we are persuaded that from no defect in Johnson's intellect, but from constitutional causes, sprung his morbid melancholy ; nay, that the strength of his intellect was proved by the control which it exercised over his temperament. A giant maniac required and obtained a giant keeper. Had he possessed the culture and shared in the progress of our age, we are not sure if more than tliree or four of its literarv heroes would have equalled him. Peace to his massive shade ! He was one of the best, greatest, Avisest, and most sincere of men. While we are engaged in finding fault, we may notice our author's opinions on the connection between intellect and lieart. Carlyle had maintained that a truly great intellect must always be accompanied by a noble moral nature ; he had not asserted the converse, that a noble moral nature implies a great intellect. Sterling, in his reply, commits, we think, two mistakes. First, imagining that Carlyle had asserted this untenable converse, he presses him with the names of Newton of Olney, Thomas Scott, Calamy, Svvartz, and Jeanie Deans, and asks if these were people of high intellect? But, although the day includes the hour, the hour does not include the day. Cax'lyle's idea is, that, while the moral nature has been found high and tlie intellect small, the in- tellect has never come to its true elevation without the corre- spondence of the heart. It is a question of facts. In the secQnd jilace, Sterling and Carlyle attacli different meanings to the word, intellect. With the one it signifies the understanding, and he shows triumphantly how it has wedded wickedness or heartless- ness in Tiberias, the Duke of Guise, Lord Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Talleyi-and. With Carlyle it means the higher power of in- tuition, genius, or reason, which, according to him, while often attended by a train of error -imps, or even big, burly vices, never exhibits profound and radical depravity, and is never unattended by a sense of the good, the true, the generous, and the just. It is obviously impossible to settle a controversy where there is a preliminary misunderstanding as to the terms, but we certainly JOHN STERLING. 279 incline to Carlyle's opinion — holding it, however, only as a gene- ral rule, and noting two distinct species of exception, which we may call the mad and the monstrous case. There is first the mad, in which, as with Rousseau, and perhaps Miraheau and Bvron, a diseased organisation has divided tliose principles of head and heart which are usually joined in the marriage chamber of the brain of genius. There is, secondly, the monstrous case, where, as in Bacon, the moral sense, if not omitted entirely, seems to exist in an inverse proportion to the intellectual power — where ati intellect, vast, varied, and weighty as the globe, is balanced by a heart, hard and small as a pin-point. Ought we to add Napoleon as another instance of this second most rare and appalling formation. We mentioned, as the second general quality of Sterling, his sincerity. Those much abused and desecrated terms, truth-seeker and beauty- lover, assumed too often by the selfish and the vain to distinguish them from the common crowd, came of their own accord and rested on his head. And if he did seem toward the close to relax somewhat in his devotion to truth, and to be smit with a fonder aiFection for the beautiful, it was because, while the latter melted into his embrace, the former fled ever before him into her awful shades. He turned from the haughty Rosa- lind of truth to the fair young Juliet of bi^auty. But his love, in both instances, was as pure as it was ardent. You do not see in him the death-wrestle of Arnold, who, like Jacob at Peniel, ap- pears panting as he ci'ies to the mystei'ions form, " I will not let thee go except thou bless me ; rather crush me by thy weight than tell me nothing." For such painful and protracted struggle. Ster- ling was unfitted by temperament and by illness ; but, if not a rugged athlete, he was a swift runner in this great chase. His mind wrouglit less than Arnold's by research — more by rapid in- tuition. With less learning and perseverance, he had incom- parably more imagination and more philosophic sagacity. Health and circumstances prevented him from effecting so much as Arnold, or leaving on tlie age the same impression of i'earlessness, truthfuhie?s, and moral power. More than even Arnold Avas he caught in tlie meshes of uncertainty, and to both death seemed the dawning of a light which they had yearned after, but never reached on earth. Both died too early for the world, but in time for their own happiness. It is clear tliat Arnold could not have remained much longer connected with the English Cliurch, nor probably with any. Whither the restless progress of Sterling's mind would have led him we cannot tell, but it had conducted him to (pjakiiig and dangerous ground. Both, while in deep doubt upon many important questions, exliibited on the verge of death a cliild-lil«! Cliristianity of spirit and language wliich it is delight- ful to contemplate ; and both, through their moral likeness to each other, through their position and the progress of their 280 JOHN STERLING. thought, will, notwithstanding many mental dissimilarities, be classed together by posterity as two of the most interesting speci- mens of" the enlightened minds of our strange transition period. Sterling's culture was of a peculiar kind. His mind was not ripened under the scorching sun of science, but under the softer and more genial warmth of pliilosophy and literature. We are not sure if he had ever thoroughly mastered the original works of the German philosophers, or if his metaphysical reading was of an extensive range ; we incline to think that he had ac- quired much of his knowledge of Kant and his brethi-en from the extempore versions of Coleridge, and that it was with the poets and such moral and religious writers of Germany as Schleiermacher that he was familiar. His historical knowledge was rather wide than accurate, and from severe personal re- search he shrunk with all the reluctance of a sensitive and ner- vous nature. With the classics of all polite literature he was in- timately conversant. His theological attainments were respect- able — there is no evidence that they were more, and latterly, indeed, he became deeply prejudiced against the present preten- sions, and forms, and modes of investigating that science. His culture, altogether, was rather elegant than strict, rather re- cherclie than profound ; and from this, we think, in part proceeded the uncertainty of his theological views. His clerical profession and his early feelings created an intense interest in theological subjects, and a yearning for deeper insight into them, but his tastes and his powers adapted him for a dilferent pursuit. Theo- logy, if we Avould tind aught new in it, requires digging. Sterling could not dig, he could only lly ; his verdicts, therefore, are valuable principally for their sincerity : they are rapid first im- pressions, not slow, deliberate, last judgments. The very power which rendered him a consummate critic of the fine arts, and often an exquisite artist, disqualified him for those laborious and complicated processes which go to build up the great idea of God's relations to mankind. Here he is a tongueless orator, a blind painter, a dumb musician, his powerlessness of execution being proportionate to the strength of his desire. A man of genius John Sterling has often been called, nor are we disposed to deny him the precious but indefinite term. His sympathies, his temperament, his mode of thinking, all the moods and tenses of his mind, were those of genius. If not a man of genius, he was a most startling likeness or bust of one. Never- theless, we have our doubts as to the originality or greatness of his vein. We argue this not, as some would absurdly, from his wide and generous sympathies ; great genius implies a great genial nature as necessarily as a great river a great channel for its waters, and a broad nature, like a broad river, must reflect many objects. We argue it not from finding no extensive or JOIIX STERLING. 281 profouncl work in the list of his writings — this his short life and liis long duel with death sufficiently explain ; and still less from his non-popularity (in the popular sense) as an author; as he never spoke to the empty echo of popular applause, he never ex- pected to receive a reply. But we imagine that we notice in the various productions he has left a sort of tentative process as of a mind distracted by various models and attempting diiferent styles. We observe this not merely in his earlier but in his later works. "We never, from the beginning to the end of his career, find him in a path so peculiar and lonely that we cry out, " Let him pro- secute this if he can till death." He never gives the impression, amid all his individual brilliances of thought, invention, and figure, of a new, and whole, and undivided thing, leaving such influence on us as is given by the sight of a new comet in the heavens, or of a Faust, a Festus, or a "Rime of the Anciente Marinere" upon the earth. His genius rather touches, dances on a brilliant and shapeless fire-mist, than constructs it into fine or terrible forms. He has all the variety, vividness, truth, and eloquence which constitute an artist who has genius, but not the possession, the self-abandonment — the one great thing in nature to tell — the one great thing toward man to do, which distinguish a prophet whom genius has. There are two lights in which to regard Sterling's writings — either as trials of strength or as triumphs of genius. It is in the former light that we are disposed to regard them. They are of almost every variety of style, subject, and merit. We have jjoems, apologues, allegories, a tragedy, criticisms, novels, and I'ragmentary relics. Seldom do we remember the steep of fame scaled on so many sides by one so young. He resembled a cap- tain who, waiting for the ultimate order of his general, keeps his troops moving hither and thither in what seems aimless and end- less ubiquity. So Sterling hung around all the alleys and avenues of thought, tarrying for the word " march, and secure this or that one" — a word which never came. Yet assuredly his talent, tactics, and earnestness were of no ordinary kind. How much mild pathos has he condensed into the " Sexton's Daughter'." What fine though dim condensations many of his poetical lines are ! How tenderly and truly does he touch what we might deem the yet sensitive and shrinking corpse of Staftbrd! Kapoleon, too, he has resuscitated ; and it is at the touch of no earthworm that he springs aloft, gigantic, if not triumphant, from the tomb. And throughout the tales and apologues, which principally com|)Ose the second volume of his " Remains," there are sprinkled beauties of thought, sentiment, and expres- sion, for which forty volumes of modern novels might be searched in vain. On his " Thoughts" and " Letters," as in some respects the 282 JOHN STERLING. most interesting of his writings, we propose (o pause for a little. Such writings, if from a sincere man, are always the most direct and genuine issues of his spirit — they are just the mind turned inside out. The naked man that can bear inspection must be handsome ; the naked thought which delights must be beautiful and true. A very good and very clever divine has written " Adams's Private Thoughts." We are thankful to him ; but what would we give for the private thouglits of Shakspere, Mil- ton, and especially of Burke, since he, less than most men, " hung his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at." AVerc but some one wiser and greater than Rousseau to shrive himself as honestly as he ! An honest account of his inmost sentiments and his entire history, held up in the hand of any intellectual man, not insane, would stop almost the motions of society till it had been read and pondered. Autobiographies being in general the falsest of books, the exception would be the more prized. And thus, too, we should find that one fearless man had uttered feelings and thoughts participated in by the whole human race, and was the mouth of a dumb humanity. Sterling's " Thoughts" are evidently sincere, but as evidently a selection. They are the collected cream of his mind. He does not open his soul ad aperturam lihri. He gives us elegant extracts, and some of them might have been better entitled " How I ought to have thought at such and such a time." The whole collection is not so much of "thoughts," as of "after- thoughts." They were published, let us remember, before his death, in " Blackwood's Magazine." Had they been thorough- going utterances such as might have been written in blood, no periodical would have printed them. As it is, many of them are very beautiful and profound. We quote a few : — " There is no lie that many men will not belieTe ; there is no man who does not believe mauy lies ; and there is no man who believes only lies. One dupe is as impossible as one twin. To found an argument for the value of Christianity on external evidence, and not on the condition of man and the pure idea of God, is to hold up a candle before our eyes that we may better see the stars. The religion of all Paeans iudiscriniinately has often been written of by zealous Christians in the worst spirit of Paine and Voltaire. Lies are the ghosts of truths, the masks of faces. The firm foot is that which finds firm footing. The weak falters although it be standing on a rock. Goethe sometimes reminds us of a Titan in a court-dress. The prose man knows nothing of poetry, but poetry knows much of him. No man is so born a poet but that he needs to be regenerated into a poetic artist. There are countenances far more indecent than the naked form of the Me- dicean Venus. Those who deride the name of God are the most unhappy of men, except those who make a trade of honouring him. JOHN STEKLING. 283 An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be ■ffeii:hed even in patent scales, nor brought to market. There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with ringe, and at the same time cut the sinews at the wrist. Better a cut finger than no knife. The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that." Sterling's letters are plain, iinexciteil, and unpretending. Their style, so much simpler than that of his essays and tales, suggests the thought that he must have elaborated the latter. They in- terest more from their good sense and information than as disco- veries of character. Tiiey are fidl of generous and (^uiet criti- cism. Thus, of Lamb he says — " I have been looking over the two volumes of his letters, and I am disposed to consider them the pleasantest in the language, not excepting the best of Cowper's, nor Horace Walpole's. lie was a man of true genius, though on a small scale, as a spangle may be gold as pure as a doubloon." Speaking of his own poems, he says — " When I think of Christabel, and Herman, aud Dorothea, I feel a strong persuasion that I deserve the pillory for ever writing verses at all. The writings of Schelling, Fichte, and some others, give the same uneasy belief as to prose." Again — " Lately I have been reading some of Alfi'ed Tennyson's second volume, and with profound admiration of his truly lyric and idyllic genius. There seems to me to have been more epic power in Keats, that fiery, beautiful meteor ; but they are two most true and great poets. When one thinks of the amount of recognition they have received, one may well bless God that poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind or left alone in its own magic hermitage. It is true that w^hat new poetry we have is little cared for ; but also true that there is wonderfully little deserving any honour. Compare our present state with twenty years ago, when Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Scott as a novelist, were all vigorously productive. Carlyle is the one great star that has arisen since, and he is far more pro- phet than singer." He gives a striking anecdote of Thorwald- sen : " Did you ever hear the story of his being at a party at Bun- se.'i's, whose house was on the Capitolian Hill, on tiie site of the temple of Olympian Jove, and where the conversation, as often, under Bunsen's guidance, took a very Christian turn, till Thor- waldsen remarked, through the window commanding a noble prospect of liome, the modern city, the i)laiiet Juj)iter in great glory, and, filling his glass, exclaimed, ' Well, here's in honour of the ancient gods !' " ^Vo mentioned at the commencement that wc conceived John Sterling's progress was typical of that of a large and interesting class of intellectual persons in the present day. We proceed now 284 JOHN STERLING. to explain what we mean. It is an extremely important and se- rious aspect of his history at which we must now look. It is at his religion. So far as religion can be called constitutional, John Sterling was constitutionally religious. The union of ardent tempera- ment, high intellect, and pure morals, generally in this country generates a strong religious appetency, which w^as manifest in him. Dr Hare has not traced so minutely and clearly as had been desirable the entire progress of his thoughts and feelings on this momentous topic. Indeed, there is throughout all his me- moir a shrinking, and want of plain speaking on the subject, un- worthy of such a man writing on such a man, and this, we know, some of Sterling's warmest i'riends feel ; but we think we can map it out with considerable accuracy, and in very few and very plain words. From the early piety of genius, he seems to have passed into the early scepticism of genius. While sounding on his dim and perilous way in those troubled waters, the great beacon-light of Coleridge attracted and seemed to save him. He became in theory, as he had been in feeling, a Christian. Influenced by his marriage and other circumstances, disciplined by various grave events, and not, he trusts, unguided by the Holy Spirit, he entered the work of the Christian ministry, la- boured for six months with exemplary diligence, and was only prevented by illness from prosecuting the calling. Afterwards, a change began gradually to pass over his mind. Loosened from professional ties — burning with a hectic speculation — impatient of the cant, and commonplaces, and bigotry of ordinary theo- logians — sick of the senseless controvei'sies of his church — and attracted ever more and more by the learning and genius of Ger- many, his orthodox belief in Christianity was shattered, though his child-like love for it remained the same. At last he died, it must be told, more than doubtful of the divine origin of Judaism, unsatisfied of tlie evidences of Christianity, and yet ravished with the unutterable beauty and moral grandeur of the latter; and his almost hist words were a request to his sister to hand him the old Bible he was wont to use in Herstmonceux (where he had been curate) among the cottages. Such is the plain unvarnished tale of Sterling's religious ca- reer. It is a very painful, very interesting, and very instructive narrative. We must be permitted to methodise our impressions of it under the following remarks : — First, It is not, alas ! a sin- gular case. Secondly, Its causes are not very recondite. And, thirdly. It teaches some momentous lessons. 