-A { EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS ESSAYS HAZLITT'S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS & SPIRIT OF THE AGE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. R. WALLER, M.A. THE PUBLISHERS OF £F£ l J{r31e^^S LlB%*Al\r WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS: TRAVEL ^ SCIENCE $ FICTION THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY HISTORY ^ CLASSICAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ESSAYS ^ ORATORY POETRY & DRAMA BIOGRAPHY REFERENCE ROMANCE kbytes IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING : CLOTH, FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP; LIBRARY BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN London : J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd. New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO. LECTURES^ ON ENGLISH POETS & -W THE SPIRIT} OF THE AGE BY WILLIAM AZLITT* LONDON ^TORONTO PUBLISHED BYJ M DENT &SONS DP 8dN NEW YORK BYE P DUTTON & CO First Issue of this Edition . 1910 Reprinted .... 1914 The following is a list of Hazlitt's published works: — Essay an the Principles of Human Action . . . with Remarks on the System of Hartley and Helvetius, 1805; Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, 1806; Abridgment of Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature, 1807; Eloquence of the British Senate (Parliamentary Speeches and Notes), 1807; Reply to Malthus, 1807; A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue, etc., 1810; Memoir of Thomas Holcroft, written by himself, etc., con- tinued by Hazlitt, 1816; The Round Table, from The Examiner, 1817; Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, 1817, 1818; A Review of the English Stage; or, a Series of Dramatic Criticisms, 1818, 1821; Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, 1819; Lectures on the English Comic Writers, 1819; Letter to William Clifford, 1819; Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, 1819, 1822; Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1820; Table Talk; or, Original Essays on Men and Manners, 1821-2, 1824; Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion, 1823; Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England, with a criticism on Marriage a la Mode (in part from London Magazine), 1824; Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims, 1823, 1837; The Spirit of the Age; or, Contemporary Portraits, 1825; The Plain Speaker; or, Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, 1826; Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (from Morning Chronicle), 1826; Boswell Redivivus, 1827; The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, vols. i. and ii., 1828; iii. and iv., 1830; Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A., 1830. Posthumous Publications. — Criticisms on Art, etc., 1843, 1844; Literary Remains, etc., 1836; Winterslow: Essays and Characters written there, 1850; Sketches and Essays, now first collected, 1839- republished as Men and Manners, 1852. Collected Works. — Edited Waller and Glover, 13 vols., 1902-6. CONTENTS LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS LECTURE I. Introductory — On Poetry in General II. On Chaucer and Spenser III. On Shakspearh and Milton . IV. On Dryden and Pope . V. On Thomson and Cowper VI. On Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, etc. VII. On Burns, and the Old English Ballads VIII. On the Living Poets .... 19 44 68 85 104 123 143 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE Jeremy Bentham ......... 171 William Godwin . . . . . . . . .182 Mr. Coleridge ......... 194 Rev. Mr. Irving ......... 204 The Late Mr. Horne Tooke ....... 213 Sir Walter Scott ......... 223 Lord Byron .......... 235 Mr. Southey .......... 244 Mr. Wordsworth ......... 252 Sir James Macintosh ........ 261 Mr. Malthus .......... 269 Mr. Gifford .......... 280 Mr. Jeffrey .......... 292 Mr. Brougham — Sir F. Burdett ...... 300 Lord Eldon — Mr. Wilberforce ...... 307 Mr. Cobbett .......... 316 Mr. Campbell — Mr. Crabbe ....... 325 Mr. T. Moore — Mr. Leigh Hunt ...... 335 Elia — Geoffry Crayon ........ 344 xiii LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS LECTURE I.— INTRODUCTORY ON POETRY IN GENERAL The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing, by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, ex- pressing it. In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of it, next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and afterwards of its connection with harmony of sound. Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It re- lates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men ; for nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible shape, can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a con- tempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some persons have been led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours — it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like endings : but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a flower that ' spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun,' — there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver : its materials lie deeper, and A ' i LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldly masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century : but there is no thought or feel- ing that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of authorship : it is ' the stuff of which our life is made.' The rest is ' mere oblivion,' a dead letter : for all that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry ; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being : without it ' man's life is poor as beast's.' Man is a poetical animal : and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry, act upon them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Getitilhomme, who had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer ; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers ; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow ; the city-apprentice, when he gazes after the Lord-Mayor's show ; the miser, when he hugs his gold ; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the savage, who paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god ; — the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own making ; and the poet does no more than describe what all the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness at second hand. ' There is warrant for it.' Poets alone have not ' such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason ' can. ' The lunatic, the lover, and the poet .Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n ; And a-, imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination.' 2 ON POETRY IN GENERAL If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy that they are, because we wish them so, there is no other nor better reality. Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica and Medoro : but was not Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of her charms as he ? Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles : but was not the hero as mad as the poet ? Plato banished the poets from his Common- wealth, lest their descriptions of the natural man should spoil his mathematical man, who was to be without passions and affections, who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor elated by any thing. This was a chimera, however, which never existed but in the brain of the inventor ; and Homer's poetical world has outlived Plato's philosophical Republic. Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and the passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry ; but poetry is the most emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the mind 'which ecstacy is very cunning in.' Neither a mere description of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around it : the flame of the passions, communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other forms ; feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, not the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur ; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason, ' has something divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, 3 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS as reason and history do.' It is strictly the language of the imagina- tion ; and the imagination is that faculty which represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an infinite variety of shapes and combina- tions of power. This language is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point of fact ; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence or passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be pre- sented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear — and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. ' Our eyes are made the fools ' of our other faculties. This is the universal law of the imagination, ' That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some biinger of that joy : Or in the night imagining some fear, How easy is each bush suppos'd a hear ! ' When lachimo says of Imogen, ' The flame o' th 1 tapei Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see the enclosed lights" — this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to accord with the speaker's own feelings, is true poetry. The lover, equally with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress as locks of shining gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic stature to a tower : not that he is any thing like so large, but because the excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another object often times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, 'for they are old like him,' there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identifica- •i in of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair ! Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. As in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with 4 ON POETRY IN GENERAL the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most im- passioned species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost point of sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or con- trast ; loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it ; grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint ; throws us back upon the past, forward into the future ; brings every moment of our being or object of nature in startling review before us; and in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, • Nothing but his unkind daughters could have brought him to this ; ' what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot be brought to conceive of any other cause of misery than that which has bowed it down, and absorbs all other sorrow in its own ! His sorrow, like a flood, supplies the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the mad scene, 'The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!' it is passion lending occasion to imagination to make every creature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude and insult in their least looked-for and most galling shapes, searching every thread and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining image of respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and kill it ! In like manner, the ' So I am ' of Cordelia gushes from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello — with what a mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last traces of departed happiness — when he exclaims, ' Oh now, for ever Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content ; Farewel the plumed troops and the big war, That make ambition virtue ! Oh farewel ! Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war : And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewel ! Othello's occupation's gone !' How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in its LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his returning love, he says, ' Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont : Even so mv bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up.' — The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at that line, ' But there where I had gamer'd up my heart, To be discarded thence ! ' — One mode in which the dramatic exhibition or passion excites our sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human soul : the whole of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast; the action and re-action are equal; the keenness of immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more intimate participation with the antagonist world of good ; makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life ; tugs at the heart- strings ; loosens the pressure about them ; and calls the springs of thought and feeling into play with tenfold force. Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive — of the desire to know, the will to act, and the power to feel ; and ought to appeal to these different parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to throw off: the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs our inmost affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the heart, and rouses the whole man within us. 6 ON POETRY IN GENERAL The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any thing peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground- work in the common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people flock to see a tragedy ; but if there were a public execution in the next street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then the difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty. Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose : nor do the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of murders and executions about the streets, find it necessary to have them turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting and authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving trade of abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom he makes his enemies for no other end than that he may live by them. The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven than of hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are as fond of indulging our violent passions as of reading a description of those of others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so ? the best answer will be, Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt, as our love or admiration. ' Masterless passion sways us to the mood Of what it likes or loathes.'' Not that we like what we loathe ; but we like to indulge our hatred and scorn of it ; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant 'satisfaction to the thought.' This is equally the origin of wit and LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope says of the Lord Mayor's shew, — ' Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, But lives in Settle's numbers one day more!' — when Collins makes Danger, 'with limbs of giant mould,* 'Throw him on the steep Of some loose hanging rock asleep : ' when Lear calls out in extreme anguish, ' Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, How much more hideous shew'st in a child Than the sea-monster!' . — the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will. — We do not wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For knowledge is conscious power ; and the mind is no longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be the victim of vice or folly. Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common sense and reason : tor the end and use ot poetry, ' both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature,' seen through the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth or abstract reason. The painter of history might as well be required to represent the face of a person who has just trod upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common portrait, as the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impressions which things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in the language of common conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so ; the im- pressions of common sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion and indifference, cannot be the same, and they must have a separate language to do justice to either. Objects must strike differently upon the mind, independently of what they are in themselves, as long as we have a different interest in them, as we 6ee them in a different point of view, nearer or at a greater distance Amorally or physically 8 ON POETRY IN GENERAL speaking) from novelty, from old acquaintance, from our ignorance of them, from our fear of their consequences, from contrast, from unexpected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of the imagination, than we can see all objects without light or shade. Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light ; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give us their drab- coloured creation in their stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning nothing but a little grey worm ; let the poet or the lover of poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace or emerald light. This is also one part of nature, one appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that not the least interesting ; so poetry is one part of the history of the human mind, though it is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot be concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown and undefined : the understanding restores things to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful pretensions. Hence the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is much the same ; and both have received a sensible shock from the progress of ex- perimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives birth and scope to the imagination ; we can only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears. ' And visions, as poetic eyes avow, Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.' There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture brings the matter nearer to us. — It is not only the progress of mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization that are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and look with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters 9 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS and giants. At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes oi good or evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or ' bandit fierce,' or to the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has been that ' our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in it.' But the police spoils all ; and we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only tolerated in this country for the sake of the music ; and in the United States of America, where the philosophical principles of government are carried still farther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar's Opera is hooted from the stage. Society, by degrees, is constructed into a machine that carries us safely and insipidly from one end of life to the other, in a very comfortable prose style. ' Obscurity her curtain round them drew, And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung.' The remarks which have been here made, would, in some measure, lead to a solution of the question of the comparative merits of painting and poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, but it should seem that the argument which has been sometimes set up, that paint- ing must affect the imagination more strongly, because it represents the image more distinctly, is not well founded. We may assume without much temerity, that poetry is more poetical than painting. When artists or connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry of painting, they shew that they know little about poetry, and have little love for the art. Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself: poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it. But this last is the proper province of the imagination. Again, as it relates to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the progress of events : but it is during the progress, in the interval of expectation and suspense, while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest pitch of breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies. • Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. The mortal instruments are then in council ; And the state of man, like to a little kingdom, Suffers then the nature of an insurrection.' iy the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces are the best part of a picture ; but even faces are not what we chiefly remember in what interests us most. — But it may be asked then, Is to ON POETRY IN GENERAL there anything better than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's portraits, than Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek statues r Of the two first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, rather than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons are certainly the finest com- ments that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would their effect be the same, if we were not acquainted with the text ? But the New Testament existed before the cartoons. There is one subject of which there is no cartoon, Christ washing the feet of the disciples the night before his death. But that chapter does not need a commentary ! It is for want of some such resting place for the imagination that the Greek statues are little else than specious forms. They are marble to the touch and to the heart. They have not an informing principle within them. In their faultless excellence they appear sufficient to themselves. By their beauty they are raised above the frailties of passion or suffering. By their beauty they are deified. But they are not objects of religious faith to us, and their forms are a reproach to common humanity. They seem to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration. Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of long standing, in what the essence of poetry consists ; or what it is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single line — ' Thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers. 1 As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound and change 'the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo.' There is a striking instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus. ' So from the ground she fearless doth arise And walketh forth without suspect of crime. They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime, Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round, Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme j And with green branches strewing all the ground, Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd. LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS And all the way their merry pipes they sound, That all the woods and doubled echoes ring ; And with their horned feet do wear the ground, Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring; So towards old Sylvanus they her bring, Who with the noise awaked, cometh out.'' Faery Queen, b. i. c. vi. On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrange- ments in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or correspondence to the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling with which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the breaks, the inequalities, and harshnesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs the reverie of an absent man. But poetry makes these odds all even. It is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, untying as it were ' the secret soul of harmony.' Wherever any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm ; — wherever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it — this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous ; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, there can be no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into each other. It is to supply the in- herent defect of harmony in the customary mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the Sense becomes a sort of echo to itself — to mingle the tide of verse, ' the golden cadences of poetry,' with the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows — in short, to take the language of the imagination from off the ground, and enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses — ' Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air — ' ON POETRY IN GENERAL without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry was invented. It is to common language, what springs are to a carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by the modulations of the voice : in poetry the same thing is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way ' sounding always the increase of his winning.' Every prose-writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in their writings. An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is but fair that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory ; and a man of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number of days in the months of the year. * Thirty days hath September,' &c. But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy ? and there are other things worth having at our ringers' ends, besides the contents of the almanac. — Pope's versification is tiresome, from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue. All is not poetry that passes for such : nor does verse make the whole difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation ; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extra- ordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the way- ward or violent movements either of the imagination or the passions. I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with *3 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being ' married to immortal verse.' If it is of the essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction ' What deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes ! The writer's genius, though not ' dipped in dews of Castalie,' was baptised with the Holy Spirit and wit!: fire. The prints in this book are no small part of it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of confine- ment. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus he says, ' As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, with- out redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go o.Y, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate." P. 50. The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the Odyssey, it is true; but the relator had the true genius of a poet. It has been made a question whether Richardson's romances are poetry ; and the answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not romance. The interest is worked up to an incon- ceivable height; but it is by an infinite number of little things, by '4 ON POETRY IN GENERAL hcessant labour and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows tlat have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spntaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story dees not ' give an echo to the seat where love is throned.' The heirt does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does no: run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but in dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those witi which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royil palace. — Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles ? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles — she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however intensely they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson ; but it is extracted from a caput moriuum of circum- stances : it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an artificial process to let it out. Shakspeare says — ' Our poesy is as a gum Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each bound it chafes.' 1 I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at diiferent periods of history — Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant ; in the Bible, the principle of faith and the idea of Providence ; Dante is a personification of blind will ; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, and the lag end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic : it is full of life and action : it is bright as the day, strong as a river In the vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature, 1 Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the reason : poetrv produces its effect by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, ;:re not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our own poetry which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction. 15 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw man/ countries, and the manners of many men ; and he has brought then all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to batte with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirit?: we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle, poured out upon the plain * all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, aid gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,' covered with glittering armo-ir, with dust and blood ; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden cups, or mingle in the fray ; and the old men assembled on the wills of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is wonderful ; their splendour, their truth, their force, and variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of number and form : he describes the bodies as well as the souls of men. The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith ; it is abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry of form, but of power ; not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide into many, but aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas of God. It is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude : each man Beems alone in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks, the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to the power that governs the universe. As the idea of God was removed farther from humanity, and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and intense, as it became more universal, for the Infinite is present to every thing : ' If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the west, we cannot escape from it.' Man is thus aggrandised in the image of his Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of this kind ; they are founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the earth ; they exist in the generations which are to come after them. Their poetry, like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite ; a vision is upon it — an invisible hand is suspended over it. The spirit of the Christian religion consists in the glory hereafter to be revealed ; but in the Hebrew dispensation, Providence took an immediate share in the affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of this intimate communion between heaven and earth : it was this that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and shed a light upon the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection in the human race was involved in her breast. There are descriptions in 16 ON POETRY IN GENERAL the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense in passion, than any thing in Homer, as that of the state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected more into masses, and gave a greater momentum to the imagination. Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic darkness and barbarism ; and the struggle of thought in it to burst the thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the ancient and the modern world ; and saw the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its passage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, sell-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after him ; but there is a gloomy abstrac- tion in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the mind ; a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the intensity of the impression ; a terrible obscurity, like that which oppresses us in dreams ; an identity of interest, which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with the passions and imaginations of the human soul, — that make amends for all other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much in themselves, they want grandeur, beauty, and order ; but they become every thing by the force of the character he impresses upon them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering ; who relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination of his readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest ; and he interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been created ; but he seizes on the attention, by shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings ; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, *7 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive : but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the inscription, ' I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth ' : and half the personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted. Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vigour and lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of country — he is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed ; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head ; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower ; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale ; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind ! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the ance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock- embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance or mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain, ' Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian ! ' tH ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER LECTURE II ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER Having, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next place, to a more particular consideration of the genius and history of English poetry. I shall take, as the subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and Spenser, two out of four of the greatest names in poetry, which this country has to boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted to the early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in a certain degree, to the same school. The freedom and copiousness with which our most original writers, in former periods, availed themselves of the productions of their predecessors, frequently transcribing whole passages, without scruple or acknowledgment, may appear contrary to the etiquette of modern literature, when the whole stock of poetical common-places has become public property, and no one is compelled to trade upon any particular author. But it is not bo much a subject of wonder, at a time when to read and write was of itself an honorary distinction, when learning was almost as great a rarity as genius, and when in fact those who first transplanted the beauties of other languages into their own, might be considered as public benefactors, and the founders of a national literature. — There are poets older than Chaucer, and in the interval between him and Spenser ; but their genius was not such as to place them in any point of comparison with either of these celebrated men ; and an inquiry into their particular merits or defects might seem rather to belong to the province of the antiquary, than be thought generally interesting to the lovers of poetry in the present day. Chaucer (who has been very properly considered as the father or English poetry) preceded Spenser by two centuries. He is supposed to have been born in London, in the year 1328, during the reign of Edward m. and to have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two. He received a learned education at one, or at both of the universities, and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued with the spirit and excellences of the great Italian poets and prose- writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccace ; and is said to have had a personal interview with one of these, Petrarch. He was connected, by marriage, with the famous John of Gaunt, through whose interest he was introduced into several public employments. Chaucer was an active partisan, a religious reformer, and from the share he took in some disturbances, on one occasion, he was obliged to fly the country. l 9 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS On his return, he was imprisoned, and made his peace with govern- ment, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates. Fortitude does not appear, at any time, to have been the distinguishing virtue of poets. — There is, however, an obvious similarity between the practical turn of Chaucer's mind and restless impatience of his character, and the tone of his writings. Yet it would be too much to attribute the one to the other as cause and effect : for Spenser, whose poetical tempera- ment was an effeminate as Chaucer's was stern and masculine, was equally engaged in public affairs, and had mixed equally in the great world. So much does native disposition predominate over accidental circumstances, moulding them to its previous bent and purposes ! For while Chaucer's intercourse with the busy world, and collision with the actual passions and conflicting interests of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding, and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes persons and things that he had known and been intimately concerned in ; the same opportunities, operating on a differently constituted frame, only served to alienate Spenser's mind the more from the ' close-pent up ' scenes of ordinary life, ami to make him ' rive their concealing continents,' to give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence of ' flowery tenderness.' It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment ; Chaucer, in severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man of business and the world. His poetry reads like history. Every thing has a downright reality ; at least in the relator's mind. A simile, or a sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence. Thus he describes Cressid's first avowal of her love. And as the new abashed nightingale, That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, When that :he heareth any herde's tale, Or in the hedges any wight stirring, And after, sicker, doth her voice outring; Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent, Open'd her heart, and told him her intent. 1 This is so true and natural, anil beautifully simple, that the two things seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the Knight's Tale— ' Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, Till it felle ones in a morwe of May, That Emelie that fayrer was to sene Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene ; 20 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER And fresher than the May with floures newe, For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe : I n'ot which was the finer of hem two.' This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of matter of fact was at issue, is remarkable. I might mention that other, where he compares the meeting between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter waiting for a lion in a gap ; — ' That stondeth at a gap with a spere, Whan hunted is the lion or the bere, And hereth him come rushing in the greves, And breking both the boughes and the leves : * — or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned to death : — ' Have ye not seen somtime a pale face (Among a prees) of him that hath been lad Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace, And swiche a colour in his face hath had, Men mighten know him that was so bestad, Amonges all the faces in that route 5 So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.' The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet's seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned : yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any one ; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and rivetted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon when left alone in his cell : f Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour Resouned of his yelling and clamour: The pure fetters on his shinnes grete Were of his bitter sake teres wete.' 21 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the instruc- tions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no ' babbling gossip of the air,' fluent and redundant ; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints ; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descrip- tions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character . and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observa- tion. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees ; and it is this which catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims — of the Knight — the Squire — the Oxford Scholar — the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at random : ' There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; Hire gretest othe n'as but by seint Eloy: 22 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. Ful wel she sange the service divine Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle ,- She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. ******* And sikerly she was of great disport, And ful plesant, and amiable of port, And peined hire to contrefeten chere Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence. But for to speken of hire con cience, She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, Or if men smote it with a yerde smert : And all was conscience and tendre herte. Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was ; Hire nose tretis ; hire eyen grey as glas ; Hire mouth ful smale ; and therto soft and red j But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe.' A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, An out-rider, that loved venerie : A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable : And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here, Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere, And eke as loucle, as doth the chapell belle, Ther as this lord was keper of the celle. The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, Because that it was olde and somdele streit, This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace, And held after the newe world the trace. He yave not of the text a pulled hen, That saith, that hunters ben not holy men ; — Therfore he was a prickasoure a right : Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight : Of pricking and of hunting for the hare Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. 2 3 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS I saw his sieves purfiled at the bond With gris, and that the finest of the lond. And for to fasten his hood under his chinne, He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne : A love-knotte in the greter end ther was. His hed was balled, and shone as any glas, And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint. He was a lord ful fat and in good point. His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed, That stemed as a fomeis of a led. His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. He was not pale as a forpined gost. A fat swan loved he best of any rost. His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.' The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred pieces, to be in a hundred places at once. ' No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, And yet he semed besier than he was.' The Frankelein, in ' whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke' ; the Shipman, ' who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe ' ; the Doctour of Phisike, < whose studie was but litel of the Bible ' ; the Wif of Bath, in 'All whose parish ther was non, That to the offiing before hire shulde gon, And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, That she was out of alle charitee ; ' — the poure Persone of a toun, ' whose parish was wide, and houses fer asonder ' ; the Miller, and the Reve, ' a slendre colerike man,' are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind ; abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men, as Linnxus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dis- pensed with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the Sompnoure : ' A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, That hadde a fire-red chcrubinnes face, For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe, As bote he was, ami likerous as a sparwe, Witli scalled browes blake, and pilled berd : Of his visage children were sore aferd. 24 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER Ther rfas quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite, That him might helpen of his whelkes white, Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. Wei loved he garlike, onions, and lekes, And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. And whan that he wel dronken had the win, Than wold he speken no word but Latin. A fewe termes coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of som decree ; No wonder is, he heard it all the day. — In danger hadde he at his owen gise The yonge girles of the diocise, And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede. A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede As gret as it were for an alestake : A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere— That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.