1st, The case is not uncommon. Without alluding to innu- merable private instances, the process through which Sterling was passing is almost the same with that less fully undergone by Foster and Arnold, and which, in Newman and Farker, in JOHN STERLING. 285 Carlyle and Emerson, may be considered pei'fected. In Shelley, it was different. In the first place, he unfortunately never en- joyed, we fear, the opportunity of seeing real religion incarnated in living examples ; with that noble moral poem, sublimer far than a " Paradise Lost," a meek and humlde disciple of Jesus, he seems never to have come in contact. 2dly, He was early re- pelled from just views of the subject by the savage stupidity of university tests and treatment. And, 3dly, The motion of his mind was accelerated by that morbid heat and misery which made his life an arm of Styx, and rendered his entire character and history anomalous. Shelley is the caricature of the unsatis- fied thinker of the times ; and while, as a poet, admired by all for his 2)otehtial achievements, his creed, which creed was none, un- less a feverish flush on the brow be a fixed principle of the soul, has chiefly influenced those who are weak and morbid through nature, or raw and incondite through youth. Sterling, on the other hand, was the express image of such a thinker, in its highest and purest form. Ere incjuiring into the causes of that strange new form of scepticism, which has seized so many of our higher minds, let us more distinctly enunciate what it is not, and does not spring from. It is not, as some imagine, a mere disguise which the scepticism of Hume and Voltaire has assumed, better accommodated to the tastes and the progress of the present age. It is not the same with it, even as Satan towering to the sky was the same with Satan lurking in the toad. It differs from it in many important respects. 1st, It admits much which the unbelief of Paine and Voltaire denied ; it grants the beauty, the worth, and the utility of our religion — nay, contends that, in a sense, it is a divine emanation, the divinest ever given to man. It does not sheatlie, but tosses away, the old poisoned terms imposture, fraud, priest- craft, cunningly-devised fable. 2dly, It approaches religion with a different feeling and motive. It desires to find its very highest claims true. It has no interest that they sliould be false. The life of such an one as we describe is modelled on the life of Christ ; his language is steeped in the Bible vocabulary. Prayer and its cognate duties he practises, and his heart is ever ready to rise to the swells of Christian oratory and feeling, as the war- horse to the sound of the trumpet. He teaches his children to prattle of Christ, and weeps at eventide as they repeat their little hymns. He gives to the cause of the Gospel, and his cheek glows at the recital of the deeds of INIissionaries. The sceptic of the eighteenth century first hated religion, because it scowled on his selfishness — then wished it untrue — and then, generally with the bungling- haste of over-eagerness, tried to prove it untrue. Thus Paine felt tlie strong rigiit hand, which, in the " Kiglits of Man" had coped worthily with tlic giant 2b 286 JOHN STERLING. Burke, shivered to splinters Avhen lie stretched it forth, in the " Age of Reason," against the " ark of the Lord." The doubter of our day (we speak, of course, of one class) loves religion, wishes it true, reverences every pin and fringe of its tabernacle, tries to convince himself and others of its paramount and peculiardivinity, and if, at last, the shadow of a cloud continues to hang over his head, it fails to disguise the fast-flowing tears wrung from his disappointed spirit. 3dly, It approaches religion, not only with a dilFerent feeling, but from a difierent direction. The sceptic of the eighteenth century approached it from the platform of matter — a platform in itself mean, even when including the whole material universe ; the doubter now looks at it from the lofty ground of the ideal and the spiritual. " It contradicts the laws of matter," said the one. " I cannot, in all its parts," says the other, " reconcile it with the principles of mental truth." " It is something greater than matter," said the one. " It is some- thing less than mind," says the other. " I cannot grasp it," said the one. " I can but too easily account for much of it," says the other. "It surpasses my standard," said the one. "It does not come up to mine," says the other. " Its miracles to me seem monstrous things which I cannot swallow," said the one. " To me," says the other, " they appear petty tricks, not impossible to, but unworthy of, a God." "Its prophecies seem to me all written after the event," said the one. " To me," says the other, "the objection is that they tell so little that is really valuable. "What comparison between the fate of a thousand empires and one burst of pure truth?" " The whole thing," said the one, " is too supernatural and unearthly for me." " To me," says the other, " it bears but too palpable marks of an earthly though un- paralleled birth — God's highest, it may be, but not his only or ultimate voice." " I wish I could convince everybody that it was an imposture," said the one. " I wish," says the other, " that I could convince myself that it is what the world professes to believe it." " It is strange," said the one, " that, superstition as it is, it wont die." " It is far stranger," says the other, " how, if it be jmr excellence true, it is dying, and has become little else than a cajyut mortuwn" " But, then, it must be confessed," said the one, " that its external evidences are imposing, though not irresistible." " To me," saj's the other, " these seem its weak- ness, not its strength ; and, as to its vitals — its internal evidences — is it not, like Cato, day after day, tearing them out with its own suicidal hands — is it not I'apidly becoming a worldly and mechanical, if not a carnal, sensual, and devilish thing ?" Such is a fair statement of the ditference between the two scepticisms. As we proceed, we shall have occasion to refute the conclusions of the second variety. We now come to its causes. 1st, "We may name the over stress which was long laid JOHN STERLING. 287 by the defenders of Christianity upon its external evidences. The effects of this have been pernicious in various ways. It could not, in the first place, be disguised that many who defended with the most success the external evidences were, if not secret sceptics, strangers to the living influence, and disbelievers in l he peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. Such were "Watson, AVake- tield, and Paley. They first threw away the kernel of Chris- tianity, and then did battle in defence of the empty shell. Never were walls and bulwarks, containing nothing, more heroically de- fended. The school of Warburton and Hurd, indeed, were of a more Christian class, but their polemical bitterness and personal arrogance were intolerable. 2dh'-, Even the successful defence of the evidences seemed a poor exploit, when it w^as confessedly considered inadequate to impi'ess the vital principles of Christi- anity upon the mind — stopping, it might be, the mouths, but not opening the hearts, of its adversaries, whom it drove away from, instead of drawing into, the city of God ; and the loud cheers, which followed each victory over a desperate but unconvinced foe, sounded harsh and liorrible, as were one to encore the plunge of a lost spirit into the abyss. 3dly, If external evidences w-ere the principal, if not sole proof of Christianity, what became of the belief of the majority of Christians, to whom these evidences were unknown, or who, at least, were quite incapable of estimat- ing the true nature and weight of the argument founded upon them ? If their belief was worthless, must not their Christianity be baseless and worthless too? If it was not, what a slur on those elaborate evidences, which in no instance could reach a re- sult which was daily attained by thousands without any external evidence at all! 4thly, What Avas the utmost value of external evidences? Not to produce demonstrative conviction of the truth of Christianity, but only a very high degree of probabi]it3% But is the soul, with all its eternal issues, to depend upon a ques- tion of degrees, of less and more, of a few grains above or scruples below ? Is there no straighter, higher, nobler road to conviction? May there not be a voice within us, corresponding with a voice in Christianity, changing a faltering "perhaps" into a loud, confident, and commanding " it is, it must be so?" Thus Mt Pascal, and this is the true history of his faith. He did not, as Cousin pretends, in order to avoid the gulf of univer- sal scepticism, to which his thoughts and researches were leading him, and where he knew perdition weltered at the bottom, turn back and throw himself into the arms of implicit faith, which, iike a nurse a child, iiad followed him to the l)rink. No; but dissatisfied with the common evidences of Christianity, as demon- strative, he leaned down and listened to the hidden river of his own spirit, as echoing the voice of inspiration, and it became to him an oracle — a proof unutterable, an argument unstateable in 288 JOHN STERLING. . human terms, only to be fully written out in soul-cyplier, and to be fully read by the eye of the soul. Pascal, we must observe, felt the utmost value of external evi- dence ; he believed that it made the truth of Christianity highly probable — nay, probable in the highest degree, though the highest degree of probability is still, of course, remote from absolute mathematical certainty. But there are others who look upon the evidences pro and con as nearly balancing each other, and wliat for them is to turn the scale ? Nay, there are some who conscientiously think that, after all Paley and Watson have written, the evidences con outweigh the evidences /iro ; and wliat can our boasted external argumentations do any more for them ? Thus has external evidence in a great measure failed of secur- ing its object, and has by this felt failure produced in many of our present thinkers the form of scepticism we now describe and deplore. In our judgment, instead of miracles being the principal proof of Christianity, Christianity is a much stronger proof of miracles. A Book intrinsically so divine, so simple, so far superior to all others, and so adapted to the wants of human nature, cannot be imagined to be deceived or to deceive others in the relation of facts. The quantity and singularity of such facts is itself an additional circumstance in their favour. A wise im- posture w^ould have sprinkled them more sparingly and artistically, and brought down, in no case save in that of necessity, its Deus ex machina. The great purpose of miracles at first was to compel attention to the new system, by the glare of grandeur it threw around it — a finger of supernal light must touch the head of the bashful boy- God, and mark him out to the world ; their main use now is to corroborate a belief which has been formed upon quite independent grounds. " Culture," cries Strauss, " cannot believe in miracles." Culture, however, can, and has believed in Christianity, and will not recall its belief, because she wears on her breast and forehead those mysterious ornaments which speak, not more forcibly than her whole dress and bearing, of a foreign and unearthly origin. Miracles must not be considered as splen- did tricks — as mere mighty bravados, which whoso could not equal or explain was compelled to believe, as well as to believe whatever was said in the lecture that should follow or accompany those experiments. They were rather, in Fosters grand thought, tlie simple tolling of the great bell of the universe, to announce the great sermon that was to follow ; and as the sermon continues after the bell has rung out, and becomes of its sound a memorial and testimony, so the marvellous words have outlived, and do testify of the marvellous works. A second cause of our recent refined scepticism may be found in the narrow, bigoted, and unworthy notions of Christianity which prevail, in the obstinacy wdth which they are retained, in JOHN STERLING. 289 the fury with which they are defended, and in the contrast thus presented to the liberal and tluent motion of the general age. This is a large text, and opens up a field which we have not ta present time to embrace. Keligious autiiorship may be taken as a correct index of the general state of religious culture and pro- gress. Now this has decidedly improved since .John Foster wrote his first essays, where he so sternly characterises a large propoi'- tion of its writings, where he speaks of " one writer who seems to value religion as an assassin his dagger, and for the same, reason — of another, who in all his motions is clad with sheets of lead — of a third, from whose vulgar illumination of religious themes you are excessively glad to escape into the solemn twilight of faith — and of a fourth, who represents the Deity as a dreadful king of furies, whose dominion is overshadowed by vengeance, whose music is the cries of victims, and whose glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of his creation." For such, perhaps, we may now search our religious literature in vain ; but we could point out some curious specimens still extant; here a writer, who would sacrifice all the records of creation to the arbitrary interpretation of a Hebrew particle ; there another, who, in order to prove Christianity the most excellent of the sciences, raves like a maniac against all science, and cares less for the sun, moon, and stars, than for a farthing candle glimmering in the corner of a conventicle ; a third, propounding the horrible doc- trine, that if you are not immersed in water you must be im- mersed in everlasting fire; a fourth, turning the Bible into a padlock on the chains of the slave; a fifth, seeking to excommu- nicate from fire and water here, and from water hereafter, one of the most gifted and amiable, albeit misled men of the age, who came an invited and unassuming stranger to our shores; a sixth, hanging around the majestic form of Christianity a dingy finery, picked up from the cast-oflT clothes of second-rate poets, and sinking the mother-tongue of heaven into the sickly whine of a mendicant, as though Isaiah had become an old Jew clothesman ; a seventh, indulging, while defending religion, in the worst of human passions and language, as if rancour, and want of cha- rity, and spleen, could be baptised and consecrated to Christ's service — as if the raven perched in Noah's ark were not a raven, a bird of foul feeding and bad omen still ; an eighth, peppering bad poems with religion, to make them sell ; and a ninth, talking of the fearful secrets of future punishment, as coolly as if he were not also in danger of the judgment, and who perhaps " goes smacking ids lips i'rom the side of tlie great uiuverse-dark- ening sacrifice to the Lord Mayor's feast! Add to this the deluges of common])lace, issuing in the form of religious pam- phlets and periodicals of tlie day, and tiie thousand narrow and fierce controversial productions which each month spawns, ami 290 JOHN STERLING. conceive of the three-piled disgust, which in so many of the refined and intellectualdarkens into a deeper feeling,and provokesthe cry, " If this be religion, better scepticism, pantheism, atheism itself." This, indeed, thank God, is not religion. But it must bear the reproach of having turned away many who otherwise would have come near and seen this great sight, and found how vast the dilierence between those crackling, whizzing, empty, and tran- sient fireworks, and the low light of the wilderness, uneclipsed by the noonday ardours, clear, innocuous, but piercing as the eye of the Inspired, kindled from, and pointing above — the bush ever burning and never consumed. Thirdly, The divided and unhappy state of the Church must bear its full share in accounting for the evil, and this the more especially when at present both letters and science are approach- ing closely the ideal of a commonwealth — when associations of the scientific and literary are the order of the day — when ranco- rous personalities and jealousies are dying out — when an appeal made in behalf of the family of a deceased poet is responded to with such promptitude by men of all politics and creeds, as to show that an electric cord of communication is fast binding the literary world into one. And yet, alas! alas! for the divisions of Reuben, and the rents in the seamless garment of Christ. Where any real love between various parties ? Where aught but hasty and ill-considered armistices ? Where any broad, compre- hensive plan of union ? Where a genuine esprit de corps among Christian churches ? Where any actual unions consummated, ex- cept in cases where the parties had come so near before, that their union lost much of its romance — where it seemed more a sliaking of hands in the market-place than a marriage — and where, as at the peace of Amiens, everybody on both sides was glad, but nobody proud ? What philosophical examination of prin- ciples, conducted by wise and impartial men, such as should pre- cede a great scheme of permanent union, has ever been even talked of; and are even the meanest and basest of old arts of polemical depreciation and abuse altogether obsolete ? It were long to trace the causes of this sad spectacle, which just amounts to — the church inferior to the world, in culture, in gentlemanly feeling, in Christian charity; but such is the fact, and prodigious the mischief which is springing from it. There are other causes which might have been illustrated, such as the contempt and prejudice entertained by many Christians for science and letters — the piece of well or ill-adjusted mechanism to which the office of the ministry has been reduced — the superiority which the press has acquired over the pulpit — the political spirit which our churches of all kinds have been led to cherish — and the infection of German, and, in general, of Continental modes of thought and speech. But, prominent above all, stands the enemy within the JOHN STEULIN'G. 291 camp the ghastly fact that Christianity has not the vital hold over men which it formerly possessed— that we are now rather haunted by its ghost than warmed by its presence — that formality, mechanism, and a thousand other evil influences have crushed and choked it — and that its extension, however wide and rapid, will in all probability extend its evils at even a greater ratio than its advantages— propagate more tares than wheat. AVe unite our voice with that of Chalmers, and James, and Thomas Binney, in proclaiming this alarming state of matters. It cannot now be concealed that a great proportion of the mind of the country — of those who make our laws, who distribute our justice, whose elo- quence fills our courts, whose talent informs our press, %yhose energy inspirits our business, whose genius animates our higher literature, whose benevolence supports our charities, and whose beauty, taste, and accomplishments decorate and refine our society — have travelled away from churches, and resigned faith in creeds, and that this they have done principally because the charm and the power which were wont to detain them there have departed. Were a dance of the living suddenly turned into a dance of the dead, though there remained the same splendour in the decora- tions, and the same lustre in the lamps, and even the same grace in the movements, would there remain the same delight in the spectators ? Would not they rush forth in con I'usion and shrieking dismay at the sight, of this ghastly mimicry of life, enacted where its pulse was beating liighest, and where its stream most richly and tumultuously ran ? Tiius feel many to our deserted chui'ches — deserted not of the dead but of the living, not of worshippers but of God. Pathetic the unseen Ichabod inscribed on the fallen cathedral — more pensive still the " Here God once dwelt," visible through the moonlight of meditation on the chambers of the soul in ruins ; but, most sorrowful of all, the sight of a large assembly of professing Christians, where all the elegance, splendour, light, decency of deportment, eloquence of speaker — wliere symi)athetic thrill, awful shadow, heaving breasts, and bursting tears them- selves, will not disguise the fact tliat One is absent, and that this place is no more " dreadful" with his presence, nor glorious with his grace. The statements thus made must be somewhat qualified. Tn the first place, we must not be understood to hold that all our modern sceptics are actuated by such motives, or influenced by such causes. Many, we fear, like their brethren in times i)ast, just "hate the light because their deeds are evil," while others ■ are stimulated to scepticism by vanity, pride, or ignorance. There^ is another class still, very intelligent but very inconsistent, of whom Miss Martineau may stand as a specimen, who, not merely doubting, but absolutely denying, all the supernaturalism of Scrip- ture, express their respect and reverence for the writers, altliough, 292 JOHN STERLING. on their own showing, those writers were either fools or rogues. But the class Avhom Sterling typified, while sorely perplexed about the supernatural part, and even the genuineness and authen- ticity of many of the documents, are smit to a passion with the grandeur and heavenliuess of the system, even to its peculiarities of atonement, spiritual influences, &c. Secondly, We must not be understood to homologate the train of thought which we have ventui'ed to put into the mouth of the Sterling-sceptic, except so far as that relates to the insufficiency of external evidence, nor to insinuate that the causes we have mentioned excuse his scepticism. Prophecy, as well as miracles, we look on as powerfully corroborative of the divinity of religion, and the fate of nations, besides, not being the sole subject of pre- diction, is very important when taken in connection with that sys- tem which they opposed, and which proclaimed their destruction, as well as in itself. The internal evidence of Christianity seems complete, notwithstanding the fact of a partial decline ; and the genius of our religion seems absolutely to forbid its contentedly taking its pUice at the head of other faiths ; it must be all or no- thing — a devil's lie or divine. And if it does not answer to the sceptic's idea of a unique and solitary emanation from heaven, may not the blame lie not with it, but with the nature of his idea — with himself? Thirdly, We do not wish, from these giddy heights, to " waft a lesson of despair" to any one. We are sorry for the position of such men as Sterling, but it Avere to be weaker than old Eli, on their account to tremble for the ark of God. The lessons we do mean to draw are as follows : 1 stly, of charity ; 2dly, of warn- ing ; 3dly, of shame ; and, 4thly, of courage. 1st, We have need of much charity at the present crisis. It will not do now to skulk from the field under a flight of nicknames. It will not do to call our opponents miscreants and monsters. There never were many in the world really deserving these names ; fools only can believe that there are many now. Here, at least, in Sterling, Arnold, Foster, we have to do with mist- severed brethren upon one great common march, with sincere lovers of mankind, with practisers of the Christian virtues, with men whodiligently discharged the duties of the Christian ministry, and whose latest deathbed murmur was of Christ. While we state their doubts, let us pity the pain and sorrow, amounting al- most to distraction and despair, which attended them, and let us inquire, if we have no difficulties, may it not be because we have never thought at all? and let us envy them the resolution of their doubts, to which they have now attained, we trust, in that land where the strength of light is not measured by the intensity of shade — where, amid all the constellations which may garnish that upper firmament, that of the " Balance " vibrates no more — JOHN STERLING. 293 where the inhabitants bask in spotless love, and see in perfect vision. No such charity, however, can we, or dare we, extend to those halt-fledged children of impudence and conceit, or else of pride and profligacy, in whom this age abounds, who, at the find- ing of each new ditficulty (one, perhai)s, resolved for centuries), raise a noisy Eureka, as they rush out Avith their filthy treasure — for those who cull from such writers as Shelley the blood-red stones of his blasphemy, that they may wreathe them into a neck- lace of ruin for themselves — nor even for those miniatures of Giant Despair, who seat themselves in we know not what "churches of doubters" or Doubting Castles, to confirm those misconceptions which they cannot or seek not to cure. The cha- rity which would extend to such must verily be of that sort which covers a multitude of sins, and of sinners too. 2dly, We must take up anew a voice of warning — the voice of him who saw the Apocalypse. There is coming up the church a current of doubt, deeper far and darker than ever swelled against her before — a current strong in learning, crested with genius, strenuous yet calm in progress. It seems the last grand trial of the truth of our faith. Against the battlements of Zion a motley throng have gathered themselves together. Unitarians, atheists, pantheists, doubters, open foes, secret foes, and be- wildered friends of Christianity, are all in the field, although no trumpet has openly been blown, and no charge publicly sounded. There are the old desperadoes of infidelity — the last followers of Paine and Voltaire ; there is the soberer and stolider Owen and his now scanty and sleepy troop; there follow the Communists of France — a fierce but disorderly crew ; the commentators of Germany come, too, with pickaxes in their hands, crying, "Raze, raze it to its foundations ! " Then you see the garde muhile — thn vicious and the vain youth of Europe; and on the outskirts of the fight hangs, cloudy and uncertain, a small but select band, whose wavering surge is surmounted by the dark and lofty crests of Carlyle and Emerson. " Their swords are a thousand" — their purposes are various; in this, however, all agree, that historical Christianity ought to go down before advancing civilisation. Sterling and some of his co-mates the merciful cloud of death has removed from the fields, while otlws stand in deep uncertainty, looking in agony and in prayer above. 3dly, Of shame. AViiile tiius the foeman is advancing, what is Zion about? Shame and alas! her towers are well nigli un- guarded; her watchmen have deserted their stations, and are either squabbling in her streets with each other, or have fallen fast asleep. IMany are singing psalms, few are standing to their arms. Some are railing at the enemy from the safest towers. The watchman who first perceived the danger and gave the alarm, almost instantly fell back in death. 2c 294 THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. 4thly, Of confidence. Shall, then, these old and glorious battlements be trodden down? Between the activity of their foes and the supineness of their friends, must they perish ? No ; vain is perhaps the help of man, but we, too, will look above. We will turn our eyes to the hills whence our aid is expected. Our grand hope as to the prospects of the world and the church has long lain in the unchanged and unchangeable love of Jesus Christ. As long as his great, tremulous, unsetting eye continues, like a star, to watch her struggles, as the eye of love the tossings of disease, we shall not fear. And whenever the time arrives for that " Bright and Morning Star" starting from his sphere to save his church, he will no longer delay his coming, whether in power or in presence. To save a city like Zion, there might fall the curtain of universal darkness. That curtain shall not fall, but there may, in lieu of it, burst the blaze of celestial light ; and who can abide the day of that appearing? THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. When our " First Gallery" first appeared, a copy of it was sent, to an eminent lay-divine ; the first sentence of whose reply was, '' you have sent me a list of shrpwrechs." It was but too true, for that " Gallery" contains the name of a Godwin, shipwrecked on a false system — and a Shelley, shipwrecked on an extravagant version of that false system — and a Hazlitt, shipwrecked on no system at all — and a Hall, driven upon the rugged reef of mad- ness — and a Foster, cast high and dry upon the dark shore of Misanthropy — and an Edward Irving, inflated into sublime idiocy by the breath of popular favour, and, in the subsidence of that breath, left to roll at the mercy of the waves, a mere log — and, lastly, a Coleridge and a De Quincey, stranded on the same poppy-covered coast, the land of the " Lotos- eaters," wliere it is never morning, nor midnight, nor full day, but always after- noon. Wrecks all these are, but all splendid and instructive withal. And we propose now repairing a second time to the shore, where the last great argosy, Thomas de Quincey, lies half-bedded in mud, to pick up whatever of noble and rare, of pure and per- manent, we can find floating around. We would speak of De Quincey's history, of his faults, of his genius, of his works, and of his future place in the history of literature. And when THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 295 we reflect on what a mare magnum we are about to show to many of our readers, we feel for the moment as if it were new to us also, as if we stood, " Like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyea He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Gather'd round him with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak of Darien." We cannot construct a regular biography of this remarkable man ; neither the time for tliis has come, nor have the materials been, as yet, placed within reach of us, or of any one else. But we may sketch the outlines of what we know — which is, indeed, but little. Thomas De Quincey is the son of a Liverpool merchant. He is one of several children, the premature loss of one of whom he has, in his " Suspiria de Profundis" (published in " Blackwood") most plaintively and eloquently deplored. His father seems to have died early. G uardians were appointed over him, with whom he contrived to quarrel, and from whose wing (while studying at Oxford) he fled to London. There he underwent a series of sur- prising adventures and severe sufferings, which he has recounted in the first part of his " Opium Confessions." On one occasion, while on the point of death by starvation, his life was saved by the intervention of a poor street-stroUei', of whom he afterwards lost sight, but whom, in the strong gratitude of his heart, he would pursue into the central darkness of a London brothel, or into the deeper darkness of the grave. Part of the same dark period of his life was spent in Wales, where he subsisted now on the hospi- tality of the country people, and now, poor fellow, on hips and haws. He was at last found out by some of his friends, and re- manded to Oxford. There he formed a friendship with Chris- topher North, which has continued unimpaired to this hour. Both — besides the band of kindred genius — had that of profound admiration, then a rare feeling, for the poetry of Wordsworth. In the course of this part of his life, he visited Ireland, and was introduced soon afterwards to oriUM — fatal friend, treacherous ally — root of that tree called Wormwood, wiiieh has overshadowed all his after life. A blank here occurs in his history. We find him next in a small white cottage in Cumberland — married — studying Kant, drinking laudanum, and dreaming the most wild and wondrous dreams which ever crossed the brain of mortal. These dreams he recorded in the " London Magazine," then a powerful periodical, conducted by John Scott, and supported by such men as Hazlitt, Lamb, and Allan Cunningham. Th(; " Confessions," when published separately, ran like wild-fire, al- though, from their anonymous form, they added nothing at the 296 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. time to llie autlior's fame. Not long after their publication, Mr De Quincey came down to Scotland, where he has continued to reside, wandering from place to place, contributing to periodicals of all sorts and sizes— to " Blackwood," " Tait," " North British Review," " Hogg's Insti-uctor," as well as writing for the " En- cyclopaxlia Britannica," and publishing one or two independent works, such as " Klosterheim," a tale, and the " Logic of Politi- cal Economy." His wife has been long dead. Three of his daughters, amiable and excellent persons, live in the sweet vil- lage of Lasswade, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh— and there he is, we believe, at present himself. From this very imperfect sketch of De Quincey's history, there rush into our minds some rather painful reflections. It is pain- ful to see a " Giant mind broken by sorrows unspoken, And woes." It is painful to see a glorious being transfigured into a rolling thino- before the whirlwind. It is painful to be compelled to in- scribe upon such a shield the word " Desdichado." It is painful to remember how much misery must have passed through that heart, and how many sweat drops of agony must have stood, in desolate state, upon that brow. And it is most painful of all to feel that guilt as well as misery has been here, and that the sow- ing of the wind preceded the reaping of the whirlwind. Such reflections were mere sentimentalism, unless attended by such corollaries as these: — 1st, Self-control ought to be more than at present a part of education, sedulously and sternly taught, for is it not the geometry of life ? 2dly, Society should feef more that she is responsible for the wayward children of genius, and ought to seek more than she does to soothe their sor- rows, to relieve their wants, to reclaim their wanderings, and to search, as with lighted candles, into the causes of their misery. Had the public, twenty years ago, feeling Mr De Quincey to be one of the master spirits of the age, and, therefore, potentially, one of its greatest benefactors, inquired deliberately into his case, sought him out, put him beyond the reach of want, encouraged thus his heart and strengthened his hand, rescued him from the mean miseries into which he was plunged, smiled approvingly upon the struggles he was making to conquer an evil habit — in one word, recognised him, what a different man had he been now, and over what magnificent wholes had we been rejoicing, in the shape of his works, instead of deploring powei's and acquirements thrown away, in rearing towers of Babel, tantalising in proportion to the magnitude of their design and the beauty of their execu- tion ! Ne<> lected and left alone as a corpse in the shroud of his own o-enius, a fugitive, though not a vagabond, compelled day after THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 297 day to fight absolute starvation at the point of his pen, the marvel is, that he has written so much which the world may not wil- lingly let die. But it is the world's fault that the writings it now recognises, and may henceforth preserve on a high shelf, are rather the sublime ravings of De Quincey drunk, than the calm, profound cogitations of De Quincey sober. The theory of capi- tal punishments is much more subtle and widely ramified than we might at first suppose. On what else are many of our summary critical and moral judgments founded? Men find a man guilty of a crime — they vote him for that one act a purely pernicious member of society, and they turn him otf. So a Byron quarrels with his wife — a Coleridge loses his balance, and begins to reel and totter like Etna in an earthquake — a Burns, made an excise- man, gradually descends towards the low level of his trade — or a De Quincey takes to living on laudanum, and the public, instead of seeking to reform and re-edify each brilliant begun ruin, shouts out, "Raze, raze it to its foundation!" Because the sun is eclipsed, they would howl him away ! Because one blot has lighted on an imperishable page, they would burn it up ! Let us hope, that, as our age is fast becoming ashamed of those infernal sacrifices called executions, so it shall also soon forbear to make its most gifted sons pass through the fire to Moloch, till it has tested their thorovgh and ineradicable vileness. Mr De Quincey's faults we have spoken of in the plural — we ought, perliaps, rather to have used the singular number. In the one word excitement, assuming the special form of opium — the " insane root " — lies the gravamen of his guilt, as also of Cole- ridge's. Now, we ai'e far from wishing to underrate the evil of this craving. But we ought to estimate Mr De Quincey's crimi- nality with precision and justice ; and, while granting that he used opium to excess — an excess seldom paralleled — we must take his own explanation of the circumstances which led liim to begin its use, and of the effects it produced on him. He did not begin it to multiply, or intensify his pleasures, still less to lash himself with its fiery thongs into a counterfeit inspiration, but to alleviate bodily pain. It became, gradually and reluctantly, a necessity of his life. Like the serpents around Laocoon, it