* It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the Sompnoure in the present day ; whether or not it has any technical representative in existing professions ; into what channels and conduits it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity, or else shews its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office, in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances. Chaucer's characters modernised, upon this principle of historic deriva- tion, would be an useful addition to our knowledge of human nature. But who is there to undertake it ? The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and natural : 'Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace : Blake was his berd, and manly was his face. The cercles of his eyen in his hed They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red, And like a griffon loked he about, With kemped heres on his browes stout ; His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe. LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS And as the guise was in his contree, Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he, With foure white bolles in the trais. Instede of cote-armure on his harnais, With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold, He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. His longe here was kempt behind his bak, As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight, Upon his hed sate full of stones bright, Ot fine rubins and of diamants. About his char ther wenten white alauns, Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere, To hunten at the leon or the dere, And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound. — With Arcita, in stories as men find, The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde, Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele, Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele, Came riding like the god of armes Mars. Hi* cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars, Couched with perles, white, and round and grete. His sadel was of brent gold new ybete ; A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. His crispe here like ringes was yronne, And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin, His lippes round, his colour was sanguin, A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint, Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint, And as a leon he his loking caste. Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. His berd was wel begonnen for to sprin , j His vois was as a trompe thondering. Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene. Upon his hond he bare for his deduit An egle tame, as any lily whit. — About this king ther ran on every part Ful many a tame leon and leopart.'' What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description! The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie ; their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like harmless lightning ; but we gaze at them with a pleasing awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power. Chaucer's descriptions ot natural scenery possess the same sort of 26 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER characteristic excellence, or what might be termed gusto. They have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story ; and render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of the finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young beauty, shrowded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the nightingale ; while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases and repeats, and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling, which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene : 'Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight, And eke the briddes song for to here, Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight, And I that couth not yet in no manere Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, Ful busily herkened with herte and with eare, If I her voice perceiue coud any where. And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire Of the eglentere, that certainely There is no herte I deme in such dispaire, Ne with thoughts froward and contraire, So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote, If it had ones felt this savour sote. And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, I was ware of the fairest medler tree That ever yet in all my life I sie As full of blossomes as it might be, Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet Here and there of buds and floures sweet. And to the herber side was joyning This faire tree, of which I haue you told, And at the last the brid began to sing, Whan he had eaten what he eat wold, So passing sweetly, that by manifold It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise, And whan his song was ended in this wise, 27 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS The nightingale with so merry a note Answered him, that all the wood rong So sodainly, that as it were a sote, I stood astonied, so was I with the song Thorow rauished, that till late and long, I ne wist in what place I was, ne where, And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere. Wherefore I waited about busily On euery side, if I her might see, And at the last I gan full well aspie Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, On the further side euen right by me, That gaue so passing a delicious smell, According to the eglentere full well. Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, That as me thought I surely rauished was Into Paradice, where my desire Was for to be, and no ferther passe As for that day, and on the sote grasse, I sat me downe, for as for mine entent, The birds song was more conuenienr, And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, The wholesome sauours eke so comforting, That as I demed, sith the beginning Of the world was neur seene or than So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man. And as I sat the birds harkening thus, Me thought that I heard voices sodainly, The most sweetest and most delicious That euer any wight I trow truly Heard in their life, for the armony And sweet accord was in so good musike, That the uoice to angels was most like.' There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment : the whole is an ebullition of natural delight 'welling out of the heart,' like water from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art : there is a strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature, that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance ; and the 28 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the streets of Jewry, ' Oh Alma Redemptoris mater, loudly sung/ and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of con- ception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, in conse- quence of his banishment from his love, is thus described : ' Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas, For sene his lady shall be never mo. And shortly to concluden all his wo, So mochel sorvve hadde never creature, That is or shall be, while the world may dure. His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft. That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft. His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold, His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold, And solitary he was, and ever alone, And wailing all the night, making his mone. And if he herde song or instrument, Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent. So feble were his spirites, and so low, And changed so, that no man coude know His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.' This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same kind is his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his life in the combat : 1 Alas the wo ! alas the peines stronge, That I for you have suffered, and so longe ! Alas the deth ! alas min Emilie ! Alas departing of our compagnie : Alas min hertes quene ! alas my wif ! Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif ! What is this world ? what axen men to have ? Now with his love, now in his colde grave Alone withouten any compagnie.' 29 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of the three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in Dryden's version. For instance, such lines as the following are not rendered with their true feeling. ' Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all The purtreiture that was upon the wall Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede — That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace In thilke colde and frosty region, Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion. First on the wall was peinted a forest, In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best, With knotty knarry barrein trees old Of stubbes sharpe and hideous to behold ; In which ther ran a romble and a swough, As though a storme shuld bresten every bough.* And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter painted on the wall, is this one : ' The statue of Mars upon a carte stood Armed, and looked grim as he were wood. A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete With eyen red, and of a man he etc' The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio ; but the Clerk of Oxen- forde, who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind, ' that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear ' ; but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart ; it is a part of the very being ; it is as inseparable from it as the breath we draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. Nothing can touch it in its ethereal purity: tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she makes, the only complaint she utters against all the ill-treatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back naked to her father's house, she says, 'Let me not like a worm go by the way.* 30 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER The first outline given of the character is inimitable : Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable, Wher as this markis shope his mariage, Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable, In which that poure folk of that village Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage, And of hir labour toke hir sustenance, After that the earthe yave hem habundance. Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man, Which that was holden pourest of hem all : But highe God sometime senden can His grace unto a litel oxes stall : Janicola men of that thorpe him call. A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight, And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight. But for to speke of vertuous beautee, Than was she on the fairest under Sonne : Ful pourely yfostred up was she : No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne ; Ful offer of the well than of the tonne She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese, She knew wel labour, but non idel ese. But though this mayden tendre were of age, Yet in the brest of hire virginitee Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage ; And in gret reverence and charitee Hire olde poure fader fostred she : A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept, She wolde not ben idel til she slept. And whan she homward came she wolde bring Wortes and other herbes times oft, The which she shred and sethe for hire living, And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft : And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft With every obeisance and diligence, That child may don to fadres reverence, Upon Grisilde, this poure creature, Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye, As he on hunting rode paraventure : And whan it fell that he might hire espie, He not with wanton loking of folie His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise, 3» LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Commending in his herte hire womanhede And eke hire vertue, passing any wight .) yong age, as wel in cherc as dede. For though the people have no gret insight In venue, he considered ful right Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shoid Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent, That for hire shapen was all this array, To fetchen water at a welle is went, And cometh home as sone as ever she may. For wel she had herd say, that thilke day The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might, She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight. She thought, '■ I wul with other maidens stond, That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see The markisesse, and therto wol I fond Ion at home, as sone as it may be, The labour which longeth unto me, And than I may at leiser hire behold, If she this way unto the castel hold." And she wolde over the threswold gon, The markis came and gan hire for to call, And she set doun her water-pot anon le the threswold in an oxes stall, And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall. And with sad countenance kneleth still, Till she had herd what was the lordes will.' The tory of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was ' all conscience and tender heart,') is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and supersti- tions of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom. It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In this too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles, and could pass at will * from grave to gay, from lively to severe ' be never confounded the two styles together (except from that untary and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, which is almost always to be found in nature,) and was exclusively taken up with what he set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath'i Prologue (which Pope has very admirably modern- 3 2 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER ised) is, perhaps, unequalled as a comic story. The Cock and the Fox is also excellent for lively strokes of character and satire. Januaiy and May is not so good as some of the others. Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not one of his east merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and its .pparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the altera- : ons which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of scenting the words of the language. The best general rule for ading him is to pronounce the final e, as in reading Italian. It was observed in the last Lecture that painting describes what .e object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer's poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot help giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go in search of Death to kill him, and who meeting with him, are entangled in their fate by his words, without knowing him. In the printed catalogue to Mr. West's (in some respects very admirable) picture of Death on the Pale Horse, it is observed, that ' In poetry ie same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of iption, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a 1 mass of awful obscurity ; but in painting, such indistinctness id be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of super-human strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.' — One might suppose from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as substantial as possible. Oh, no! Pai .ting has its prerogatives, (and high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the invisible. The moral attributes of D?ath are powers and effects of an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or by a distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially isionary ; its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the only things ; and things, physical forms, che mere mockeries of the under- standing. The less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more vast, unformed, and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over B 33 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS nil things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He stalks on before us, and we do not mind him : he .vs us close behind, and we do not turn to look back at him. We do not see him making faces at us in our life-time, nor perceive him afterwards sitting in mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs, and staring into our hollow eye-balls ! Chaucer knew this. He makes three riotous companions go in search of :i to kill him, they meet with an old man whom they reproach with his age, and ask why he does not die, to which he answers thus: 'Ne Deth, alas ! ne will not han my lit'. Thus walke I like a restless caitiff, And on the ground, which is my modres g:t f e, I knocke with my staf, erlich and late, And say to hire, " Leve mother, let me in. Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin, Alas ! when shall my bones ben at reste ? Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste, That in my chambre longe time hath be, Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me." But yet to me she will not don that grace, For which ful pale and welked is my face.' They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death tc kill him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of !1 three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have encountered ! The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary The ing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, 4 ancient Gower,' Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John ito Ireland, or which he has left behind him some tender 'ections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a record in bly written paper, containing observations on the state of that country and the means of improving it, which remain in full force to the present day. Spin er died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed circumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was ■ed in active life ; but the genius of his poetry was not active : it ipired by the love of case, and relaxation from all the cares and bu mess of lite. Of all the poets, he is the most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to preceding writers were 54 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto ; but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther, Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology. If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a company, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but as we expected to find it ; and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. He waves his wand of enchantment — and at once embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love 'clap on high his coloured winges twain' : and it is said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions, ' In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad.' At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty ; as where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the almond tree : ' Upon the top of all his lofty crest, A bunch of hairs discoloufd diversely With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly dic^t Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity ; Like to an almond tree ymounted high On top of green Selenis all alone, With blossoms brave bedecked daintily; Her tender locks do tremble every one At every little breath that under heav'n is blown.' The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind ; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence ; or the still solitude of a hermit's cell — in the extremes of sensuality or refinement. In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, 35 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs : and all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, 'and mask, and antique pageantry.' What can be more solitary, more shut up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to which Archimago sends for a dream : ' And more to lull him in his slumber soft A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound. No other noise, nor people's troublous cries. That still are wont t' annoy the walled town Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies.' It is as if ' the honey-heavy dew of slumber ' had settled on his pen in writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how like in beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss : 1 Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound Of all that mote delight a dainty ear; Such as at once might not on living ground, Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere : Right hard it was for wight which did it hear, To tell what manner musicke that mote be ; For all that pleasing is to living eare Was there consorted in one harmonee : Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree. The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefuli shade Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet : The angelical soft trembling voices made To tif iiwruments divine respondence meet. The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall ; The water's tall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; gentle warbling wind low answered to all.' The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and lid brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled : 1 Tlu- whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay; Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing dost thou fain to see, In springing flower the image of thy day! Ah I tee the virgin rose, how sweetly she j6 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty, That fairer seems the less ye see her may ! Lo ! see soon after, how more bold and free Her bared bosom she doth broad display ; Lo ! see soon after, how she fades and falls away ! So passeth in the passing of a day Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower; Ne more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower Or many a lady and many a paramour! Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age that will her pride deflower ; Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime. * He ceased ; and then gan all the quire of birds Their divers notes to attune unto his lay, As in approvance of his pleasing wordes. The constant pair heard all that he did say. Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way Through many covert groves and thickets close, In which they creeping did at last display 2 That wanton lady with her lover loose, Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose. Upon a bed of roses she was laid As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin 5 And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, All in a veil of silk and silver thin, That hid no whit her alabaster skin, But rather shewed more white, if more might be: More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ; Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee. Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil Of hungry eyes which n' ote therewith be fill'd, And yet through languor of her late sweet toil Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd, That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd j And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd Frail hearts, yet quenched not ; like starry light, Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright.* 1 Taken from Tasso. 2 This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser some- times took with language. 37 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first book ; the House of Pride ; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave of Despair ; the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other things, 'The wars he well remember'd of King Nine, Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine'; the description of Belphcebe ; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son ; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss ; the Mask of Cupid ; and Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them : they look at it as a child looks at .1 painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pike-staff. It might as well be pretended that, we cannot see Poussin's pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory prevents us from understanding Spenser. For instance, when Brito- mart, seated amidst the young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers hex sex, is it necessary to know the part she plays in the allegory, to understand the beauty of the following stanza ? • And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest Was for like need enforc'd to disarray. Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest, Her golden locks that were in trammels gay Upbounden, did themselves adown display, And raught unto her heels like sunny beams That in a cloud their light did long time stay ; Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams, And through the persant air shoot forth their azure Streams. Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphcebe, that her hair was sprinkled with Mowers and blossoms which had been entangled in it as she fled through the woods ? Or is it necessary to have a more distinct idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, with the frighted Florimel at his feet, while ' the cold icicles from his rough beard Dropped adown upon her snowy breast ! ' Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that pass by them, to say — ' I hat was Arion crowned ; — So went he playing on the watery plain.' 38 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the coach of Pride, in which the figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, of Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath speak, one should think, plain enough for themselves ; such as this of Gluttony : ' And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, Deformed creature, on a filthy swine ; His belly was up blown with luxury; And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne ; And like a crane his neck was long and fine, With which he swallowed up excessive feast, For want whereof poor people oft did pine. In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad ; For other clothes he could not wear for heat: And on his head an ivy garland had, From under which fast trickled down the sweat: Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat. And in his hand did bear a bouzing can, Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat His drunken corse he scarce upholden can; In shape and size more like a monster than a man.' Or this ot Lechery : ' And next to him rode lustfull Lechery Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy) Was like the person's self whom he did bear: Who rough and black, and filthy did appear. Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye : Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear, When fairer faces were bid standen by : O ! who does know the bent of woman's fantasy? In a green gown he clothed was full fair, Which underneath did hide his filthiness ; And in his hand a burning heart he bare, Full of vain follies and new fangleness ; For he was false and fraught with fickleness ; And learned had to love with secret looks ; And well could dance ; and sing with ruefulness j And fortunes tell ; and read in loving books; And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks. Inconstant man that loved all he saw, And lusted after all that he did love ; Ne would his looser life be tied to law; But joyed weak women's hearts to tempt and prove, If from their loyal loves he might them move.' 39 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser : ' Yet not more sweet Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ; High priest of all the Muses' mysteries ! ' On the contrarv, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do not strictly belong to the Muses. Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train of votaries : ' The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer ; His garment neither was of silk nor say, But painted plumes in goodly order dight, Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight: A- those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light, That by his gait might easily appear ; For still he far'd as dancing in delight, And in his hand a windy fan did bear That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there. And him beside march'd amorous Desire, Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain, Yet was that other swain this elder's sire, And gave him being, common to them twain : His garment was disguised very vain, And his embroidered bonnet sat awry ; Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain, Which still he blew, and kindled busily, That soon they life conceiv'd and forth in flames did fly. Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad In a discolour" d coat of strange disguise, That at his back a broad capuccio had, And sleeves dependant Albanese-iuise ; He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes, And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, Or that the floor to shrink he did avise ; And on a broken reed he still did stay rceble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. With him went Daunger, cloth 'd in ragged weed, Made of bears skin, that him more dreadful made; Yet his own face was dreadful!, ne did need Strange horror to deform his grislv shade ; 40 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade In th' other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap; With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade, With th' other he his friends meant to enwrap ; For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap. Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe, Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby, But f ear'd each shadow moving to and fro ; And his own arms when glittering he did spy Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly, As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel'd ; And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye, 'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield. With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, Of chearfull look and lovely to behold ; In silken samite she was light array' d, And her fair locks were woven up in gold ; She always smil'd, and in her hand did hold An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew, With which she sprinkled favours manifold On whom she list, and did great liking shew, Great liking unto many, but true love to few. Next after them, the winged God himself Came riding on a lion ravenous, Taught to obey the menage of that elfe That man and beast with power imperious Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous: His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind, That his proud spoil of that same dolorous Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind ; Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind. Of which full proud, himself uprearing high, He looked round about with stem disdain, And did survey his goodly company : And marshalling the evil-ordered train, With that the darts which his right hand did strain, Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake, And clapt on high his colour'd winges twain, That all his many it afraid did make : Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take.' The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one of the most beautiful in Spenser : and the triumph ot Cupid at the mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In 4i LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ling these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of Rubens's allegorical pictures ; but the account of Satyrane taming the lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his arms while yet an infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to 'go seek some other play-fellows,' has even more of this high picturesque character. Nobody but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser ; and he could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it! With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon words, where he ribes Malbecco as escaping in the herd of goats, 'by the help of iv re homes on hight.' But he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion and of strength. He has both in an immense degree He has not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suffering, which is more properly the dramatic ; but he has all the pathos of sentiment and romance — all that belongs to distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable — but it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen through the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following Btanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror ' That house's form within was rude and strong, Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift. From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, Aiul with rich metal loaded every rift, That heavy ruin they did seem to threat : And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. Both root and floor, and walls were all of gold, overgrown with dust and old decay, 1 Ami hid in darkness that none could behold 1 'That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, Tho' they arc made and moulded of things past, And it, that is a little gilt, M-irc laud than gold o'cr-dustcd.' Troi/us and Cressid 42 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER The hue thereof: tor view or" cheerful da> Did never in that house itself display, But a faint shadow of uncertain light ; Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away ; Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright. ******* And over all sad Horror with grim hue Did always soar, beating his iron wings 5 And after him owls and night-ravens flew, The hateful messengers of heavy things, Of death and dolour telling sad tidings ; Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift, A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings, That heart of flint asunder could have rift ; Which having ended, after him she fiieth swift.' The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power of fancy ; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the evils of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of Malbecco, who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run away from his own thoughts — 'High over hill and over dale he flies' — the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are equally striking. — It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in point of interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus ; and the result would not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one work of the same allegorical kind, which has more interest than Spenser (with scarcely less imagination) : and that is the Pilgrim's Progress. The three first books of the Faery Queen are very superior to the three last. One would think that Pope, who used to ask if any one had ever read the Faery Queen through, had only dipped into these last. The only things in them equal to the former, are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the delightful episode of Pastorella. The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing : it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to 43 LECTURES ON THE ExNGLISH POETS their language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance which the consonant endings of the northern languages make to this sort of endless sing-song. — Not that I would, on that account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, indebted to this very necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, ' in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out' — that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted bv their continued variety of modulation — dwelling on the pauses of the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with the move- ment of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic transitions of Shakspeare's blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of Milton's ; but it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the chains of suspense. Spenser was the poet of our waking dreams ; and he has invented not only a language, but a music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like those of the waves of the sea : but the effect is still the same, lulling the Benses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, Irom which we have no wish to be ever recalled. LECTURE III ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON In looking back to the great works ot genius in former times, we are - -imes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has since l*.-en made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general. But this is perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to the fact, than the supposition that in what we understand by the Jine arts, as painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result of ited efforts in successive periods, and that what has been once well done, constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admit, of gradual improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, but depends on feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a vulgar error, which has grown up, like many ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON others, from transferring an analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the account the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. i.e. in things depending on mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts and institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon the theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural philosophy, with a smile of pity : science, and the arts connected with it, have all had their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to contain in them no principle of limitation or decay : and, inquiring no farther about the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride, and the height of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has been made, and will continue to be made, in all other things which are the work of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face, that one would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and over- turn our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, have always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the flm rude dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in general declined ever after. This is the peculiar dis- tinction and privilege of each, of science and of art : — of the one, never to attain its utmost limit of perfection ; and of the other, to arrive at it almost at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto, (Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it) — Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek sculptors and tragedians, — all lived near the beginning of their arts — perfected, and all but created them. These giant-sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows ; and the long line of their successors, in different ages, does not interpose any object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength and stature they are unrivalled ; in grace and beauty they have not been surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are called) great men have arisen, one by one, as it were by throes and at intervals; though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope, among poets ; Guido and Vandyke, among painters. But 45 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS in the earlier stages of the arts, as soon as the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the language was sufficiently acquired, they rose by clusters, and in constellations, never so to rise again ! The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world ot thought within us, and with the world of sense around us — with what we know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred .shrine of our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp ot nature. But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood three thousand, or three hundred years ago, as they are at present: the face of nature, and < the human face divine ' shone as bright then as they have ever done. But it is their light, reflected by true genius on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses' feet, like that which ' Circled Una's angel face, And made a sunshine in the shady place.' The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first we come to — Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are no others that can really be put in competition with these. The two last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation ; while the two first (though 'the fault has been more in their stars than in themselves that they are underlings') either never emerged far above the horizon, or were too soon involved in the obscurity of time. The three first of these are excluded from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his com- positions) : and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a reluctant and churlish welcome. In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life ; Spenser, as the port of romance ; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest use of the term) ; and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer frequently describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish ; to be ; Shakspeare, as they would be ; and Milton as they it to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things according to nature, was common to them all : but the principle or moving power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice ; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous ; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The charac- tic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, +6 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON elevation ; of Shakspeare, every thing. — It has been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit ; that they had all his other qualities but that ; that one writer had as much sense, another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. This statement is not true ; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, and not his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to have done with such minute and literal trifling. The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds — so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune 01 conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had ' a mind reflecting ages past,' and present : — all the people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar : ' All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,' are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives — as well those that they knew, as those which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies 'nodded to him, and did him curtesies': and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of 'his so potent art.' The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women : and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other ; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes 4" LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS them. He had only to think of any tiling in order to become that thino, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects, •subject to the same skyey influences,' the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its hi ! ien recesses, ' his frequent haunts and ancient neighbourhood,' are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole ' coheres semblably together ' in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do not merely learn what his characters say, — you see their persons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the bye play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously remarked) when >ero describes himself as left alone in the boat with his daughter, 'he epithet which he applies to her, ' Me and thy crying self,' flings .he imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the ler, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm — 'What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows ! ' Again, Hamlet, in the scene with Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on life by saying, 'Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.' Which plained by their answer — ' My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way ' : — as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by, and he ha 1 seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not 'a combination and a form ' of words, h or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this : but all the persons concerned must have been present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would have pai ' I through their minds on the occasion, and have been i ved by others, passed through his, and is made known to the 48 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON reader. — I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take one example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet ; and as Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that of any modern authority. ' Ophelia. My lord, as I was reading in my closet, Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd, No hat upon his head, his stockings loose, Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous, As if he had been sent from hell To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me. Polonius. Mad for thy love ! Oph. My lord, I do not know, But truly I do fear it. Pol. What said he ? Oph. He took me by the wrist, and heid me hard Then goes he to the length of all his arm ; And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face, As he would draw it : long staid he so ; At last, a little shaking of my arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being. That done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn'd, He seem'd to find his way without his eyes ; For out of doors he went without their help, And to the last bended their light on me.' Act. II. Scene i. How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's death begins thus : ' There is a willow hanging o'er a brook, That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.' — Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear 40 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS 4 hoary ' in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech oi Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence : — 'He's speaking now, or murmuring, where 's my serpent of old Nile ? ' How fine to make Cleopatra have this con- sciousness of her own character, and to make her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her ! She says, after the battle cf Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, ' It is my birth-day ; I had thought to have held it poor : but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.' What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it ? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact. — That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, is* this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth or the person in whose name it is given. His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood ; they speak iike men, not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and heard what passed. As in our dreams we hold conversations with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves make, till we hear it : so the dialogues in Shakspeare are carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance reparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by i.il inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis : all comes, or Ofl to come, immediately from nature. Each object and circum- stance exists in his mind, as it would have existed in reality : each ral train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being of its own ! Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical pro- tions. They are consistent, but uniform ; we get no new idea of 5° ON SHAKSPEAIIE AND MILTON them from first to last ; they are not placed in different lights, nor are their subordinate traits brought out in new situations ; they are like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare's are historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic, Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as he pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He answered for his characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage, are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In Shakspeare there is a continual composition and de- composition of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not know the result, the turn which the character will take in its new circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy. His imagination, ' nigh sphered in Heaven,' claimed kindred only with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the same elevation with itself. He sat retired and kept his state alone, ' playing with wisdom ' ; while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played the host, * to make society the sweeter welcome.' The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment prey- ing upon itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him ; subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident ; calling into play all the resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will ; irritated by obstacles or yielding to them ; rising from small beginnings to its utmost height ; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a torrent. The human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of adversity : it is stretched on the wheel ol destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are in a state of pro- jection. Years are melted down to moments, and every instant teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. Thus after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous 5 1 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS suggestions on the mind of Othello, ' which, with a little act upon the blood, will work like mines of sulphur,' he adds — Look where he comes ! not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday." — And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his wrongs and raging for revenge ! The whole depends upon the turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame ; and the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in Chaucer is quite different ; it is like the course of a river, strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud- lashed by furious storms ; while in the still pauses of the blast, we distinguish only the cries of despair, or the silence of death ! Milton, on the other hand, takes the imaginative part of passion — that which remains after the event, which the mind reposes on when all is over, which looks upon circumstances from the remotest elevation of thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world of action to that of contemplation. The objects of dramatic poetry affect us by sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by surprise, or force us upon action, 'while rage with rage doth sympathise' ; the objects of epic poetry affect us through the medium of the imagina- tion, by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the other with admiration and delight. There are certain objects that strike the imagination, and inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently of any dramatic interest, that is, of any connection with the vicissitudes of human life. For instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without a certain emotion, a sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind. The heavenly bodies that hung over our heads wherever we go, and 'in their untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all our circs forgotten,' affect us in the same way. Thus Satan's address to the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest ; for though the second person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the eye of that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of heaven, and seems conscious of what he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic poetry and epic, in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and J* ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON strengthen one another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid. from the dignity of persons and things, as the heroic does from human passion, but in theory they are distinct. — When Richard n. calls for the looking-glass to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and bursts into that affecting exclamation : ' Oh, that I were a mockery-king of snow, to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke,' we have here the utmost force of human passion, combined with the ideas of regal splendour and fallen power. When Milton says of Satan : ' His form had not yet lost All her original brightness, nor appear'd Less than archangel ruin'd, and th 1 excess Of glory obscur'd ; * — the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect. The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility ; or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to their having had a deeper sense than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or affecting in the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot under- stand the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness ; for their minds reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the very idea that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or admiration of the world, they look upon with the most perfect indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world repays their indifference with scorn. « With what measure they mete, it has been meted to them again.' — Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his con- ception of character or passion. ' It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.' Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite extremes : or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, ' puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.' 53 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it , but the stroke, like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest possible range, but from that very range he has his choice of the greatest variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together images the most alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each other ; that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude I rom the remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more the thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to become. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner in the same instant. I will mention one or two which are very striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and Cressida -/Eneas says to Agamemnon, ' I ask that I may waken reverence, And on the cheek be ready with a blush Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes The youthful Phoebus.' Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says — • No man is the lord of anything, Till he communicate his parts to others: _\'or doth he of himself know them for aught, Till he behold them formed in the applause, Where they 're extended ! which like an arch reverberates The voice again, or like a gate of steel, Fronting the sun, receives and renders back Its figure and its heat.' Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice. 1 Recuse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid I trom your neck unloose his amorous fold, And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane Be shook to air.' Shakspeare's language and versification are like the rest of him. He has a magic power over words : they come winged at his mg ; and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets ingle phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is 54 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the language. They are the building, and not the scaffolding to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a well-known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the particular words and phrases, than the syllables of which they are composed. In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakspeare, any other word but the true one, is sure to be wrong. If any body, for instance, could not recollect the words of the following description, ' Light thickens, And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,' he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however, are strictly applicable only to the impassioned parts of Shakspeare's language, which flowed from the warmth and originality of his imagination, and were his own. The language used for prose conversation and ordinary business is sometimes technical, and involved in the affecta- tion of the time. Compare, for example, Othello's apology to the senate, relating ' his whole course of love,' with some of the preceding parts relating to his appointment, and the official dispatches from Cyprus. In this respect, 'the business of the state does him offence.' His versification is no less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has every occasional excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed and perplexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest expansion— from the ease and familiarity of measured conversation to the lyrical sounds < Of ditties highly penned, Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, With ravishing division to her lute.' It is the only blank verse in the language, except Milton's, that for itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly swelling like his, but varied and broken by the inequalities of the ground it has to pass over in its uncertain course, ' And so by many winding nooks it strays, With willing sport to the wild ocean.' It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so many or so great as they have been represented ; what there are, are chiefly owing to the following causes : — The universality of his genius 55 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS was, perhaps, a disadvantage to his single works ; the variety of his resources, sometimes diverting him from applying them to the most effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of /Eschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. It he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He is relaxed and careless in critical places ; he is in earnest throughout only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts, and by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the • great vulgar and the small,' in his time, not for posterity. If Queen Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily at his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his be:;t passages, he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He did not trouble himself about Voltaire's criticisms. He was willing to take advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things ; and if his plays pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very facility of production would make him set less value on his own excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well or ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to above half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and geography, not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion : he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and « his delights did shew most dolphin-like.' He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy ; and his tragedies are hotter than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His female characters, which ha\e been found fault with as insipid, are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman. Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of his age, and his political prejudices were not very strong, in these ts, as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the con- templation oi the I h In cw theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; ■ m ' ith a hand just warm from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character into his im- S 6 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON agination ; so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind appears to have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with the bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome ; — ' Blind Thamyris, and blind Mseonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old.' He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing him- self, nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He lived apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from his mind whatever might distract its purposes or alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. ' With darkness and with dangers compassed round,' he had the mighty models of antiquity always present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a monument of equal height and glory, ' piling up every stone of lustre from the brook,' for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had girded himself up, and as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from his youth. ' For after,' he says, * I had from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the style by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live ; but much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance above what was looked for ; I began thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let it die. The accomplish- ment of these intentions, which have lived within me ever since I could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not but in a power above man's to promise ; but that none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours 57 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ot wine ; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases : to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much before- hand ; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' So that of Spenser : ' The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, And is with child of glorious great intent, Can never rest until it forth have brought The eternal brood of glory excellent." Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave r.jthing undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his ;t to the utmost : he surrounds it with every possible association auty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He relmes on his descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the ense aches at them ; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic ; .<>n, that 'makes Ossa like a wart.' In Milton, there is always an appearance of effort : in Shakespeare, scarcely any. Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind •imped on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts D and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory irialB. In ; is works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more distinct from them. The quantity of art in him shews the strength of his genius : the weight of his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other writer. Milton's learning has the 58 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures. 1 Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.' The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the most perfect landscape. And again : ' As when a vulture on Imaus bred, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams ; But in his way lights on the barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive With sails and wind their cany waggons light.' It Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not have described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages are like demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be multiplied without end. We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he describes visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an unusual degree of strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight ; but we find the same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which occur in his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of ' the great vision of the guarded mount,' with that preternatural weight of impression with which it would present itself suddenly to ' the pilot of sonic small night-foundered skiff' : and the lines in the Penseroso, describing ' the wandering moon,' ' Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way,' are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells — the same absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of criticism, that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if because they were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to 59 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS keep the sage critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities at the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. But Milton's poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-place mould ; it is not so barren of resources. His worship of the Muse was not so simple or confined. A sound arises 'like a steam or' rich distilled perfumes ' ; we hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged around ! The ear indeed predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and because the language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural accompani- ment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associations of the imagination are not the principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and Eve, of Satan, &c. are always accompanied, in our imagination, with the grandeur of the naked figure ; they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an instance, take the following : ' He soon Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, The same whom John saw also in the sun : His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ; Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar Circled his head, nor less his locks behind Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings Lay waving round ; on some great charge employ "d He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep. Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope To find who might direct his wand'ring flight To Paradise, the happy seat of man, His journey's end, ami our beginning woe. But first he casts to change his proper shape, Which else might work him danger or delay And now a stripling cherub he appears, N it of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd : Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore Ot many a colour' d plume sprinkled with gold. Hi habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand.' The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek statue ; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's harp ! 6o ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait or Beelzebub : ' With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies : ' Or the comparison of Satan, as he 'lay floating many a rood,' to • that sea beast,' ' Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream ! ' What a force of imagination is there in this last expression ! What an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing ? Force of style is one of Milton's greatest excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners, is to take down the book and read it. Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend to say that this is not sometimes the case ; for where a degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put together, (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our stanza writers, as Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there any thing like the same ear for music, the same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick or affectation, as the occasion seems to require. The following are some of the finest instances : ' His hand was known In Heaven by many a tower'd structure high ; — Nor was his name unheard or unador'd In ancient Greece : and in the Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber : and how he fell From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Tove 61 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ^heer o'er the chrystal battlements; from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day ; and with the setting sun Dropt from the zenith like a falling star On Lemnos, the ^Egean isle : thus they relate, Erring.' — ' But chief the spacious hall Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd ; till the signal giv'c ; Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race oiid the Indian mount, or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.' 