con- firmed its grasp, notwithstanding the wild tossings of his arms, the spasmodic resistance of every muscle, the loud shouts of pro- testing agony ; and, when conquered, he lay, like the overpowered Hatteraick in the cave, sullen, still in despair, breathing hard, but perfectly powerless. Its effects on him, too, were of a peculiar kind. They were not brutifying or blackguardising. He was never intoxicated with the drug in his life ; nay, he denies its power to intoxicate. Nor did it at all weaken his intellectual fa- culties, any more than it strengthened them. We have heard poor creatures consoling themselves for their inferioi-ity by saying, 298 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. " Coleridge would not have written so well but for opium." " No thanks to De Quincey for his subtlety — he owes it to ojDiura." Let such persons swallow the drug, and try to write the " Sus- piria," or tlie " Aids to Reflection." Coleridge and De Quincey were great in spite of their habits. Nay, we believe that on truly great intellects stimulus produces little inspiration at all. Can opium think ? can beer imagine ? It is De Quincey in opium — not opium in De Quincey — that ponders and that writes. The stimulus is only the occasional cause which brings the internal power into play; it may sometimes dwarf the giant, but it can never really elevate the dwarf. The evil influences of opium on De Quincey were of a diflfe- rent, but a very pernicious sort. They weakened his will ; they made him a colossal slave to a tiny tyrant; they shut him up (like the Genie in the " Arabian Tales") in a phial filled with dusky fire ; they spread a torpor over the energies of his body ; they closed up, or poisoned, the natural sources of enjoyment ; the air, the light, the sunshine, the breeze, the influences of spring, lost all charm and power over him. Instead of these, snow was welcomed with an unnatural joy, storm embraced as a brother,'and the stern scenery of night ai'ose like a desolate temple round his ruined spirit. If his heart was not utterly hardened, it was owing to its peculiar breadth and warmth. At last his studies were in- terrupted, his peace broken, his health impaired, and then came the noon of his night; a form of gigantic gloom, swaying an " ebon sceptre," stood over him in triumph, and it seemed as if nothing less than a miraculous intervention could rescue the vic- tim from his power. But the victim.was not an ordinary one. Feeling that hell had come, and that death was at hand, he determined, by a mighty effort, to arise from his degradation. For a season his struggles were great and impotent, as those of the giants cast down by Jove under Etna. The mountain shook, the burden tottered, but the light did not at first appear. Nor has he ever, we suspect, completely emancipated himself from his bondage ; but he has struggled manfully against it, and has cast off such a large por- tion of the burden, that it were injustice not to say of him that he is now FREE. It were ungracious to have dwelt, even so long, upon the errors of De Quincey, were it not that, first, his own frankness of dis- closure frees us from all delicacy ; and that, secondly, the errors of such a man, like the cloud of the pillar, have two sides — his darkness may become our light — his sin our salvation. It may somewhat counteract that craving cry for excitement, that ever- lasting " Give, give," so much the mistake of the age, to point strongly to this conspicuous and transcendent victim. We pass to the subject of his genius. That is certainly one of THOMAS DE QCINCEY. 299 the most singular, in its power, variety, culture, and eccentricity, our age has witnessed. His intellect is at once solid and subtle, reminding you of veined and figured marble, so beautiful and evasive in aspect, that you must touch ere you are certain of its firmness. The motion of his mind is like that of dancing, but it is the dance of a Polyphimus, with his heavy steps, thundering down the music to which he moves. Hence his humour often seems forced in motion, while always fine in spirit. The con- trast between the slow march of his sentences, the frequent gra- vity of his spirit, the recondite masses of his lore, the logical se- verity of his diction, and his determination, at times, to be despe- rately witty, produces a ludicrous effect, but somewhat different from what he had intended. It is " Laughter " lame, and only able to hold one of his sides, so that you laugh at, as well as with, him. But few, we think, would have been hypercritical in judging of Columbus' first attitudes as he stepped down upon his new world. And thus, let a great intellectual explorer be per- mitted to occupy his own region, in whatever way, and with whatever ceremonies, may seem best to himself. Should he even, like Cajsar, stumble upon the shore, no matter if he stumble /or- icard, and, by accepting, make the omen change its nature and meaning. Genius and logical perception are De Quincey's principal powers. His insight hangs over us and the world like a nebu- lous star, seeing us, but, in part, remaining unseen. In fact, liis deepest thoughts have never been disclosed. Like Burke, he has not " hung his heart upon his sleeve, for daws to peck at." He has profound reticence as well as poAver, and he has modesty as well as reticence. On subjects vni\\ which he is acquainted, such as logic, literature, or political economy, no man can speak with more positive and perfect assurance. But on all topics where the conscience — the innermost moral nature — must be the umpire, the "English Opium-Eater" is silent. His " silence," indeed, " answers very loud;" his dumbness has a tongue, but it requires a " peculiar ear " to hear its accents ; and to interpret tlieni, what but his own exquisitely subtle and musical style, like written sculpture, could suffice ? Indeed, De Quincey's style is one of the most wondrous of his sifts. As Professor Wilson once said to us about him, " the best word always comes up." It comes up easily, as a bubble on the wave ; and is yet fixed, solid, and permanent as marble. His style is at once warm as genius, and cool as logic. Frost and fire fulfil the paradox of " embracing each other." His faculties never disturb or distract each other's movements — they are in- separable, as substance and shadow. His sentences are generally very long, and as full of life and of joints as a serpent. It is told of Coleridge, that no shorthand-writer could do justice to his lee- 300 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. tures ; because, although he spoke deliberately, yet it was im- possible, from the first part of his sentences, to have the slightest notion how they were to end — each clause was a new surprise, and the close often unexpected as a thundei'bolt. In this, as in many other respects, De Quincey resembles the "noticeable man with large grey eyes." Each of his periods, begin where it may, accomplishes a cometary sweep ere it closes. To use an expres- sion of his own, applied to Bishop Berkeley, he passes, with the utmost ease and speed, from " tar-water to the Trinity, from a mole-heap to the thrones of the Godhead." His sentences are microcosms — real, though imperfect wholes. It is as if he dreaded that earth would end, and chaos come again, ere each prodigious period were done. This practice, so far from being ashamed of, he often and elaborately defends — contrasting it with the " short- winded and asthmatic " style of writing which abounds in modem times, and particularly among French authors. We humbly think that the truth on this question lies in the middle. If an author is anxious for fulness, let him use long sentences ; if he aims at clearness, let them be short. If he is beating about for truth, his sentences will be long ; if he deems he has found, and wishes to communicate it to others, they will be short. In long sentences, you see processes ; in short, results. Eloquence de- lights in long sentences; wit, in short. Long sentences impress more at the time ; short sentences, if nervous, cling more to the memory. From long sentences you must, in general, deduct a considerable quantum of verbiage ; short have often a meagre and skeleton air. The reading of long sentences is more painful at first, less so afterwards; a volume composed entirely of short sen- tences becomes soon wearisome. The mind which employs long sentences has often a broad, but dim vision — that which delights in short, sees a great number of small points clearly, but seldom a rounded whole. De Quincey is a good specimen of the first class. The late Dr Hamilton, of Leeds, was the most egregious instance of the second. With all his learning, and talent, and fancy, the writings of that distinguished divine are rendei-ed ex- ceedingly tedious by the broken and gasping character of their style — reading which has been compared to walking on stepping- stones, instead of a firm road. Everything is so clear, sharp, and short, that you get irritated and provoked, and cry out for an in- tricate or lengthy sentence, both as a trial to your wind, and as a relief to your weariness. The best style of writing, in point of effect, is that which com- bines both forms of sentence in proper proportions. Just as a well-armed warrior of old, Avhile he held the broadsword in his right hand, had the dagger of mercy suspended by his side, the eftective writer, who can at one time wave the flaming brand of eloquence, can at another use the pointed poniard of direct state- THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. 301 ment, of close logic, or of keen and caustic wit. Thus did Burke, Hall, Horsley, and Chalmers. Akin to De Quincey's length of sentence, is his ungovernable habit of digression. You can as soon calculate on the motions of a stream of the aurora, as on those of his mind. From the title of any one of his papers, you can never infer whether he is to treat the subject announced, or a hundred others — whether the subjects he is to treat are to be cognate, or contradictory, to the pi-ojected theme — whether, should he begin the subject, he shall ever finish it — or into how many foot-notes he is to draw away, as if into subterranean pipes, its pith and substance. At every possible angle of his road he contrives to break olF, and hence he has never yet reached the end of a day's journey. Un- like Christian in the " Pilgrim," he welcomes every temptation to go astray — and, not content with shaking hands with old AVorldly Wiseman, he must, before climbing Mount Difficulty, explore both the way of Danger and that of Destruction. It may be inquired, if this arise from the fertility or from the frailty of his genius — from his knowledge of, and dominion over, every pro- vince of thought, or from his natural or acquired inability to re- sist " right-hand or left-hand defections," provided they promise to interest himself and to amuse his readers. Judging from Coleridge's similar practice, Ave are forced to conclude that it is in De Quincey, too, a weakness fostered, if not produced, by long habits of self-indulgence. And yet, notwithstanding such defects (and we might have added to them his use of logical formulie at times when they ap- pear simply ridiculous, his unnecessary scholasticism and display of learning, the undue self-complacence with which he parades his peculiar views, and explodes his adversary's, however reputed and venerable, and a certain air of exaggeration which swathes all his written speech), what splendid powers this strange being at all times and on all subjects exerts! With what razor-like sharpness does he cut the most difficult distinctions! What learning is his — here compelling wonder, from its variety and minute accuracy ; and there, from the philosophical grasp with which he holds it, in compressed masses ! And, above all, what grand, sombre, Miltonic gleams his imagination casts around him on his way; and in what deep swells of organ-like music do his thoughts often, harmoniously and irrepressibly, move! The three prose-writers of this century, wlio, as it appears to us, ap- proach most nearly to the giants of the era of Charles 1., in spirit of genius and munificence of language, are, Edward Irving, in some of his works, Thomas Aird, in parts of his " Religious Cha- racteristics," and Thomas De Quincey, in his " Confessions," and his " Susjiiria de Profundis." In coming down from an author to his works, we have often a 302 THOMAS DE QUINCET. feeling of humiliation and disappointment. It is like comparing the great Ben Nevis with the streamlets which flow from his base, and asking, " Is this all the mighty mountain can give the world ?" So, " What has De Quincey done?" is a question we are now sure to hear, and feel rather afraid to answer. In a late number of " Hogg's Instructor," Mr De Quincey, as if anticipating some sucli objection, argues (referring to Profes- sor Wilson), that it is ridiculous to expect a writer now to write a large separate work, as some had demanded from the professor. He is here, however, guilty of a fallacy, which we wonder he allowed to escape from his pen ; there is a difference between a large and a great work. No one wishes either De Quincey or John Wilson to write a folio ; what we wish from each of them is, an artistic whole, large or comparatively small, fully reflecting the image of his mind, and bearing the relation to his other works which the "Paradise Lost" does to Milton's "Lycidas," " Arcades," and " Hymn on the Nativity." And this, precisely, is what neither of those illustrious men has as yet effected. De Quincey's works, if collected, would certainly possess suffi- cient bulk ; they lie scattered in prodigal profusion through the thousand and one volumes of our periodical literature ; and we are certain, that a selection of their better portions would fill ten admirable octavos. Mr De Quincey himself was lately urged to collect them. His reply was, " Sir, the thing is absolutely, in- superably, and for ever impossible. Not the archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary, durst attempt any such thing!" AYe suspect, at least, that death must seal the lips of the " old man eloquent," ere such a selection shall be made. And yet, in those unsounded abysses, what treasures might be found — of criticism, of logic, of wit, of metaphysical acumen, of research, of burning eloquence, and essential poetry ! We should meet there Avith admirable specimens of translation from Jean Paul Richter and Lessing ; with a criticism on the former, quite equal to that more famous one of Carlyle's ; with historical chapters, such as those in " Blackwood" on the Caesars, worthy of Gibbon; with searching criticisms, such as one on the knocking in " Mac- beth," and two series onLandor and Sclosser: with the elephantine humour of his lectures on " Murder, considered as one of the fine arts;" and with the deep theological insight of his papers on Christianity, considered as a means of social progress, and on the Essenes. In fact, De Quincey's knowledge of tlieology is equal to that of two bishops — in metaphysics, he could puzzle any German professor — in astronomy, he has outshone Professor Nichol — in chemistry, he can outdive Samuel Brown — and in Greek, excite to jealousy the shades of Porson and Parr. There is another department in which he stands first, second, and third — we mean the serious hoax. Do our readers remember the THOMAS DE QUINCET. 303 German romance of " "Walladmor," passed off at the Leipsic fair as one of Sir AValter Scott's, and afterwards translated into Eng- lish? The translation, which was, in fact, a new work, was executed by De Quincey, who, finding tlie original dull, thought proper to re-write it ; and thus to charge trick upon trick. Or have they ever read his chapter in " Blackwood" for July, 1837, on the " Retreat of a Tartar tribe ?" a chapter certainly contain- ing the most powerful historical painting we ever read, and re- cording a section of adventurous and romantic story not equalled, he says, '• since the retreat of the fallen angels." This chapter, we have good reason for knowing, originated principally in his own inventive brain. Add to all this, the fiery eloquence of his " Confessions" — the laboured speculation of his " Political Eco- nomy" — the curiously-perverted ingenuity of his " Ivlosterheim" — and the solemn, sustained, linked, and lyrical raptures of his " Suspiria;"* and we have answered the question, What has he done? But another question is less easy to answer, What cau he, or should he, or shall he, yet do? And here we venture to express a long-cherished opinion. Pure history, or that species of biography which merges into history, is his forte, and ought to have been his selected province. He never could have written a first-rate fiction or poem, or elaborated a complete or original system of philosophy, although both his imagination and his in- tellect are of a very high order. But he has every quality of the great historian, except compression : he has learning, insight, the power of reproducing the past, fancy to colour and wit to enliven his writing, and a style wdiich, while it is unwieldy upon small subjects, rises to meet all great occasions, like a senator to salute a king. The only danger is, that, if he were writing the history of tlie Crusades or Caisars, for instance, his work would expand to the dimensions of the " Universal History." A great history we do not now expect from De Quincey; but he might produce some, as yet, unwritten life, such aa the life of Dante or of Milton. Such a work would at once concentrate his purpose, task his powers, and perpetuate his name. As it is, his place in the future gallery of ages is somewhat uncertain. Eor all he has hitherto done, or for all the impres- sion he has made upon the world, his course may be marked as that of a brilliant, but timid, meteor, shooting athwart the mid- night, watched by but few e^-es, but accompanied by tlie keenest interest and admiration of those who did watch it. Passages of his writings may be preserved in collections; and, among natural curiosities in the museum of man, his memory must assuredly be • The tliinl number of the " Suspiria," which appeared in "Blackwood " for Juno, 18J-J, is tlie most profound, eloquent, and heartrending prose-poeui in the language. It is a sigh wliich only the ISccoud Advent cau answer. 304 WORDSWORTH. included as the greatest consumer of laudanum and learning — as possessing the most potent of brains and the weakest of wills of almost all men who ever lived. We have other two remarks to offer ere we close. Our first is, that, with all his errors, De Quiiicey has never ceased to be- lieve in Christianity. In an age Avhen most men of letters have gone over to tlie sceptical side, and too often treat with insolent scorn, as sciolistic and shallow, those who still cling to the Gos- pel, it is refreshing to find one who stands confessedly at the head of them all, in point of talent and learning, so intimately acquainted with the tenets, so profoundly impressed by the evi- dences, and so ready to do battle fur the cause, of the blessed faith of Jesus. From those awful depths of sorrow in which he was long plunged, he never ceased to look up to the counte- nance and the cross of the Saviour ; and now, recovered from his evils, and sins, and degradations, we seem to see him sitting, " clothed and in his right mind, at the feet of Jesus." Would to God that others of his class were to go, and to sit down beside him! WORDSWORTH. Since the first edition of this book appeared, the greatest laureate of England has expired— the intensest, most unique, and most pure-minded of our poets, with tlie single exceptions of Milton and Cowper, is departed. And it were lesemajesty against his mighty shade not to pay it another tribute, while yet his memory and the grass of his grave are green. It is singular that only a few months elapsed between his death and that of the great antagonist of his literary famcr— Lord Jeffrey (who, we understand, persisted to the last in his ungenerous and unjust estimate). How different the men! One of the acutest, most accomplished, most warmhearted and generous of men, Jeffrey wanted that stamp of universality, that highest order of genius, that depth of insight and that simple directness of purpose, not to speak of that moral and religious consecration, which " give the world assurance of a man." He was the idol of Edinburgh, and the pride of Scotland, because he condensed in himself those qualities which the modern Athens has long been accustomed to covet and admire — taste and talent rather than genius — subtlety of appreciation rather than power WORDSWORTH. 305 of on"-ination — the logical understanding rather than the inven- tive insicht — and because his name had sounded out to the ends of the earth. But nature and man, not Edinburgh Castle or the Grampian Hills merely, might have been summoned to mourn in Wordsworth's departure the loss of one of their truest high-priests, who had gazed into some of the deepest secrets of the one, and echoed some of the loftiest aspirations of the other. To soften such grief, however, there comes in the reflection, that the task of this great poet had been nobly discharged. He had given the world assurance, full, and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and of what was meant by him. "What AVordsworth's mission was, may be, perliaps, understood through some previous remarks upon his great mistress — Nature, as a poetical personage. There are three methods of contemplating nature. These are, the material, the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The mate- rialist looks upon it as the great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as a shadow — a mode of mind — the infinite projection of his own thought. The man who stands heitceen the two extremes, looks on nature as a great, but not ultimate or everlasting, scheme of mediation or compromise between pure and absolute spirit and humanity — adumbrating God to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materiaHst, there is an altar, star-lighted heaven- high, but no God. To the idealist, there is a God, but no ahar. He who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great Spirit as his God, and the universe as the altar on which he presents the gift of his poetical (we do not speak at present so much of his theological) adoration. It must be obvious at once which of those three views of nature is the most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the two prin- ciples of spirit and matter distinct and unconfounded — preserves in their proper relations — tlie soul and the body of things — God within, and without the garment by which, in Goethe's grand thought, "we see him by." AVhile one party deify, and another destroy matter, the third impregnate, without identifying, it •with the Divine presence. The notions suggested by this view, which is that of Scripture, are exceedingly comprehensive and magniticent. Nature be- comes to the poet's eye "a g7-eat sheet let doivnfrom God out of heaven" and in which there is no object "common or unclean." The purpose and the Being above cast such a grandeur over the pettiest or barest objects as did the fiery pillar upon the sand or the shrubs of the howling desert of its march. Everything becomes valuable Avhcn looked upon as a communication from God, imperlcct only from the nature of the material used. What 306 WORDSWORTH. Otherwise iniglit have been concluded discords, now appear only stammerings or whisperings in the Divine voice ; thorns and thistles spring above the primeval curse, the " meanest flower that blows " gives " Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The creation is neither unduly exalted nor contemptuously trampled under- foot, but maintains its dignified position, as an ambassador from the Divine King. The glory of something far beyond association — that of a divine and perpetual presence — is shed over the landscape, and its golden drops are spilled upon the stars. Objects the most diverse — the cradle of the child, the wet hole of the centipede, the bed of the corpse, and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the crag on which sits, half asleep, the dark vulture, digesting blood — are all clothed in a light the same in kind, though varying in degree — " A light which never was on sea or shore." In the poetry of the Hebrews, accordingly, the locusts are God's "great army;" — the winds are his messengers, the thun- der his voice, the lightning a " fiery stream going before him," the moon his witness in the heavens, the sun a strong man re- joicing to run his race — all creation is roused and startled into life through him — its every beautiful, or dire, or strange shape in the earth or the sky, is God's moveable tent ; the place where, for a season, his honour, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwell — the tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode. His mere "tent," however — for while the great and the infi- nite are thus connected with the little and the finite, the subor- dination of the latter to the former is always maintained. The most magnificent objects in nature are but the mirrors to God's face — the scafiblding to his future purposes ; and, like mirrors, are to wax dim ; and, like scaffolding, to be removed. The great sheet is to be received up again into heaven. The heavens and the earth ai-e to pass away, and to be succeeded, if not by a purely mental economy, yet by one of a more spiritual mate- rialism, compared to which the former shall no more be remem- bered, neither come into mind. Those frightful and fantastic forms of animated life, through which God's glory seems to shine with a struggle, and but faintly, shall disappear — nay, the worlds which bore, and sheltered them in their rugged dens and caves, ^hall flee from the face of the regenerator. " A milder day" is to dawn on the universe — the refinement of matter is to keep pace with the elevation of mind. Evil and sin are to be eternally banished to some Siberia of space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled— " And one eternal spring encircles all I " s "WORDSWORTH. 307 The mediatorial purpose of creation, fully subserved, is to be abandoned, that we may see " eye to eye," and that God may be " all in all." That such views of matter — its present ministry — ^tlie source of its beauty and glory — and its future destiny, transferred from tlio pages of both Testaments to those of our great moral and re- ligious poets, have deepened some of their profoundest, and swelled some of their highest, strains, is unquestionable. Such prospects as were in INIilton's eye, when he sung — " Thy Saviour and thy Lord Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealM, In glory of the Father to dissolve Satan with his perverted world ; then raise From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date," — may be found in Thomson, in his closing " Hymn to the Seasons," — in Coleridge's " Religious Musings " (in Shelley's " Prome- theus" even, but perverted and disguised), in Bailey's " Festus" (cumbered and entangled with his religious theory), and more rootedly, although less theologically, than in all the rest, in the poetry of Wordsworth. The secret of Wordsworth's profound and peculiar love for Nature, even in her meaner and minuter forms, may he, perhaps, here. De Quincey seeks for it in a peculiar conformation of the eye, as if he actually did see more in the object than other men ; but the critic has not sought to explain the rationale of this pe- culiarity. Mere acuteness of vision it cannot have been, else the eagle might have/eZ<, though not written, " The Excursion" — else the fact is not accountable why many of weak sight, such as Burke, have been rapturous admirers of Nature ; and so, till we learn that Mr De Quincey has looked through Words- worth's eyes, we must call this a mere fancy. Hazlitt again, and others since, have accounted for the phenomenon by associa- tion ; but this fails, we suspect, fully to explain the deep, native, and brooding passion in question — a passion which, instead of being swelled by the associations of after life, rose to full stature in youth, as " Tintern Abbey" testifies. One word of his own, perhaps, better solves the mystery— it is the one word "conse- cration" — " The consecration and the poet's dream." His eye had been anointed with eye- salve, and he saw, as his poet-predecessors had done, the temple in which he was standing, heard in every breeze and ocean billow the sound of a temple- service, and ielt that tiie grandeur of the ritual, and of its reci- pient, threw the shadow of their greatness upon every stone in 308 WORDSWORTH. the corners of the edifice, and upon every eft crawling along its floors. Reversing the miracle, he saw "trees as men walking" — heard the speechless sing, and, in the beautiful thought of " The Roman," caught on his ear the fragments of a " divine soliloquy," filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. Hence the tumul- tuous, yet awful joy of his youthful feelings to Nature. Hence his estimation of its lowliest features ; for does not every bush and tree appear to him " a pillar in the temple of his God ?" The leaping fish pleases him, because its " cheer" in the lonely tarn is of praise. The dropping of the earth on the coffin lid is a slow and solemn psalm, mingling in austere sympathy with the raven's croak, and in his " Power of sound" he proceeds elabo- rately to condense all those varied voices, high or low, soft or harsh, united or discordant, into one crushing chorus, like the chorusses of Haydn, or of heaven. Nature undergoes no out- ward cliange to his eye, but undergoes a far deeper transfigura- tion to his spirit — as she stands up in the white robes, and with the sounding psalmodies of her mediatorial office, between him and the Infinite I AM. Never must this feeling be confounded with pantheism. All does not seem to him to be God, nor even (strictly speaking) divine ; but all seems to be immediately /ro?« God — rushing out from him in being, to rush instantly back to him in service and praise. Again tlie natal dew of the first morning is seen lying on bud and blade, and the low voice of the first evening's song becomes audible again. Although Coleridge in his youth was a Spinozist, Wordsworth seems at once, and for evei-, to have re- coiled from even his friend's eloquent version of that creedless creed, that baseless foundation, that system, through the iiilieno- menon of which look not the bright eyes of Supreme Intelligence, but the blind face of irresponsible and infinite necessity. Shelley himself — with all the power his critics attribute to him of paint- ing night, animating atheism, and giving strange loveliness to annihifation — has failed in redeeming Spinoza's theory from the reproach of being as hateful as it is false ; and there is no axiom we hold more strongly than this — that the theory which cannot be rendered poetical, cannot be true. " Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty," said poor Keats, to whom time, however, was not granted to come down from the first glowing generalisation of his heart, to the particular creeds Avhich his ripened intellect would have, according to it, rejected or received. Nor, although Wordsworth is a devoted lover of nature, down to what many consider the very blots, or, at least, dashes and commas in her page, is he blind to the fact of her transient cha^ racter. The power he worships has his " dwelling in the light of setting suns," but that dwelling is not his everlasting abode. For earth, and the universe, a " milder dwf (words certifying WOKDSWORTH. 309 their truth by their simple beauty) is in store, when " the monu- ments" of human weakness, folly, and evil shall " all be over- grown." He sees afar off the great spectacle of Nature retiring before God; the ambassador giving place to the King; tlie bright toys of this nursery— sun, moon, earth, and stars — put away, like childish things; the symbols of the Infinite lost in the Infinite itself ;^ and though lie could, on the Saturday evening, bow before the midnight mountains and midnight heavens, he could also, on the Sabbath morn, in Rydal church, bow as profoundly before the apostolic word, *' All these things shall be dissolved." With Wordsworth, as with all great poets, his poetical creed passes into his religious. It is the same tune with variations. But we confess that, in his case, we do not think the variations equal. The mediation of nature he understands, and has beau- tifully represented in his poetry ; but that higher mediation of the Divine Man between man and the Father, does not lie fully or conspicuously on his page. A believer in the mystery of godli- ness he unquestionably was, but he seldom preached it. Chris- topher North, many years ago, in " Blackwood," doubted if there were so much as aBible in poor Margaret's cottage("Excursion"). We doubt so too, and have not found much of the " true cross" among all his trees. The theologians divide prayer into four parts— adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and petition. Words- worth stops at the second. Nowhere do we find more solemn, sustained, habitual, and worthy adoration, than in his writings. The tone, too, of all his poems, is a calm thanksgiving, like that of a long blue, cloudless sky, colouring, at evening, into the hues of more fiery praise. But he does not weep like a penitent, nor supplicate like a child. Such feelings seem suppressed and folded up as far-off storms, and the traces of past tempests are succinctly enclosed in the algebra of the silent evening air. And hence, like Milton's, his poetry has rather tended to foster the glow of devotion in the loftier spirits of the race — previously taught to adore — than, like that of Cowper and Montgomery, to send pro- digals back to their forsaken homes; Davids, to cry, "Against thee only have I sinned ;" and Peters, to shriek in agony, " Lord, save us: we perish," To pass from the essential poetic element in a writer of genius, to his artistic skill, is a felt, yet necessary descent — like the painter compelled, after sketching the man's countenance, to draw his dress. And yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity, elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the body — seems the soul made visible; so is it with the style and manner of many great poets. Their speech and music witliout are as inevitable as their genius, or as the song lor ever sounding within their souls. And why? The whole ever tends to beget a whole— the large substance to cast its deep, 2 D 310 WORDSWORTH. yet delicate, shadow — the divine to be like itself in the human, on which its seal is set. So it is with "Wordsworth. That pro- found simplicity — that clear obscurity — that night-like noon — that noon-like night — that one atmosphere of overhanging Deity, seen weighing upon ocean and pool, mountain and molehill, forest and flower — that pellucid depth — that entireness of pur- pose and fulness of power, connected with fragmentary, wilful, or even weak execution — that humble, yet proud, precipitation of himself, Anl£Eus-like, upon the bosom of simple scenes and simple sentiments, to regain primeval vigour — that obscure, yet lofty isolation, like a tarn, little in size, but elevated in site, with few visiters, but with many stars — that Tory-Eadicalisni, Popish- Protestanti.