1 can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in lea\ing off. ' Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood So high above the circling canopy Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Ainlromeda far off Atlantic seas B< yond the horizon : then from pole to pole He views in breadth, and without longer pause Down right into the world's first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars that shone Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds; Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles,' &c. The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down ON SIIAKSPEARE AND MILTON as ii it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his versification — * Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out. Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton's, — Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's, Wordsworth's, — and it will be found, from the want of the same insight into ' the hidden soul of harmony,' to be mere lumbering prose. To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in the most essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character and passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical objections or excellences ; but I shall try to explain at once the foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give up the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, ' God the Father turns a school-divine' ; nor do I consider the battle of the angels as the climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of Milton's pen. In a word, the interest of the poem arises from the daring ambition and fierce passions of Satan, and from the account or the paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents. Three-fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The two first books alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold. Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem ; and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe ; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest ; but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body ; the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a tower ; or ' As when Heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines. 1 63 LECTURES ON THE ExNGLISH POETS He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach ; though he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and man- kind are his easy prey. 1 All is not lost ; th' unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what else is not to be overcome,' are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude of it ; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride ; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil — but of the abstract love of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this principle he never once flinches. His love of power and contempt tor suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. His thoughts burn like a hell within him ; but the power of thought holds dominion in his mind over every other consideration. The consciousness of a determined purpose, of ' that intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity,' though accompanied with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to ' being swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.' He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one line. ' Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering ! ' After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is something ; but he does more than this — he founds a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct ; the Titans were not more vast ; Prometheus chained to his rock was not a more terrific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, ' rising aloft incumbent on the dusky air,' it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate images : so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed — but dazzling in its faded 64 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will ; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven toot ; to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have availed themselves, and which the mystic German critics would restore. He relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil his due. Some persons may think that he has carried his liberality too far, and injured the cause he professed to espouse by making him the chief person in his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he would be equally in danger of running into this fault, from his faith in religion, and his love of rebellion ; and perhaps each of these motives had its full share in determining the choice of his subject. Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, his soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in heaven, or in the fall of man, shew the same decided superiority of character. To give only one instance, almost the first speech he makes : ' Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heaven ; this mournful gloom For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he Who now is sovVain can dispose and bid What shall be right : farthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewel happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells : Hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor : one who brings A mind not to be chang'd by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least We shall be free ; th' Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.' The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium are well worthy of the place and the occasion — with Gods for speakers, and C 6 5 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS angels and archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in the arguments and sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from thorough conviction ; an excellence which Milton probably borrowed from his spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the natural firmness and vigour of his mind. In this respect Milton resembles Dante, (the only modern writer with whom he has any thing in common) and it is remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That approximation to the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an objection to Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these bitter invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account. The rout in Heaven is like the fall of some mighty structure, nodding to its base, 'with hideous ruin and combustion down.' But, perhaps, of all the passages in Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of the angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom ' retreated in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle,' is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity. — What proves the truth of this noble picture in every part, and that the frequent complaint of want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the poet, is that when any interest of a practical kind takes a shape that can be at all turned into this, (and there is little doubt that Milton had some such in his eye in writing it,) each party converts it to its own purposes, feels the absolute identity of these abstracted and high speculations ; and that, in fact, a noted political writer of the present day has exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in the Paradise Lost, by applying it to a character whom he considered as after the devil, (though I do not know whether he would make even that exception) the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to shew that Milton's Satan is not a very insipid personage. Cf Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can teel little interest in them, because they have none of the passions, pursuit!, or even relations of human life, except that of man and wife, the least interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at least to the by-standers. The preference has on this account been given to Homer, who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely diversified pictures of all the passions and affections, public and private, incident to human nature — the relations of son, of brother, parent, friend, citizen, and many others. Longinus preferred the Ilia 1 to the Odyssey, on account of the greater number of battles it contains ; but I can neither agree to his criticism, nor assent to the pre ent objection. It is true, there is little action in this part of 6fi ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON Milton's poem ; but there is much repose, and more enjoyment. There are none of the every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes, wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and common handicrafts of life ; ' no kind of traffic ; letters are not known ; no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession, bourne, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none ; no occupation, no treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any engine.' So much the better ; thank Heaven, all these were yet to come. But still the die was cast, and in them our doom was sealed. In them * The generations were prepared • the pangs, The interna] pangs, were ready, the dread strife Of" poor humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny/ In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with loss of Eden. But there was a short and precious interval between, like the first blush of morning before the day is overcast with tempest, the dawn of the world, the birth of nature from ' the unapparent deep,' with its first dews and freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs was the first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all that was to come of it. In them hung trembling all our hopes and fears. They were as yet alone in the world, in the eye of nature, wondering at their new being, full of enjoyment and enraptured with one another, with the voice of their Maker walking in the garden, and ministering angels attendant on their steps, winged messengers from heaven like rosy clouds descending in their sight. Nature played around them her virgin fancies wild ; and spread for them a repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there nothing in this scene, which God and nature alone witnessed, to interest a modern critic ? What need was there of action, where the heart was full of bliss and innocence without it ! They had nothing to do but feel their own happiness, and ' know to know no more.' ' They toiled not, neither did they spin ; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' All things seem to acquire fresh sweet- ness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. ' In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened.' They stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight — their tears 'such as angels weep.' The pathos is of that mild 67 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS contemplative kind which arises from regret for the loss of unspeakable nappiness, and resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the fierceness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind and turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual struggles of the will with circumstances, irritated by repeated disappointment, and constantly setting its desires most eagerly on that which there is an impossibility of attaining. This would have destroyed the beauty of the whole picture. Thev had received their unlooked-for ha] piness as a free gift from their Creator's hands, and they submitted to its los>, not without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn repining. ' In either hand the hast'ning angel caught Our lingering parents, and to th' eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the subjected plain ; then disappear'd. Thev looking back, all th' eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon ; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.' LECTURE IV ON DRYDEN AND POPE Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspcare, and Milton, were of the natural ; and though this artificial style is generally and very justly acknowledged to be inferior to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that class, ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an inferior place in a superior class. They have a clear and independent claim upon our gratitude, as having produced a kind and degree of >ence which existed equally nowhere else. What has been done well by some later writers of the highest style of poetry, is included in, and obscured by a greater degree of power and genius in those before them : what has been done best by poets of an entirely distinct turn of mind, stands by itself, and tells for its whole amount. Young, for instance, Gray, or Akenside, only follow in the train of Milton and Shakspeare : Pope and Dryden walk by their side, though of an unequal stature, and are entitled to a first place in the ON DRYDEN AND POPE lists of fame. This seems to be not only the reason of the thing, but the common sense of mankind, who, without any regular process of reflection, judge of the merit of a work, not more by its inherent and absolute worth, than by its originality and capacity of gratifying a different faculty of the mind, or a different class of readers ; for it should be recollected, that there may be readers (as well as poets) not of the highest class, though very good sort of people, and not altogether to be despised. The question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling ; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose-writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste ; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet, we mean one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the clean contrary way ; namely, in representing things as they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, as in his Critical Essays ; or in representing them in the most con- temptible and insignificant point of view, as in his Satires ; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of Fancy ; or in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friend- ship or self-love, as in his Epistles. He was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of the heart ; but he was a wit, and a critic, a man of sense, of observa- tion, and the world, with a keen relish for the elegances of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought and manners as established by the forms and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as he felt them within the little circle of his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but of art ; and the distinc- tion between the two, as well as I can make it out, is this — The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men ; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature ; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record the 69 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions ; and to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are ; he feels them in their universal interest, for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose works will last as long as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible forms and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from the bosom as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses by the hand of their maker. The power of the imagination in them, is the representative power of all nature. It has its centre in the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe. Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion ; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world ; he judged of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shak- speare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances : Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth, through Chaos and old Night. Pope's Muse never wandered with safety, but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his lilirary back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden ; he could describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own person, better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven — a piece of cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect, than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp, than with ' the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow,' that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles through the cottage window, and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him, was the greatest ; the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw, than admiration of that which was interesting to all mankind. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncalculating impulres of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple ; while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off like a masquerade-dress, make much or little of them, 7C ON DRYDEN AND POPE indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased ; and because while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur ; its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry ; he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more in diminish- ing, than in aggrandizing objects ; in checking, not in encouraging our enthusiasm ; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them ; in describing a row of pins and needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans ; in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha Blount. Shakspeare says, ' In Fortune's ray and brightness The herd hath more annoyance by the brize Than by the tyger : but when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks. And flies fled under shade, why then The thing of courage, As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise ; And with an accent tuned in the self-same key, Replies to chiding Fortune.' There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse was on a peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit ; the thunders of his pen are whispered flatteries ; its forked lightnings pointed sarcasms ; for * the gnarled oak,' he gives us * the soft myrtle ' : for rocks, and seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills ; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall of a china jar ; for the tug and war of the elements, or the deadly strife of the passions, we have ' Calm contemplation and poetic ease." Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was contained ! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered refinement of sentiment ! It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their 7i LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference ; where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiiul, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing, but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or surprised. Such, at least, is the best account I am able to give of this extraordinary man, without doing injustice to him or others. It is time to refer to particular instances in his works. — The Rape of the Lock is the best or most ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite specimen of filagree work ever invented. It is admirable in proportion as it is made of nothing. ' More subtle web Arachne cannot spin, Nor the tine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee.' It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appear- ance is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around ; — the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in hurope. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock- heroic ! I will give only the two following passages in illustration of these remarks. Can any thing be more elegant and graceful than the description of Belinda, in the beginning of the second canto? 'Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames. Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone, But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone. < >:. her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 1,'uick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those: Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; "It she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ; And like the sun, they shine on all alike. 72 ON DRYDEN AND POPE Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide : If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you '11 forget 'em all. This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck.' The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda's assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks 'from her fair head for ever and for ever.' 'Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd, And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. (The same his ancient personage to deck, Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck, In three seal-rings; which after, melted down, Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown : Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew; Then in a bodkin graced her mother's hairs, Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).' I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau. The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful : unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reason- ing on the variety of men's opinion, he says — ' 'Tis with our judgments, as our watches ; none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.' Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and illustrations in the Essay : the critical rules laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one passage in the Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel who have themselves any hope or chance of 73 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS immortality. I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it here. ' Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rag.-, Destructive war, and all-involving age. Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, Immortal heirs of universal praise! Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow,' These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader, as they were dictated by the writer's despair of ever attaining that lasting glory which he celebrates with such disinterested enthusiasm in others, from the lateness of the age in which he lived, and from his writing in a tongue, not understood by other nations, and that grows obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every second century. But he needed not have thus antedated his own poetical doom — the loss and entire oblivion of that which can never die. If he had known, he might have boasted that ' his little bark ' wafted down the stream of time, ' With theirs should sail, Pursue the triumph and partake the gale * — if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, were not the last to decide confidently on their own pretensions to it. There is a cant in the present day about genius, as every thing in poetry : there was a cant in the time of Pope about sense, as per- forming all sorts of wonders. It was a kind of watchword, the shibboleth of a critical party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive attention which it occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in the Essay on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than half a score successive couplets rhyming to the word sense. This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are given. ' But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, To tire our patience than mislead our sense.' — lines 3, 4.. 1 In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence.' — /. 28, 29. ' Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense.' — /. 209, 10. 1 Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.' — /. 324, 5 74 ON DRYDEN AND POPE ' 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; The sound must seem an echo to the sense.' — /. 364, 5. ' At every trifle scorn to take offence ; That always shews great pride, or little sense.'' — /. 386, 7. * Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.' — I. 366, 7. • Be niggards of advice on no pretence, For the worst avarice is that of sense.' — /. 578, 9. ' Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense, And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.' — /. 608. 9, ' Horace still charms with graceful negligence, And without method talks us into sense.' — /. 653, 4. I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those critics who are bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correct- ness. These persons seem to be of opinion that ' there is but one perfect writer, even Pope.' This is, however, a mistake : his excel- lence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he says — •There died the best of passions, Love and Fame.' This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, though love is : but his ear was evidently confused by the meeting of the sounds ' love and fame,' as if they of themselves immediately implied ' love, and love of lame.' Pope's rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear ; and this to a greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to have done with this. The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks ; and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem : it is finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman could be supposed to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the richness of the historical materials, the high gusto of the original 7S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS sentiments w hicb Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps circumstances in his own situation which made him enter into the subject with even more than a poet's feeling. The tears shed are drops gushing from the heart : the words are burning sighs breathed from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it bears the greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden's Tancred and Sigis- munda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will bear this com- parison ; and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other. There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of the concluding lines : ' If ever chance two wandering lovers brings To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,' Sec. The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he expanded into verse. But ' he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.' All that he says, * the very words, and to the self-same tune,' would prove just as well that whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has splendid pa- ages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the Lord Mayor's poet, (for at that time there was a city as well as a court poet) ' Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, But lives in Settle's numbers one day more ' — is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the triumphant bards of antiquity ! The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, is the prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires : 'Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, 'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me; Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, She 's still the same belov'd, contented thing. Vice is undone if she forgets her birth, And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth. Hut 'tis the Fall degrades her to a whore : Let Greatness own her, and she 's mean no more. " r birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess, t. haste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless 5 In golden chains the willing world she draws, \"t or a bird ! supinely when he might Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light 1 What if his dull forefathers us'd that cry, Could he not let a bad example die ? The world was fallen into an easier way: This age knew better than to fast and pray. Good sense in sacred worship would appear, So to begin as they might end the year. Such feats in former times had wrought the falls Of crowing chanticleers in cloister' d walls. Expelld for this, and for their lands they fled; And sister Partlet with her hooded head Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.' There is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets, a fearless choice of topics of invective, which may be considered as the heroical in satire. The Annus Mirab'il'is is a tedious performance ; it is a tissue of far-fetched, heavy, lumbering conceits, and in the worst style of what has been denominated metaphysical poetry. His Odes in general are of the same stamp ; they are the hard-strained offspring of a meagre, meretricious fancy. The famous Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its reputation ; for, as piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or recited in alternate strophe and antistrophe, with classical allusions, and flowing verse, nothing can be better. It is equally fit to be said or sung ; it is not equally good to read. It is lyrical, without being epic or dramatic. For instance, the description of Bacchus, 'The jolly god in triumph comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums j Flush'd with a purple grace, He shews his honest face ' — does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of the God, returning from the conquest of India, with satyrs and wild beasts, that he had tamed, following in his train ; crowned with vine leaves, and riding in a chariot drawn by leopards — such as we have seen him painted by Titian or Rubens! Lyrical poetry, of all others, bears the nearest resemblance to painting : it deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures, which depend for effect, not on the working out, but on the selection. It is the dance and pantomime of poetry. In variety and rapidity of movement, the Alexander's Feast has all that can be required in this respect ; it only wants loftiness and truth of character. Dryden's plays are better than Pope could have written ; for 81 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS though he does not go out of himself by the force of imagination, he goes out of himself by the force of common-places and rhetorical dialogue. On the other hand, they are not so good as Shakspeare's : but he has left the best character of Shakspeare that has ever beer written. 1 His alterations from Chaucer and Boccaccio shew a greater knowledge of the taste of his readers and power of pleasing them, than acquaintance with the genius of his authors. He ekes out the lameness of the verse in the former, and breaks the force of the passion in both. The Tancred and Sigismunda is the only general exception, in which, I think, he has fully retained, if not improved upon, the impassioned declamation of the original. The Honoria has none of the bewildered, dreary, preternatural effect of Boccaccio's story. Nor has the Flower and the Leaf anything of the enchanting simplicity and concentrated feeling of Chaucer's romantic fiction. Dryden, however, sometimes seemed to indulge himself as well as his readers, as in keeping entire that noble line in Palamon's address to Venus : 'Thou gladder of the mount of Cithseron !' His Tales have been, upon the whole, the most popular of his works ; and I should think that a translation of some of the other serious tales in Boccaccio and Chaucer, as that of Isabella, the Falcon, of Constance, the Prioress's Tale, and others, if executed with taste and spirit, could not fail to succeed in the present day. It should appe::r, in tracing the history of our literature, that poetry had, at the period of which we are speaking, in general declined, by successive gradations, from the poetry of imagination, in the time of Elizabeth, to the poetry of fancy (to adopt a modern distinction) in the time of Charles i.j and again from the poetry oi I incy to that of wit, as in the reign of Charles n. and Queen Anne. It degenerated into the poetry of mere common places, both in style • To begin then with Shakspeare : he was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the s of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commenda- tion : he wjs naturally learned : he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say, he is every where alike ; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, and insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself .is high above the rest of poets, ^iMinum lenta ident Inter Viburna Cupressi? : ON DRYDEN AND POPE ?nd thought, in the succeeding reigns : as in the latter part of the last century, it was transformed, by means of the French Revolution, into the poetry of paradox. Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad, and some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel. Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa ; and his lines on the death of Oliver Cromwell shew that he was a man not without genius and strength of thought. Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, and worthy of a better age. Some of his verses are harsh, as the words of Mercury ; others musical, as is Apollo's lute. Of the latter kind are his boat- song, his description of a fawn, and his lines to Lady Vere. His lines prefixed to Paradise Lost are by no means the most favourable specimen of his powers Butler's Hudibras is a poem of more wit than any other in the language. The rhymes have as much genius in them as the thoughts ; but there is no story in it, and but little humour. Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously : wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature. The fault of Butler's poem is not that it has too much wit, but that it has not an equal quantity of other things. One would suppose that the starched manners and sanctified grimace of the times in which he lived, would of themselves have been sufficiently rich in ludicrous incidents and characters ; but they seem rather to have irritated his spleen, than to have drawn forth his powers of picturesque imitation. Certainly if we compare Hudibras with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a meagre and unsatisfactory performance. Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love or pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it ; his contempt for every thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were the bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written. Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp, but with a greater fund of animal spirits ; as witty, but less malicious. His Ballad on a Wedding is perfect in its kind, and has a spirit of high enjoyment in it, of sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and a truth of nature, that never were surpassed. It is superior to either Gay or Prior ; for with all their naivete and terseness, it has a Shakspearian grace and luxuriance about it, which they could not have reached. 83 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but were quite distinct from each other : the one was grave and prosing, the othc melancholy and fantastical. There are a number of good lines and good thoughts in the Cooper's Hill. And in Cowley there is an inexhaustible fund of sense and ingenuity, buried in inextricably conceits, and entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. He was a great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no more on this subject. I never wish to meddle with names that are sacred, unless when they stand in the way of things that are more sacred. Withers is a name now almost forgotten, and his works seldom read ; but his poetry is not unfrequently distinguished by a tender and pastoral turn of thought; and there is one passage of exqui ite feeling, describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms : ' She doth tell me where to borrow Comfort in the midst of sorrow j Makes the desolatest place 1 To her presence be a grace ; And the blackest discontents Be her fairest ornaments. In my former days of bliss Her divine skill taught me this, That from every thing I saw, I could some invention draw ; And raise pleasure to her height, Through the meanest object's sight, By the murmur of a spring, Or the least bough's rusteling, By a daisy whose leaves spread Shut when Titan goes to bed ; Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me, Than all Nature's beauties can, In some other wiser man. By her help I also now Make this churlish place allow Some things that may sweeten gladness In the very gall of sadness. The dull loneness, the black shade, That these hanging vaults have made, The strange music of the waves. Beating on these hollow caves, This black den which rocks emboss, Overgrown with eldest moss, The rude portals that give light More to terror than delight, 1 Written in the Fleet Prison. ON THOMSON AND COWPER This my chamber of neglect, Wall'd about with disrespect, From all these and this dull air, A fit object for despair, She hath taught me by her might To draw comfort and delight. Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, I will cherish thee for this. Poesie ; thou sweet'st content That ere Heav'n to mortals lent : Though they as a trifle leave thee, Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee, Though thou be to them a scorn, That to nought but earth are born : Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee. Though our wise ones call thee madness, Let me never taste of sadness, If I love not thy maddest fits, Above all their greatest wits. And though some too seeming holy, Do account thy raptures folly, Thou dost teach me to contemn What makes knaves and fools of them." LECTURE V ON THOMSON AND COWPER Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals and of poets. But he was also one of the best both of mortals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise that he wrote 'no line which dying he would wish to blot.' Perhaps a better proof of his honest simplicity, and inoffensive goodness of disposition, would be that he wrote no line which any other person living would wish that he should blot. Indeed, he himself wished, on his death- bed, formally to expunge his dedication of one of the Seasons to that finished courtier, and candid biographer of his own life, Bub Doddington. As critics, however, not as moralists, we might say on the other hand — 'Would he had blotted a thousand!' — The same suavity of temper and sanguine warmth of feeling which threw such a natural grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm over his poetry, was also the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is affected through carelessness : pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of 85 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS character. He is frequently pedantic and ostentatious in his style, because he had no consciousness of these vices in himself. He mounts upon stilts, not out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom writes a good line, but he makes up for it by a bad one. He takes advantage of all the most trite and mechanical common places of imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his Muse, and as if he thought them quite as good, and likely to be quite as acceptable to the reader, as his own poetry. He did not think the difference worth putting himself to the trouble of accomplishing. He had too little art to conceal his art : or did not even seem to know that there was any occasion for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his nature ; the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gaudy, and meretricious. — All that is admirable in the Seasons, is the emanation of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of his subject, unforced, unstudied, that comes uncalled for, and departs unbidden. But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction ; or if he seems to labour, it is worse than labour lost. His genius ' cannot be con- strained by mastery.' The feeling of nature, of the changes of the seasons, was in his mind ; and he could not help conveying this feeling to the reader, by the mere force of spontaneous expression ; but if the expression did not come of itself, he left the whole business to chance ; or, willing to evade instead of encountering the difficulties of his subject, fills up the intervals of true inspiration with the most vapid and worthless materials, pieces out a beautiful half line with a bombastic allusion, or overloads an exquisitely natural sentiment or image with a cloud of painted, pompous, cumbrous phrases, like the shower of roses, in which he represents the Spring, his own lovely, fresh, and innocent Spring, as descending to the earth. ' Come, gentle Spring ! ethereal Mildness ! come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend ' W no, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this and the following cantos ? For instance, the very next passage is crowded with a set of striking images. ' And see where surly Winter passes off" Far to the north, and calls his rulHan blasts : His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill, The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale ; While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch 86 ON THOMSON AND COWPER Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost, The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze, Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets Deform the day delightless ; so that scarce The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath, And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.' Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets : for he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of objects ; — no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind. He does not go into the minutia of a landscape, but describes the vivid impression which the whole makes upon his own imagination ; and thus transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagination of his readers. The colours with which he paints seem yet wet and breathing, like those of the living statue in the Winter's Tale. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full over- shadowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life and vivifying soul. His faults were those of his style — of the author and the man ; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation, or false ornaments. It is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the refined, because he gives back the impression which the things 87 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS themselves make upon us in nature. ' That,' said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure country alehouse — ' That is true fame ! ' It has been supposed by some, that the Castle of Indolence is Thomson's best poem ; but that is not the case. He has in it, indeed, poured out the whole soul of indolence, diffuse, relaxed, supine, dissolved into a voluptuous dream ; and surrounded himself with a set of objects and companions, in entire unison with the listlessness of his own temper. Nothing can well go beyond the descriptions of these inmates of the place, and their luxurious pampered way of life — of him who came among them like 'a burnished fly in month of June,' but soon left them on his heedless way ; and him, ' For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween, If in this nook of quiet, bells had ever been.' The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where ' all was one full- swelling bed'; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by * the stock- dove's plaint amid the forest deep/ ' That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ' — are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still there are no passages in this exquisite little production of sportive ease and fancy, equal to the best of those in the Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, was the first to point out and do justice to some of these ; for instance, to the description of the effects of the contagion among our ships at Carthagena — ' of the frequent corse heard nightly plunged amid the sullen waves,' and to the description of the pilgrims lost in die deserts of Arabia. This last passage, profound and striking as it is is not free from those faults of style which I have already noti ' Breath'd hot I rom all the boundless furnace of the sky, And the wide-glitt'ring waste of burning sand, A ^allocating wind the pilgrim smites With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, Son of the desert, ev'n the camel feels Shot through his wither'd heart the fiery blast. Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad. S:illies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands, nmov'd around, in gath'ring eddies play; Nearer and nearer still they dark'ning come, Till with the genVal all-involving storm Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise, And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown, ON THOMSON AND COWPER Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, Beneath descending hills the caravan Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets, Th' impatient merchant, wond'ring, waits in vain ; And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'' There are other passages of equal beauty with these ; sucli as that of the hunted stag, followed by * the inhuman rout,' -That from the shady depth Expel him, circling through his ev'ry shift. He sweeps the forest oft, and sobbing sees The glades mild op'ning to the golden day. Where in kind contest with his butting friends He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy.' The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the Winter, is perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt, as being done from early associations, that that of the torrid zone in his Summer. Any thing more beautiful than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I think, hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry. 