-m, philosophical Christianity, which have rendered him a glorious riddle, and made Shelley, in despair of finding it out, exclaim, " No Deist, and no Christian he ; No Whig, no Tory. He got so subtle, that to be Nothing was all his glory" — all such apparent contradictions, but real unities, in his poetical i3nd moral creed and character, are fully expressed in his lowly but aspiring language, and the simple, elaborate architecture of his verse — every stone of which is lilted up by the strain of strong logic, and yet laid to music; and, above all, in the choice of his subjects, which range, with a free and easy motion, up Irom a garden spade and a village drum, to the " celestial visages" which darkened at the tidings of man's fall, and to the "organ of eternity" which sung pseans over his recovery. We sum up what we have further to say of Wordsworth, under the items of his works, his life and character, and his death. His works, covering a large space, and abounding in every variety of excellence and style, assume, after all, a fragmentary aspect. They are true, simple, scattered, and strong, as blocks torn from the crags of Helvellyn, and lying there " low, but mighty still." Few even of his ballads are wholes. They leave too much untold. They are far too suggestive to satisfy. From each poem, however rounded, there streams off a long train of (bought, like the tail of a comet, which, while testifying its power, mars its aspect of oneness. The " Excursion," avowedly a fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter, like a piece of Pallas, itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, per- haps, his sonnets, his " Laodamia," his "Intimations of Immor- tality," and his verses on the " Eclipse in Italy," are the most complete in execution, as certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has none, nor does he regret the want. " 1 hate," he was wont to say to Hazlitt, " those interlo- WORBSWORTH, 311 cutions between Caius and Lucius." He sees, as " from a tower, the end of all." The waving lights and shadows, the varied loopholes of view, the shif tings and fluctuations of feeling, the growing, broadening interest of the drama, have no charm ibr him. His mind, from its gigantic size, contracts a gigantic stiif- ness. It " moveth altogether, if it move at all." Hence, some of his smaller poems remind you of the dancing of an elephant. Many of tiie little poems which he wrote upon a system are ex- ceedingly tame and feeble. Yet often, even in his narrow bleak vales, we find one " meek streamlet — only one" — beautifying the desolation; and feel how painful it is for him to become poor, and that, when he sinks, it is with "compulsion and laborious flight." But, having subtracted such faults, how much remains — of truth — of tenderness — of sober, eve-like grandeur — of purged beauties, white and clean as tlie lilies of Eden — of calm, deep reflection, contained in lines and sentences which have be- come proverbs — of mild enthusiasm — of minute knowledge of nature — of strong, yet unostentatious, sympathy with man — and of devout and breathless communion with the Great Author of all ! Apart altogetlier from their intellectual pretensions, Words- worth's poems possess a moral clearness, beauty, transparency, and harmony, whicii connect them immediately with those of Milton; and beside the more popular poetry of the past age — ■ such as Byron's and Moore's — they remind us of that unplanted garden, wliere the shadow of God united all trees of fruitfulness, and all flowers of beauty, into one; where the "large river," which watered the whole, " ran south," toward the sun of heaven — when, compared with the garden* of the Hesperides, where a dragon was the presiding deity, or with those in the Metropolis, where Comus and his rabble rout celebrate their un ■ disguised orgies of miscalled and miserable pleasure. To write a great poem, demands years — to write a great un- dying example, demands a lifetime. Such a life, too, becomes a poem — liigher far than pen can inscribe, or meti'e make musi- cal. Such a life it was granted to Wordsworth to live in severe harmony with his verse — as it lowly, and as it aspiring, to live, too, amid opposition, obloquy, and abuse — to live, too, amid the glare of that watchful observation, which has become to public men far more keen and far more capacious in its powers and opportunities than in ililton's days. It was not, unquestionably, a perfect life, even as a man's, far less as a poet's. He did feel and resent, more than beseemed a great man, the pursuit and persecution of the hounds, wliether "grey" and swift-footed, or whetlier curs of low degree, who dogged his steps. His voice from his mountains sounded at times rather like the moan of wounded weakness, than the bellow of masculine wrath. He should, simply, in reply to his opponents, have written on at his 312 WORDSWORTH. poems, and let his prefaces alone. " If they receive your first hook ill," wrote Thomas Carlyle to a new author, " Avrite the second better — so much better as to shame them." When will authors learn that, to answer an unjust attack, is merely to give it a keener edge, and that all injustice carries the seed of oblivion and exposure in itself? To use the language of the masculine spirit just quoted, " it is really a truth, one never knows whether praise be really good for one, or whether it be not, in very fact, the worst poison that could be administered. Blame, or even vituperation, I have always found a safer article. In the long run, a man has, and 2S, just what he is and has; the world's notion of him has not altered him at all, except, indeed, if it have poisoned him with self-conceit, and made a capvt mortuwn of him." The sensitiveness of authors — were it not such a sore subject — might admit of some curious reflections. One vvould some- times fancy that Apollo, in an angry hour, had done to his sons what' fable records him to have done to JMarsyaf — -fioyed them alive. Nothing has brought more contempt upon authors than this — implying, as it does, a lack of common coui'age and man- hood. The true son of genius ought to rush before the public as the warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch — to acknowledge only home thrusts — large, life-letting- out blows — determined either to conquer or to die, and feeling that battles should be lost in the same spirit in which they are won. If Wordsworth did not fully answer this ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it. In private, Wordsworth, we understand, was pure, mild, simple, and majestic — perhaps somewhat austere in his judg- ments of the erring, and, perhaps, somewhat narrow in his own economics. In accordance, ^ve suppose, with that part of his poetic system which magnified moleheaps to mountains, pennies assumed the importance of 2^oimds. It is ludicrous, yet charac- teristic,^to think of the great author of the " Eecluse," squabbling with a porter about the price of a parcel, or bidding down an old book at a stall. He was one of the few poets who were ever guilty of the crime of worldly prudence — that ever could have fulfilled the old paradox, " A poet has built a house." In his young days, according to Hazlitt, he said little in society, sat generally lost in thought, threw out a bold or an indifferent re- mark occasionally, and relapsed into reverie again. In latter years, he became more talkative and oracular. His health and habits were always regular, his temperament happy, and his heart sound and hale. We have said that his life, as a poet, was far from perfect. Our meaning is, that he did not sufhciently, owing to tempera- jiient, or position,' or habits, sympathise with the ongoings of WORDSWORTH. 313 society, tlie fulness of modern life, and the varied passions, un- beliefs, sins, and miseries of modern human nature. His soul dwelt apart. He came, like the Baptist, " neither eating nor drinking," and men said, " He hath a demon." He saw at morn- ing, from London Bridge, " all its mighty heart" lying still; but he did not at noon plunge artistically into the thick of its throb- bing life, far less sound the depths of its wild midnight heavings of revel and wretchedness, of hopes and fears, of stifled fury and eloquent despair. Nor, although he sung the " mighty stream of tendency" of this wondrous age, did he ever launch his poetic craft upon it, nor seem to see the lohitherioards of its swift and awful stress. He has, on the wliole, stood aside from his time — not on a peak of the past, not on an anticipated Alp of tlie future, but on his own Cumberland highlands — hearing the tumult and remaining still, lifting up his life as a far-seen beacon-fire, studying the manners of the humble dwellers in the vales below — " piping a simple song to thinking hearts," and striving to waft to brother spirits the fine infection of his own enthusiasm, faith, hope, and devotion. Perhaps, had l:e been less strict and consistent in ci'eed and in character, he mi'i^ht have attained greater breadth, blood-warmth, and widespread power, have presented on his page a fuller reflection of our present state, and drawn from his poetry a yet stronger moral, and be- come the Shakspere, instead of the Milton, of the age. For him- self, he did undoubtedly choose the "better part;" nor do we mean to insinuate that any man ought to contaminate himself ibr the sake of his art, but that the poet of a period will necessarily come so near to its peculiar sins, sufferings, follies, and mistakes, as to understand them, and even to feel the force of their tempta- tions, and though he should never yield to, yet must have a "fel- low-feeling" of, its prevailing infirmities. The death of this eminent man took few by surprise. Many anxious eyes have for a while been turned towards Rydal Mount, where this hermit stream was nearly sinking into the ocean of the Infinite. And now, to use his own grand word, used at the death of Scott, a "trouble" hangs upon Helvellyn's brow, and over the waters of Windermere. The last of the Lakers has de- j)arted. That glorious country has become a tomb for her more glorious children. No more is Southey's tall form seen at his library window, confronting Skiddaw, with a port as stately as its own. No more does Coleridge's dim eye look down into the dim tarn, heavy laden, too, under the advancing thunder-storm. And no more is Wordsworth's pale and lofty front shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noonday amidst the quiet wooils. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those " Serene creators of immortal things." 314 JOHN BUKTAN. Alas ! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this strange world ! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices and the liigliest aspirations, are equally unsihle to rescue their votaries from the swift ruin which is in chase of us all : " Golden lads and girls all must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust." But Wordsworth has left for himself an epitaph almost super- fluously rich — in the memory of his private virtues — of the im- pulse he gave to our declining poetry — of the sympathies he dis- covered in all his strains with the poor, the neglected, and the despised — of the version he furnished of nature, true and beau- ful as if it were nature describing herself- — of his lofty and enacted ideal of his art and the artist — of the " thoughts, too deep for tears," he has given to meditative and lonely hearts — and, above all, of the support he has lent to the cause of the " primal duties" nnd eldest instincts of man — to his hope of immortality, and his fear of God. And now we bid him farewell in his own words — "Blessings be with him, and eternal praise, Ihe poet, who on earth has made us heirs Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays." JOHN BUNYAN. The three greatest natural geniuses of Britain hitherto, have been a player, a tinker, and a ganger — Sliakspere, Bunyan, and Burns. It is marvellous to think of the Divirice 2')articula aura' passing by palaces and courts as in scorn, and shedding its selectest influ- ences on heads not only uncrowned, but actually loaded by a penumbi'a of contempt, and the "foregone conclusion" of three of the most unpoetical of professions. Marvellous, and yet not, perhaps, to remain for ever unparalleled ; for would our readers believe that the three most rising poets of our day are a brew^er, a wine merchant, and a seller of shawls,'' Verb. sat. saj^. Facts like these prove unquestionably, that poetry is a gift, not an art ; that poeta nasciiur non ft ; that genius, like the will of that Being of whose breath it is a ihinor inspiration, is sovereign, and, like the wind, bloweth wliere it listeth ; and that to feel contempt for any lawful trade is a vulgarism and fallacy liable to the exposure and reversal of the Almighty himself. Shakspere miglit have been a chimney-sweep instead of a stage- player ; Burns might have been a hind instead of a farmer hold- JOHN' BUNT AN. 315 ing his own plough ; and Bunyan a camp-suttler, instead of a soldier in tlie piirliainentaiy army. It had been the same to the great breath, \yiiich, in poetry as in religion, seems to search about, to wait long, and to " return according to its circuits," in order, by ciioosing the weak and the base things, yea, and the very nonentities of this world, to bring to nought the things that are, and to confound the things that are mighty. The walls of the seventh heaven of invention are not to be scaled by mere am- bition or art ; inspiration, if genuine, descends from above, and, in descending, must, like the lightning, be permitted its own proud and imperial choice. Let, tlien, the stage-player, the tinker, and the ganger, appear for a moment together upon our stage. The first is a swarthy and Spaniard-looking man, with tall forehead, sharp sidelong eyes, dark hair curling over his lips and chin, and firm, deep-cut nostril. Tiie second has a fresh complexion, auburn locks, round brow, hair on iiis upper lip after tlie old English fashion, and sparkling glowing eyes, not the least like those of a dreamer, but resembling rather tlie eyes of " some hot amcurist," as John AVoodvil hath it. Tlie third has a broad, low brow, palpitating •with tliought and suHering, eyes shivering in their great round orbs witli emotion, like the star Venus in the orange west, nostril slightly curved upward, dusky skin, black masses of hair, and dimpkd, undecisive cliin and cheek. All three have imagination as their leading f\vculty, but that of the player is wide as th ■ globe ; that of the tinker is intense, almost to lunacy, and that of the gauger is narrov/ and vivid as a stream of forked lightning. All three have strong intellect, but the intellect of the one is ca- pacious, that of the other casuistic, and that of the third clear. All are partially educated, but Shakspere's cidtureis that of the society of his age, Bunyan's that of solitary reading, and Burns's of a compound of both. All are men of " one book," Shakspere's being the universe, Bunyan's the Bible, and Burns's the ballad poetry of Scotland. All are men of intensely ardent tempera- ment, which in Shakspere is subdued by the width of the mind in which the furnace glows, which in Bunyan becomes a purged flame, but which, in poor Burns, bursts out of all restraint into a destructive conflagration. In the works of all, materiem siipemt opus, the genius ol' Shakspere flaming out of mean structures of farce and tragi-comedy, Bunyan's power overflowing the banks of narrow controversial treatises, and the great soul of Burns o'cr-iuforming the tenement of fugitive poems, j/'ewx (Tesprits, sa- tires, and semi-scandalous ballads. All sprang from the people; but, while Shaks[)ere and Burns belonged to its upper stratum, Bunyan appeared amid its lowest dreg-, like a new creation amiil tlie slush of chaos. All had sometliing of a religious tendcmcy, but, while in Shakspere it takes a vague diffusive form, and in 316 JOHN BUNYAN. Burns never amounts to much more than what he himself calls "an idiot piety," in Bunyan it becomes a deep burning principle of thought and action, at once swallowing up and sanctifying his native genius. The fate of the three was curious and characteristic. Shak- spere, the sublime stage-player, outliving his early self, with those mysterious errors which are partially revealed in his sonnets, subsided into a decent, retired, self-indulgent gentleman, like a dull, sleepy, soaking evening following a day of blended storm and splendour. Burns, after many a vain attempt to rally against the misfortunes and sins of his life and temperament, fell down at last their proud recalcitrating victim, dying, and making but dubious signs ; while John Bunyan, strong in supernal might, victorious over his tendencies, having bound his very madness in chains, and turned his tears and tortures into the elements of hope and triumph, crossed the black river, singing in concert with the shining ones, and passed into eternity, perfect through suffering, and resembling rather one of its own native children tlian a poor burdened sinner from the City of Destruction. Phi- losophers might speculate long and vainly on the causes of those very different destinies. Our theory is the simple Christian one : — God endowed the three with almost commensurate powers, but one only, through patient struggle and solemn search, reached the blessed hope and new life of Christianity. And we come to the farther analysis and illustration of Bunyan's genius, with this exulting thought — " we are not about to speak of a ray which has wandered, or eveh of a magnificent world unfinished, un- named, unbaptised of God, but of a star once astray, but which returned and received a place in the great galaxy of the worship- ping and holy heavens." It is curious to mark the slow and gradual progress of this man's fame, when compared with the rapid growth of his reputa- tion. It was to some extent the same with Shakspere and Bux'ns. William Shakspere was very popular in his lifetime, for the sake of the humour and geniality of his plays, but it took a century or two for the world to see that he was the greatest poet that ever lived. Burns's wild and witty and pathetic poems pervaded all Scotland like the winds of April, as swift and as soft ; but forty years had to pass ere Carlyle ventured to pro- nounce him the first man, in genius, his country had ever pro- duced. Bunyan's first part of the " Pilgrim " was speedily tran- slated into other languages, as well as widely circulated in his own ; but nearly two hundred years revolved ere any critic was hardy enough to call it a work of genius. Previously to this, it was named and praised with misgiving, and in cold and timid terms. " Wonderful book for a tinker ; clever allegory ; pity it is so Calvinistic ; considerable dramatic power in it ; an ex- JOnx BUNYAN. 317 cellent book for the vulgar." Such were some of the morceanx of criticism with which the eighteenth century bestrewed it. Dr Johnson, to be sure, praised it for its invention and the conduct of its story, but laid too much stress upon the mere popularity it had acquired ; and, though he compared its opening passage to the first lines of Dante, he seemed ignorant of the author's other works, and probably regarded the " Pilgrim's Progress " as a kind of lusus naturae — an exception, and not an expression, of the general character of the author's mind. Scott says of it, in rather a disparaging tone, that " it rarely fails to make an impression upon children and persons of the lower rank of life." Campbell com- pares Bunyan to Spenser, but it is with a patronising air, and he seems to start back, aifrighted, at the " sound himself hath made." Cowper, indeed, long before, had sung the " Ingenious Dreamer " in worthy strains ; but it required the tongue of Coleridge, the pens of Macaulay and Montgomery, and the pencils of Martin, Melville, and David Scott, not to speak of the excellent lives by Philip, Southey, and others, fairly to elevate him to that position, as an unconscious artist, whence it Avere hopeless now to dis- lodge him, and before which the intellectual and the Christian world universally and emulously bend. We are not sure but the history of all works of profound genius and permanent influence is precisely similar. They are not, in general, as Wordsworth thinks, ignored or despised at first, but consisting, as all great productions must, of the splendid and the deep, the bright foam above and the strong billow below, their brilliance attracts in their own age, while their pi-ofounder quali- ties fascinate the future. It was so with Homer, with iEschylus, with Sophocles, with Lucretius, with Dante, with Spenser, with Milton, with Dryden, with Cowper, with Byron, with Words- worth himself All these obtained reputation in their lifetimes, for properties in their writings of interest, or elegance, or oddity, or splendour, which were not their rarest or most characteristic, and all afterwards grew up to that fame, which now " waits like a menial" on their immortal names. To this there are excep- tions, but we believe it to be the rule, and a rule, moreover, in strict accordance with the principles which prevail through the universe. We see long belbre we can weigh the star. In analysing the mind of Bunyan, the first quality which strikes us is the thorough equality and almost identity of the subjective, and the objective. Not only are thought and imagery one, but imagery and reality seem one also. He does not think, but ima- gine — not imagine, but see. We have no doubt whatever, that many of his pictures, like Blake's, stood out from the eye ; that lie saw visions as well as dreamed dreams, and that tliis perilous fa- culty did not unhinge his mind, owing to the stren^ith of his bodily constitution, the simplicity of his habits, and that vigorous inteU 2 K 318 JOHN BUNYAN. lect which burned yet was not consumed amid the blaze of his imagination. But, if ever a man since the pi-ophets of Israel deserved, in a lower sense, tlie name of " seer," it was John Bunyan. It was as if his brain throbbed and thought in his eye, every motion of which seemed " sciiitilhiting soul." If this ob- jectiveness might be termed diseased, it was the divine disease of Dante, of Spenser, and of Michael Angelo — a disease perfectly compatible with strength of judgment, and even with severity of purpose — but the infection of which has, unfortunately, not been perpetuated, for the two who in modern times most resembled him in this quality, wanting Bunyan's ballast, became morbid, if not mad. We refer to Blake and Shelley. In Bunyan, at the period at least wlien he wrote his works, it was a power healthy as the vision of the eagle, and yet peculiar and inimitable as the eyeless intuitions of clairvoyance — that blind goddess who is re- ported to see so far. In close connection with, and dependence on, this peculiar fa- culty, is his child-like simplicity, or unconsciousness of self. This is, we think, always connected with real sight. Who is proud o( the landscape which he beholds, however pleased he may be with the spectacle ? To one who actually sees, there is nothing for it but a cnj — a Eureka — if he does not first fall down as a dead man. He may, indeed, afterwards begin to speculate on the power and perspicacity of his eye ; but he will have little leisure and less inclination to pursue this, if visions after visions, new and varied, continue to press forward in panoi-amic vividness and succession upon his soul. As to " dare, and to dare, and to dare," was Danton's method for a revolutionist, so to " see, and to see, and to see," till the eye be shut in death, or rather opened on eternal realities, is the method and the history of a poet. Nay, the fact that these sights are frequently terrific and be- wildering, is itself enough to check, if not to crush, the vanity of vision. And how often must the dreamer, as he awakes, like Jacob, exclaim, " How dreadful is this place! " and not always, like Jacob, be able to add — " It is none other than the gate of heaven! " Perhaps, rather he has been led past the mouth of the pit, and his cry has been not that of exultation, but of anguish and despair. Bunyan, at least, felt in the first instance no great joy, and no selfish "satisfaction at all in his marvellous dreams. Unlike Cali- ban, he sometimes cried " not to dream again." Did he ever awake, like poor De Quincey, in struggles, and cry out — "I shall sleep no more ?" AVhether awake or asleep, his visions seemed to have passed before him swiftly, as clouds in a wind-tossed sky — himself as helpless as the wanderer who watches their veering shapes and changeful shadows amid the solitary hills. He had thus a " dreadful post of observation ; " but it did not darken JOHN BUNTAN. 319 every hour, but brightened on and on, till, behold! the morning was spread upon the mountains, and in a cloudless sky the "sun rose upon Christian, and he had daylight all the rest of his jour- ney." Something, indeed, of childish gratulation does ajipear in the prefatory poem to the second part of the " Pilgrim," but it is child-like, the mere momentary crowing of an infant ; and is speedily swallowed up in the fresh glories whicii dawn upon his touched and ever-advancing spirit. How sublime tiiis perpetual attitude of reception ! And how little does a mere literary man — perpetually on tiptoe — now seek- ing to smile down, and now to frown up inspiration — or lashing himself into a false furor by selfish passion, look beside Bunyan lying prostrate before the Invisible Power, which " moves him at times," and draws forth from him the simplest, yet noblest music. And while remembering the vast difference between the inspiration of prophecy and of genius, v/e may nevertheless say, that not more abandoned to the power of supernal influence was Ezekiel, when lifted up by a lock of his hair between earth and heaven — or when watching the dreadful wheels as they moved in the might of the unseen Spirit, than was the tinker of Elstowe, when following the footsteps of Christian in that inmiortal pil- grimage — or when beleaguering Mansoul with those multitudi- nous hosts of darkness. His visions came upon him as he sat still and expectant, like those cloven tongues of fire which crowned the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. We have alluded to Ezekiel. Some critics have ventured to deny to him the high poetic quality which they concede to Isaiah and Jeremiah. Now, we admit that his language and imagery arc not so rich as theirs ; but, then, how grand the objects and the scenery he beholds and describes. His style serves severely to daguerreotype the vast, fire-edged, and wind-swept visions which crossed his daring and solitary soul. It is the same with Bunyan. His style seems poor and bald compared to John Howe's or Jeremy Taylor's ; it has no beauty ; no golden images sparkle on his page ; but his figures are forms ; his images are characters ; he does not decorate, but create ; and though seem- ing, like that prophet of old, to stand in a valley of dry bones, he soon causes them to live and move — an exceeding great army, fresh with colour, strong of sinew, and prepared ibr the battle. In him imagination exists — not as a dilution, but as an intense essence ; and, while the least florid of writers, he is the most poetical of thinkers. In this point he resembles Dante, who, while possessed of infinite inventiveness and sublimcst concep- tion, is as literal and hard in his diction as Defoe. But he has similes, scattered, though sparingly, over his ])oem ; where- as, all Bunyan's are (hirived I'rom Scripture — as if he were afraid to adorn the borders of that solemn way wiiii any flowers 320 JOHN BUNYAN. but those which had been transplanted from the garden of God. This peculiarity is quite in keeping with Bunyan's child-like character. Children seldom speak in metaphor ; but they are all essentially poets: they live in a world of illusion. A garden walk becomes to them a pilgrim's path, which they crowd with imaginary characters and adventures. A puddle near it is an Atlantic with a thousand ships sailing on its bosom, with per- petual conflictions of storm and calm. They weave everlasting little Robinson Crusoes and Progresses of their own, and, even when they sleep, the fine shuttle of their fancy continues to move in its aerial loom of dreams. This poetic tendency is too often crushed by worldly influences ; but in some favoured souls it sur- vives, and becomes the germ of the artist. But in Bunyan — and Bunyan alone — it seems to have remained entire, unchilled by worldly feelings ; for of these he had little — unmodified by cul- ture — for his culture was slender — and having defied time itself to cool its virgin flame. Whether dreaming or awake, a black- guard or a saint, in youth, manhood, or age, in the pulpit or with the pen in his hand, living or dying, John Bunyan was equally and always a child. His exceeding earnestness is the next quality we notice in him. No feeble, factitious Christian was John Bunyan. All his works beat with heart, with passionate purpose, with deep faith, and with the reverberations of past suffering. Every work he has written is a chapter in his autobiography ; and the more unin- tended, the more vital the chapter is. We wonder that Thomas Carlyle has never described the earnestness of Bunyan. Plad he tried it, it might have been in language something like this : — " Here, too, under a poor shed of Bedfordshire, there appeared a brave, trne-hearted man, striving forward, under the immensi- ties, and toward the eternities, bearing, in his own stout dialect, a burden on his back, and seeking, as with unutterable groanings, to cast it from him, and be free. No sham woes were his, no hearsay was hell, no simulacrum was sin, no vague vapour death, %o him. He had been in the outer, nay, the outmost darkness ; he had awoke from terrific sleep, and felt the worm that dieth not around his neck, and heard at his bedside the ripple of the slow-moving waves of the unquenchable fire. He had been in the ' iron cage,' and in the grim dungeons of Despair ; had groped in his bosom for the key called Promise ; and had shouted in trembling joy as he saw from Mount Clear a little of the glory of the city. Nay, in the Black River he had once and again dip- ped his feet, long before he was called to pass through it. Honour to thee, brave jnlgrim, for thou also wert a hero ; and, with all thy tinkering, thou hast not mended, but made, one right manly piece of work, which shall live long in the memory of men." JOHN BUNTAN. 321 All this Cai-lyle might say, and it were all true, but not the whole truth. Bunyan, indeed, fled from his burden of sin and his City of Destruction, but it was into the arms of a Saviour. His bur- den clung to him like the gripe of deatli till he saw the cross and the sepulchre, and felt, without being able fully to express, save by tears, the divine mystery, the awful incarnation of love ex- hibited there. Carlyle's " Sartor " seeks after peace as sincerely as Bunyan, but, in haste, or pride, or some fatal blindness, he overlooks the cross, overleaps the sepulchre, and stumbles here and there, till, by a retrograde motion, he gains the town of False Security, which is hard by the City of Destruction, and which trembles at times, in sympathy with the eai'thquakes, muttering fitfully below its devoted towers. Or, shall we rather say, Bunyan is his own Christian, a manful struggler, who, if he falls, rises again and pursues his journey ; who, if he wanders, returns to the way; and who, if he trembles, trembles /or»-orc/,- while " Sartor" too often resembles Mr Weary-of-the-World (notweaned from the world), whose life was a long suicide, who fed on bile, and mistook the recoil of hatred and disgust at the earth for humble, prayerful, and simple-minded search after a better country. Many, we daresay, are disposed to say of Bunyan, as Joseph's brethren said of him, in a sneering spirit, " Behold, this dreamer Cometh ! " Pshaw ! " a mere half-lunatic man of genius." But let such, for their own sakes, beware of entering into controversy with this di-eamer, else he will make a fool of them all. Let them beware, too, of remaining too long in his eye, else he may hold them up on his rude calotype to immortal scorn. This lu- natic dreamer can argue as acutely as any casuist or schoolman. He can, by the quietest touch of sarcasm, dropped as from the shadow of his strong hand, wither up a pompous pretender, tear off the mantle of a hypocrite, expose a fool, and blast an impostor. This dreamer is at times dangerous, alike in his earnest anger, and in the cool naivete of his satire. He has a rough, forceful logic, ay, and a " tinkler tongue " of his own. His dreams are dramas, rich, vivid, varied as Shakspere's. He carries along with him a great key, which can open every lock of human nature — the chapels of its worship, the dungeons of its despair, its airy roofs of grandeur, and its pleasant halls of mirth. He paints at one time a Beulah, and at another a bypath to hell ; now a Mercy, and now a Madame Wanton ; now green-headed Ignorance, and now Mr Greatheart ; now Giant Maul, and now the three Shin- ing Ones ; now the den of Diabolus, and now that City which hath no need of the sun. " ]\Iighty," too, is this dreamer " in the Scriptures," and his enemies must know, that when he holds a sword in his hand it is no misty meteor, but a right Jerusalem blade; it is the two-edged sword of the Spirit, it has been bathed in heaven, and it glows and glitters, " anointed for the slaughter." 322 JOHN BDNYAN. The Bible we have called Biinyan's one book ; and his case corroborates the conamon notion, beware of the man of one book — of one who by frequent perusals has drunk so deeply into a l)ook's spirit, has got so much into its thought and feeling — tra- vels, in short, so easily and naturally in its track, that, without any conscious imitation, his works b:-come duplicates of the origi- nal. This is true of other books, but much more of the Bible, It is a Pactolus, and he who bathes in it comes out dipped in gold ; nay, it resembles that otlier fabled stream which made the bather invulnerable and immortal. Bunyan had read little else; he had read it, too, in circumstances which burned and branded its language upon his soul ; he had read it as its blessed words swam on his eyesight through tears ; he had read it amid the Slough of Despond, by the red lightnings of Sinai, and as he gazed u|)\vards from the Delectable Hills to the far-streaming glory of th« City ; even in the Valley of the Sha- dow of Death, he had continued to clasp while unable to see it; every chapter in it was a chapter in his history, and every verse touched and thrilled some chord in his heart. Like the poor man's lamb, " it lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daughter." Many millions have loved the Bible, but we question if any one surpassed or equalled Bunyan in the depth and fervour of his love. Many have framed concordances, and made entire tran- .scriptions of it, but Bunyan's concordance was his memory, and it lay all transcribed, every word and syllable of it, in his heart. Bunyan's theology is now desp'sed by many who admire his genius; and yet, when stripped of the phraseology and severed from the mistakes of his age, his book seems to contain the best, clearest, and boldest exhibition of truth ever given by uninspired man. Man's anomalous condition by nature — the fearful and hereditary wo which hangs over his cradle — the dark something, call it a rent, or fissure, or fatal flaw, which mars his being ub origine — the God- inspired tliirst for light, safety, and a sublimer existence which comes over him — the struggles through which this feeling must be born — the worthlessness of mere human merit — the importance of the Spirit's teaching — the power of ' a simple-minded faith in divine revelation — the glorious lines of truth and beauty, which, rising from earth, and stooping from heaven, meet and convt.-rge in the cross — the doctrine of atone- ment, shining, in the shape of an uplifted lamb, through the darkness of a guilty earth — the importance of humility — the pro- gressive character of the Christian life — the warlike attitude of the Christian himself — the resistance he meets at every step — the fate of the miserable pretenders to his faith and walk, who en- tangle and annoy him— his constant dependence upon supernatu- ral aid — his feebleness and frequent falls — the personal character JOHN BUXYAN. 323 of real Christianity — the increasing clearness of his path — the certainty of his corains; to his journey's end — the fact that the complexion of his deathbed is determined by that of his life, and the type which the individual believer forms of the history of the churcli as a whole ; these are some of the important truths which, apart from special dogmas, are presented in the pictured page of Bunyan. But how they seem to live, and move, and swell, and fructify there ! How difterent from the dry catalogues and dead rattling autumn-leaves of our catechisms and creeds! Let our theological students burn their systems, and apply themselves to John Bunyan. They often lose the Christian patii in mazes, or sink it in marshes, or carry it along roads, uniformly flinty ; he invests it with the vitality, the variety, and the beauty of real life; and, whether it be with a sunbeam or a flash of lightning, or a glare of hell-fire, or the chiaro-scuro of death's valley, that he shows that narrow way, it is always clear, as if cut out now in blackest ebony, and now in whitest ivory ; but in both distinct and vivid as the " terrible crystal, and the body of heaven in its clearness." We pass now from Bunyan's general qualities to his writ- ings, and on these we shall be rapid in our remarks. AVe shall omit his theological treatises, properly so called, and also his minor allegories, such as " The Life and Death of Mr Bad- man." The " Visions of Heaven and Hell," usually printed in his works, are decidedly not his ; their better passages are in style above him, and their worst are in spirit beneath him. The author, our readers will remember, introduces Hobbes into hell, and minutely describes his punishment and feelings there. The Bunyan of the " Pilgrim," even had he seen that si)irit in tor- ment, would, like his own heroes near the open mouth of the pit, have passed on in silent awe and sorrow. " The Visions of Heaven," again, are apparently written by a scholar, who quotes Milton, and rounds splendid sentences. We confine ourselves to the " Grace Abounding," the " Holy War," and tlie " Pilgrim's Progress." Tiie first is his heart turned inside out — is his inner history minutely and lingeriiigly portrayed; this lifts it far out of the sphere of mere art ; literary merit it has hardly any ; the little chapters into wliich it is divided are successive throbs of his big heart. The strangest thing about it is the clearness and self- possession, which not only distinguish his record of his past suf- ferings, Ijut wliich have evidently been with him through every step of the terrible process. It is as though a madman were to feel with his own finger his pulse while at the wildest ; it is as though a martyr in a burning fiery furnace w'ore to mcasuic liis paces through the fire, or to count the minutes of iiis agony. Bunyan proves himself equal lor tasks like these. All tlie 324 JOHN BUNYAN. agonised experiences of his heart — its tumults — its treacherous quiet — its fluctuations, so speedy, between the tempest and the cahu — its trances, dreams, and strange imaginings, have been observed, as by some cahu collateral eye, and have been jotted down, as by the firm finger of a bystander. That eye and that finger are those, in fact, of Banyan's own clear and powerful in- tellect, which had the art of standing aside from the fierce rush of his fancy, and of beholding, remembering, and registering its vs^hirling words, and yet wilder conceptions. It is conscious frenzy, a fearful gift, only possessed by two or three since Bunyan, one of whom, strange to tell, was Rousseau. Bunyan's confessions, however, unlike Rousseau's, are almost entirely of spiritual sin and spiritual struggle. His sins were all of the spirit, and none of the flesh. Whatever ardour there might be originally in his temperamerlt, was soon drained out of it, into the reservoirs of his imagination and heart, and these in their turn either slept or stormed, to the lulling zepliyrs or the rushing blasts of his religion. Sore for a season is the contest around the wanderer between the sun and the wind ; but the wind at last subsides, and the sun, shining from a higher sphere and burning with a purer blaze, sheds upon his path what seems only a mightier moonlight, a "holier day," so soft is its warmth, and so shorn and meek its effulgence. The life of the Chi-istian is described in Scripture under many analogies. Three, however, are most common and most striking. It is now a race ("so run that ye may obtain") ; now a walk (" walk ye as children of the light") ; and now a battle (" fight the good fight of faith"). The two latter of these seem particu- larly to have struck Bunyan's imagination, and, to prove it, he has written a book on each— the " Holy War" and the " Pilgrim's Progress." Which of these two books should be the better, was, we think, entirely a question of time. Had he written the " Holy War" first, and the "Pilgrim's Progress" last, the last had been first, and the first last. But ere he built up Mansoul, or mar- shalled around it those dark armies, he had in some measure exhausted his creative genius, emptied out his martial ardour, and strained the energies of the allegory itself, in the broad and manifold structure of the " Pilgrim's Progress," a book which, besides its peaceful pictures, contains the record of some contests which in fire and vigour Homer himself has not surpassed ; and the pi'aise of certain warriors, such as Valiant- for-Truth, "with his sword cleaving in blood to his hand" — worthy of the days when battle had its deity, and war might still be called divine. And yet, though somewhat worn, the old parliamentary soldier enters on the " Holy War" with marvellous spirit. It is a dream, less vmisemhlahle, less varied, less beautiful than the Pilgrim, but full of rugged power and unique purpose. There are florid wars JOHN BUNTAN. 325 as well as books, with fine and empty flourishes of endeavoui-, with niclering commanders and faint-hearted troops. Bunyan's is of a different kind. It is earnest, fierce ; all scabbards tossed away, no armour for backs, and victory or death the watcliword of the day. The field is wide and one — " Mansoul ;" the hosts are twain — those who are called chosen and faithful, and those who are the serfs of sin and Satan. The commanders are also two — the Word made flesh, his garments dyed in blood, his eyes as a flame of fire, his face more marred than that of man, and the Prince of Darkness, with pride and fury glaring through his miserable eyes, with the scars of thunder on his cheek, holding, in defiance, his garment of gloom around his scorched frame, and saying — "Evil, be thou my good;" and saying again — "What matter where, if I be still the same?" — the result one ; for it has been settled from everlasting that Mansoul shall be saved, Diabolus defeated, and "that great country Universe" made as happy and beautiful as the throne round which it revolves. Let those who would see in what living fire, in what crowding figures — not of speech, but of action — in what bare yet burning words, and with what profusion of martial incident, and eloquence of martial dialogue, Bunyan tells this brief but pregnant tale, read his "Holy War;" although, we fear, it lies now neglected as some old claymore, which once reeked at gory Culloden. Not so with his " Pilgrim's Staff." That who has not seen and handled, and now wept over, and now worshipped, beside? Who has forgot his emotions on reading this wonderful book, which, for the first time, seemed to realise to him his early faith in Christianity ? It is to us, at least, an era in our life. We read it beside our mother's knee ; and never can we forget the Dreamer, or that road which his genius has mapped out for evermore. Never can we forget even the little well-worn copy of " Cooke's Classics," with its dark binding, its crude prints, and its torn-out leaves here and there, which contained the pi-ecious treasure, and on which we can hardly now think or look without tears — so deeply are joys and sorrows, with whicji no stranger may inter- meddle, bound up and blended with its memory. We may sum ujj what we have further to say of the "Pilgrim," under some remarks on its pictures, its characters, its scenes, and the comj)arative merits of its two parts. It is the only ])erfect picture-book in literature. Every page of it might bf illustrated, nay, is illustrated already, by the painter's hand. Many of its pictorial points have had full justice done to them by artists, but there are still two or three we have never seen successfully represented, if even attempted at all. One is the intei'ior of the City of Destruction. Who, going to work on the hints di'opped by iiunyan, shall paint us the Lust-lanos, Murdei'-alleys, Theft- corners, and broad Blasphemy-squares of 326 JOHN BDNYAN. that fearful place, with the lightnings ever and anon dipping down into its midst, and with the scowl of lieaven formino- a permanent and prophetic blackness over its walls ? Then there is Beelzebub's Castle lowering over against the bright Wicket- gate, with one solitary watcliman pacing along its battlements, night and day, haggard with his eternal vigil, and calling, as each new pilgrim approaches, on his archers to take their aim. Then there is Turnaway, brought back by devils, and with the words inscribed on his back, " Wanton Professor and Damnable Apostate." And, in fine, there is still waiting for representation the FACK of Ignorance, with the blank of vacuity and the black- ness of darkness mingling in its expression, as he is refused ad- mittance at the gate, and told, that he who could scarcely go for- ward, must be taken in a wliirlwind bach! The variety of the cliaracters in this book is wonderful, and the vividness of their portraiture. So is the intensity of the in- dividualism of all and each, even of tliose who represent large classes of men. But perhaps the most surprising thing is the liking Bunyan entertains, and makes us entertain, for all of them. It is so with all creators. But it is less strange in mere artists, like Shakspere and Scott, than in one whose art was subordinate to his earnestness. Whatever be the cause, the effect is certain. We may condemn, we must pity, but we do not, and cannot hate, one even of the vile and depraved characters introduced into this parable. We sigh behind Pliable ; we would box tlie ears of Obstinate, indeed, but we would box him onwards; and we feel a sneaking kindness even for Worldly Wiseman, for Shame, for Adam the First, for Green-headed Ignorance, and his com- plaisant ferryman. Why ? Because their author unconsciously felt, and unconsciously wished us to feel, the same ; because all genius has covered, with a like catholic mantle, the basest and lowest of its handiworks, even as the sun dyes worlds and worms in the same radiance, and gilds the clouds of the sky and the webs of the spider with the same gold ; and, indeed, it must do so from its peculiar power, which is that of looking on a broad scale, and in a mild light, as if at the angle of all science, upon the affairs and productions of the universe. There is but one character in the " Pilgrim " for whom we profess a thorough detestation, and that because he not only re- fuses to be good, but ignores the possibility of all goodness, and the existence of God himself. This is Old Atheist. How well named! for there are no young Atheists. How hollow his laughter! And yet we have heard its echo again and again, from learned throats, too, in these miserable days of ours. But never did we enter into the perfect badness, the intricate abomi- nation of the character, till we saw David Scott's picture of him. Just look at it a moment. There he stands in the way of the two JOHN BUNTAN. 327 simple-minded wanderers — tall — a very pyramid of scorn and pride, with fingers uplifted and snapping at the idea of a God and immortality; with long ears, as if listening, but hcai-ing nothing ; with eyes full of lust, deceitfiilness, and malignity, as if the souls of two Voltaires had been shed into their sockets ; and with words which you hear not, but seem to see entering into, and withering, the very heartstrings of the pilgrinis. It is a figure which might be divided anion"; a multitude of modern sceptics. The scenery of the "Pilgrim's Progress" is to us one of its dearest elements. We have often puzzled our brains to conceive, especially when in Bedfordshire, and looking at hills which you were tempted to kick out of your road, like husks in a pine- wood, how Bunyan, reared in a country so tame, and who, like j^oor Cowper, could never hope to see mountains till he saw them in heaven, has yet sketched an outline of scenery in the "Pilgrim" so free, so varied, so bold, and so studded with lofty hills. Many green meadows, like -Ease, he must have seen, and some evening landscapes from church towers, whicli might have sug- gested Beulah, but where could he have studied for the deep solitary Valley of Humiliation, or the Valley of the Shadow of Death, or for the Delectable Mountains, where Mount Danger seems to tremble as it looks down its own tremendous precipices ; where, from Mount Error, not momentary avalanches, but mo- mentary men, are falling, to be crushed to atoms at the base ; where, from Mount Caution, are to be seen the blind wanderers among the tombs, remaining in the congregation of the dead ; where, on Mount Marvel, stands the man removing mountains by a word; where, on jMount Innocence, ajtpears he against whom Prudence and Ill-will are flinging their dirt in vain ; and where, highest far, Mount Clear looks through crystalline air, right up- ward to the golden gates of the city. And then there is the Slough of Despond, and the shaggy Sinai, and the steep Hill Difii- culty, and the wild roaring torrent edging the grounds of Giant Despair and his frowning castle, and iinuimerable other outstand- ing points or pinnacles ol" scenic interest. Indeed, had the in- spired tinker travelled in Scotland, had he visited the black gorge of Glencoe, had he gone up Glen Mirk alone as the shadows of evening were doubling its darkness, had he bathed after sunset in the dark waters of Loch Lea, had he stood on Lochnagar and looked down through mi.-t on the eternal snow lying in its clefts, or on the lonely lakes sunounding its base, or had he, on the summit of Ben Macdhui, seen the au'ful array of giants which seem absolutely to press on each other, and make the spot the "JNIeeting of the JMountains," with one tarn, dark and deep as a murderer's eye, watching the precipices which rise to three thousand feet on three of its sides, he would not have better 328 JOHN BUNTAN. painted the ■wilder and grander scenes in the " Pilgrim's Pro- <>;ress." As he did none of this, so much the stronger evidence has he given of the force and the rich resources of his own genius. The first part of the "Pilgrim" may be called the Iliad, and the second the Odyssey of Banyan's genius. There are in the one more sublimity, boldness, and wealth ; in the other, more tenderness, sweetness, and beauty. The road in the first part is travelled by sunlight, chequered indeed with clouds, but produc- ing bold masses of light and shadow ; in the second, the sweet still light of a full moon rests on the whole landscape. The second has no such Dantesque pictures as the Man in the Cage — no such Homeric contest as that with Apollyon — no such ro- mantic episode as that of Giant Despair — no such exquisite satiric sketch as that of Talkative — no such happily-conceived series of adventures as those of Faithful — no one character so well sustained as Ignorance, and no one death scene like that of Christian and Hopeful. The gloss, too, is in some measure oiF the subject, and the road has not quite the same freshness of glory. But then, in the second part, there is the matchless female cha- racter of Mercy ; there are the boys, dear little fellows, diversi- fying the road with their fine prattle ; there is one rich peep into the gossip and scandal of the City of Destruction, where Mrs Timorous, Lady Bats- Eyes, &c., play their parts ; there is that jewel of a man, Mr Brisk ; there is the Valley of Humiliation shown in a new and more congenial light, with a boy resting and singing on that lonely sward, where erst Apollyon had spread his dragon wings ; there is the gradual gathering in of tributary pilgrims to swell the general current, which at last weds the black river; there are old Honest and Valiant-for-Truth; there is the storming of Doubting Castle ; and there is the characteristic pas- sage of each pilgrim through the waters, especially that of ]Much- Afraid, who goes over singing, but no one could tell the words of her song, for it is the language of the spirit-world, already ti'embling on her dying tongue. It is wonderful how Bunyan has passed over the same road twice without in one instance re- jieating or imitating himself, but pouring out, at every turning, from his overflowing invention, new incidents, new characters, new meaning, and new life. In the " Odyssey," Homer has changed the scene, the hero, the mode of lil'e, perhaps the age, and thus easily secured variety to his second work. Bunyan has dared, in iDoth his parts, the difiiculties of the same scene, of similar characters, and a similar moral, and has not dared them in vain. In those works, allegory came to its culmination, and has since declined. We have had no great work in this style since. The best allegories of later days have been the short papers of Addi- JOHN BDNYAN. 329 son, who has caught much of Bun3'an'3 spirit, and of his simpli- city of style, and has added a quiet mellowness of colouring all his own. Johnson's are in general too turgid and laboured ; his best thing of this sort, the " Vultures," is rather a fable than an allegory. The express imitations of Bunyan (with the exception of the history of Tender-Conscience, which is very interesting, and has one splendid description, that of the Cave of Contempla- tion) are contemptible. Bulwer has some forcible allegories in the " Student ; " Edgar Poe has left one or two striking, almost sublime, dreams of a mystical description. And there are many others, we believe, scattered through our periodical literature. But we think that the time has nearly arrived for a new allegory adapted to the age, and expressing the deep cravings, wild wanderings, pe- culiar temptations, and only possible resting-place of sincere re- ligious thinkers at present. Such an allegory, if thoroughly well executed, would do more than many elaborate treatises to show us our present state of progress, would say things which formal statement could not say, would dart a broad light upon some of the dark and difficult places of our present road,-Avould turn our perplexities, our uncertainties, and divine despairs into beauty, our groanings that cannot be uttered into music, and if it did not calm, might brighten, the waves of our tempest-tossed era. 'J'he hour is well-nigh come for such a work, but where is the man ? We cannot close without alluding to the fearful religious signs of this our time, so different from the age of Bunyan. Could the glorious dreamer of Elstowe look down from that spiritual eminence, far beyond Beulah, and higher far than Mount Clear, which he has reached, he would see a scene which might at first amaze and confound his spirit — that Bible, which he believed as his own existence, labouring in eclipse, and shedding disastrous twilight upon the churches of Christ — thousands waiting in si- lence and eager expectancy for its emergence from the shadow thousands more desiring that the twilight may terminate in utter night, and prepared with their odes to be sung at the great funeral, and their epitaphs to be inscribed on the everlasting tomb — thousands more still wandering in various degrees of un- certainty below the labouring orb — " As it hangs black, with'ring, intense, The wreck of its magnificence — " some saying, " We trusted that it had been this that should have redeemed Israel " — others not daring to look above, but working in the darkened harvest-field the more actively that doomsday seems near ; and other some wringing their hands, and crying, " Oh, that we had never been born in an age of blackening scepticism as thisl" — around, meanwhile, heard the sound of travellers 330 JOHN BUNYAN. dashed down hidden rocks — of feet hurrying backwards to old cities of sin they had forsalcen — of avalanches falling, and earth- quakes heaving, the nations angry, and blood beginning to drizzle down through the lurid air. Mightier still may the anguish grow, deeper may fall the darkness, more complex and fearful the plot, as the dreamer continues to gaze ; but he will soon cease to fear for the result. He will trace the eclipse rather to a fog from below, than to a final withdrawal of light from above. He will confide in the mercy, the power, and the promise of his Prince, and feel certain that he can and will roll away the gloomy sha- dow, and restore the i'ullest original elfulgence of the beams — nay, give the orb " new-spangled ore," ere it again " flame in the forehead of the morning sky." Let us, also, take courage. We have seen a mighty ship sunk and lost for a season amid mist that shrouded its form, waves that made its timbers creak, and tempest that tore every shred of sail from the rigging ; but, if we i'eared, it was only till we re- membered the strength of the vessel, the skill of the pilot, and that it had surmounted a thousand seas before, and we waited in anxiety, but in firm faith, that it would again emerge, like a star of the sea from a cloud, victorious over the storm. We have seen the sun in eclipse — watched the great shadow passing over his disk — seen the orb striving, as with arms of light, to resist the progress of the burden, but in vain — seen him struggling, as among the breakers — I'elt the awe and silence of the moment tt^hen the victory of darkness seemed complete, and when, as the dews began to fall, the birds to cease their song, and the stars to appear, it seemed to emit a ghastly and murderous smile ; but even then we felt that the sun was safe, and never safer than when the shadow seemed its eternal home. And so we feel the profoundest conviction that the Bible and Christianity, in all that is essential and divine, are safe, shall by and by surmount and burn into the train of their own glory the fogs and mists of Ger- man and other scepticism, and shed, not an evening, but a morn- ing ray of Divine influence and power upon the strange dark history of earth. WJISUUKGU: PRISTBB BY J. HOGG. 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