'There through the prison of unbounded wilds, Barr'd by the hand of nature from escape, Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow, And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods, That stretch athwart the solitary vast Their icy horrors to the frozen main ; And cheerless towns far distant, never bless'd, Save when its annual course the caravan Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, With news of human kind.' The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lingering, slow-revolving years of pining expectation, of desolation within and without the heart, was never more finely expressed than it is here. The account which follows of the employments of the Polar night — of the journeys of the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer, and of the return of spring in Lapland — ' Where pure Niemi's fairy mountains rise, And fring'd with roses Tenglio rolls his stream,' is equally picturesque and striking in a different way. The traveller lost in the snow, is a well-known and admirable dramatic episode. I prefer, however, giving one example of our author's skill in painting common domestic scenery, as it will bear a more immediate com- parison with the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of 89 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POElb little consequence what passage we take. The following description; of the first setting in of winter is, perhaps, as pleasing as any. 'Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends, At first thin wav'ring, till at last the flakes Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields Put on their winter- robe of purest white : 'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melt» Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid Sun, Faint, from the West tmits his ev'ning ray, Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the lab'rer-ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav'n, Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth ; then hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is : Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet. The food less wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Though timorous of heart, and hard beset By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind Eye the bleak heav'n, and next, the glist'ning earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers'd, Dig for the wither' d herb through heaps of snow.' It is thus that Thomson always gives a moral sense to nature. Thomson's blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable ; but it is heavy and monotonous ; it seems always labouring up-hill. The selections which have been made from his works in Enfield's Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favour- able idea of his genius or taste ; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any author which are most liable to be stitched in worsted, and framed and 90 ON THOMSON AND COWPER glazed, are not by any means always the best. The moral descriptions and reflections in the Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written with great force and fervour. His poem on Liberty is not equally good : his Muse was too easy and good-natured for the subject, which required as much indignation against unjust and arbitrary power, as complacency in the constitutional monarchy, under which, just after the expulsion of the Stuarts and the establishment of the House of Hanover, in contempt of the claims of hereditary pretenders to the throne, Thomson lived. Thomson was but an indifferent hater ; and the most indispensable part of the love of liberty has unfortunately hitherto been the hatred of tyranny. Spleen is the soul of patriotism, and of public good : but you would not expect a man who has been seen eating peaches off a tree with both hands in his waistcoat pockets, to be ' overrun with the spleen,' or to heat himself needlessly about an abstract proposition. His plays are liable to the same objection. They are never acted, and seldom read. The author could not, or would not, put himself out of his way, to enter into the situations and passions of others, particularly of a tragic kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigismunda, which is taken from a serious episode in Gil Bias, is an admirable one, but poorly handled : the ground may be considered as still unoccupied. Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a considerable distance of time after Thomson ; and had some advantages over him, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision and minuteness of graphical description, and in a more careful and leisurely choice of such topics only as his genius and peculiar habits of mind prompted him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes than the Seasons ; but it has not the same capital excellence, the ' unbought grace ' of poetry, the power of moving and infusing the warmth of the author's mind into that of the reader. If Cowper had a more polished taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a more fertile genius, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness of himself in his subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the slovenliness of the author by profession, determined to get through his task at all events ; in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the finicalness of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he completes his work or not ; and in whatever he does, is evidently more solicitous to please himself than the public. There is an effeminacy about him, which shrinks from and repels common and hearty sympathy. With all his boasted simplicity and love of the country, he seldom launches out into general descriptions of nature : he looks at her over his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept 9 1 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS garden-walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment now and then, it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being caught in a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any untoward accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads ' his Vashti ' forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet. He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little child on a common, to the drawing room and the ladies again, to the sofa and the tea-kettle — No, I beg his pardon, not to the sinking, well-scoured tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. His walks and arbours are kept clear of worms and snails, with as much an appear- ance of petit-maitresbip as of humanity. He has some of the sickly sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope ; but then Pope prided himself in them : whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions of the one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an intimacy with the other : but to be a coward, is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love ! Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst vices are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though there is a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejuneness in his manner, he has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. Such, among others, are his memorable descrip- tion of the post coming in, that of the preparations for tea in a winter's evening in the country, of the unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty morning (with the fine satirical transition to the Empress of Russia's palace of ice), and most of all, the winter's walk at noon. Every one of these may be considered as distinct studies, or highly finished cabinet-pieces, arranged without order or coherence. I shall be excused for giving the last of them, as what has always appeared to me one of the most feeling, elegant, and perfect specimens of this writer's manner. ' I he Dight was winter in his roughest moodj The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon ■n the southern side of the slant lulls, And where the woods fence off the northern blast, The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, 9 2 ON THOMSON AND COWPER Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendour of the scene below. Again the harmony comes o'er the vale ; And through the trees I view th' embattled tow'r, Whence all the music. I again perceive The soothing influence of the wafted strains, And settle in soft musings as I tread The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. The roof, though moveable through all its length, As the wind sways it, has yet well sufiic'd, And, intercepting in their silent fall The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd. Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shake? From many a twig the pendent drop of ice, That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one. Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them, by a tune entranc'd, While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing therefore without pause or choice The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root. Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.' 93 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture of controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not a seraph's wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to the laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet : but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan ; — nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision, nor is the other so much like the reality. The first volume of Cowper's poems has, however, been less read than it deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and humble believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and poetry, particularly the last. ' Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store ; Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night, Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light ; She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding, and no wit, Receives no praise ; but, though her lot be such, (Toilsome and indigent) she renders much ; Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true — A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew; And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes Her title to a treasure in the skies. O happy peasant ! Oh unhappy bard ! His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward; He praisM, perhaps, for ages yet to come, She never heard of half a mile from home: He lost in errors his vain heart prefers, She safe in the simplicity of hers.' His character ot Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is one ot his most spirited and striking things. It is written con amore. ' But if, unblameable in word and thought, A man arise, a man whom God has taught, With all Elijah's dignity of tone, And all the love of the beloved John, To storm the citadels they build in air, To smite the untemper'd wall ('tis death to spare,) 94 ON THOMSON AND COWPER To sweep away all refuges of lies, And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise, Lama Sabachthani before their eyes ; To show that without Christ all gain is loss, All hope despair that stands not on his cross ; Except a few his God may have impressed, A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest.' These lines were quoted, soon after their appearance, by the Monthly Reviewers, to shew that Cowper was no poet, though they afterwards took credit to themselves for having been the first to introduce his verses to the notice of the public. It is not a little remarkable that these same critics regularly damned, at its first coming out, every work which has since acquired a standard reputation with the public. — Cowper's verses on his mother's picture, and his lines to Mary, are some of the most pathetic that ever were written. His stanzas on the loss of the Royal George have a masculine strength and feeling beyond what was usual with him. The story of John Gilpin has perhaps given as much pleasure to as many people as any thing of the same length that ever was written. His life was an unhappy one. It was embittered by a morbid affection, and by his religious sentiments. Nor are we to wonder at this, or bring it as a charge against religion ; for it is the nature of the poetical temperament to carry every thing to excess, whether it be love, religion, pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of Cowper and of Burns, and to find torment or rapture in that in which others merely find a resource from ennui., or a relaxation from common occupation. There are two poets still living who belong to the same class of excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words ; I mean Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer's Boy. As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pre- tensions than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned. Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distin- guished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naivete, his description of lambs racing, of the pigs going out an acorning, of the boy sent to feed his sheep before the break of day in winter ; and I might add the innocently told story of the poor bird-boy, who in vain through the live-long day expects his promised companions at his hut, to share his feast of roasted sloes with him, as an example of that humble pathos, in which this author excels. The fault indeed of his genius is that it is too humble : his Muse has something not only rustic, but menial in her aspect. He seems afraid of elevating 95 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS nature, lest she should be ashamed of him. Bloomfield very beautifully describes the lambs in springtime as racing round the hillocks of green turf: Thomson, in describing the same image, makes the mound of earth the remains of an old Roman encampment. Bloomfield never gets beyond his own experience ; and that is some- what confined. He gives the simple appearance of nature, but he gives it naked, shivering, and unclothed with the drapery of a moral imagination. His poetry has much the effect of the first approach of spring, 'while yet the year is unconfirmed,' where a few tender buds venture forth here and there, but are chilled by the early frosts and nipping breath of poverty. — It should seem from this and other instances that have occurred within the last century, that we cannot expect from original genius alone, without education, in modern and more artificial periods, the same bold and independent results as in former periods. And one reason appears to be, that though such persons, from whom we might at first expect a restoration of the good old times of poetry, are not encumbered and enfeebled by the trammels of custom, and the dull weight of other men's ideas ; yet they are oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the common advantages which others have ; are looking at the tinsel finery of the age, while they neglect the rich unexplored mine in their own breasts; and instead of setting an example for the world to follow, spend their lives in aping, or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accomplish- ments of their inferiors. Another cause may be, that original genius aione is not sufficient to produce the highest excellence, without a corresponding state of manners, passions, and religious belief: that no single mind can move in direct opposition to the vast machine of the world around it ; that the poet can do no more than stamp the mind of his age upon his works ; and that all that the ambition of the highest is can hope to arrive at, after the lapse of one or two generations, is the perfection of that more refined and effeminate style of studied elegance and adventitious ornament, which is the result, not of nature, but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry has succeeded, or seems likely to succeed, in the present day. The public taste hangs like a millstone round the neck of all original genius that does not conform to established and exclusive models. The writer is not only without popular sympathy, but without a rich and varied mass of materials for his mind to work upon and assimilate unconsciously to itself; his attempts at originality are looked upon as affectation, and in the end, degenerate into it from the natural spirit of contradiction, and the constant uneasy sense of disappointment and undeserved ridicule. But to return. Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most literal of our descriptive 9 6 ON THOMSON AND COWPER poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things. He gives the very costume of meanness ; the nonessentials of every trifling incident. He is his own landscape-painter, and engraver too. His pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm- eaten ch^ir, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering world ; and he records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an event in history. He is equally curious in his back-grounds and in his figures. You know the christian and surnames of every one of his heroes, — the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a Monday, — their place of birth and burial, the colour of their clothes, and of their hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an inventory of the human heart exactly in the same manner as of the furniture of a sick room : his sentiments have very much the air of fixtures ; he gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired of their lives, and you heartily wish them dead. They remind one of anatomical preservations ; or may be said to bear the same relation to actual life that a stuffed cat in a glass-case does to the real one purring on the hearth : the skin is the same, but the life and the sense of heat is gone. Crabbe's poetry is like a museum, or curiosity-shop : every thing has the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. If Bloomrield is too much of the Farmer's Boy, Crabbe is too much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He has no delight beyond the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal would convert the world into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own imagination in the stocks, and his Muse, like Malvolio, ' wears cruel garters.' He collects all the petty vices of the human heart, and superintends, as in a panopticon, a select circle of rural malefactors. He makes out the poor to be as bad as the rich — a sort of vermin for the others to hunt down and trample upon, and this he thinks a good piece of work. With him there are but two moral categories, riches and poverty, authority and dependence. His parish apprentice, Richard Monday, and his wealthy baronet, Sir Richard Monday, of Monday-place, are the same individual — the extremes of the same character, and of his whole system. ' The latter end of his Common- wealth does not forget the beginning.' But his parish ethics are the very worst model for a state : any thing more degrading and D 97 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS helpless cannot well be imagined. He exhibits just the contrary view of human life to that which Gay has done in his Beggar's Opera. In a word, Crabbe is the only poet who has attempted and succeeded in the still life of tragedy : who gives the stagnation of hope and fear — the deformity of vice without the temptation — the Vain of sympathy without the interest — and who seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy with which he describes only what is disagreeable. The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, to be found in our descriptive poets. There are set descriptions of the flowers, for instance, in Thomson, Cowper, and others ; but none equal to those in Milton's Lycidas, and in the Winter's Tale. We have few good pastorals in the language. Our manners are not Arcadian ; our climate is not an eternal spring ; our age is not the age of gold. We have no pastoral-writers equal to Theocritus, nor any landscapes like those of Claude Lorraine. The best parts of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar are two fables, Mother Hubberd's Tale, and the Oak and the Briar ; which last is as splendid a piece ot oratory as any to be found in the records of the eloquence of the British senate ! Browne, who came after Spenser, and Withers, have left some pleasing allegorical poems of this kind. Pope's are as full of senseless finery and trite affectation, as if a peer of the realm were to sit for his picture with a crook and cocked hat on, smiling with an insipid air of no-meaning, between nature and fashion. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia is a lasting monument of perverted power ; where an image of extreme beauty, as that of ' the shepherd boy piping as though he should never be old,' peeps out once in a hundred folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry and scholastic quaint- It is not at all like Nicholas Poussin's picture, in which he represents some shepherds wandering out in a morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription — ' I also was an Arcadian ! ' Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton's Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the descrip tion of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the author's mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory oguee are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks or the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air : we walk with him along the dusty road-side, or repose on the banks of the river under a shady tree ; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls ' the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.' We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare ; while Maud, the pretty milk-maid, 98 ON THOMSON AND COWPER at her mother's desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; ' Come live with me, and be my love.' Good cheer is not neglected in this work, any more than in Homer, or any other history that sets a proper value on the good things of this life. The prints in the Complete Angler give an additional reality and interest to the scenes it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy work, amiable and happy old man, shall last !— It is in the notes to it that we find that character of ' a fair and happy milkmaid,' by Sir Thomas Overbury, which may vie in beauty and feeling with Chaucer's character of Griselda. ' A fair and happy milk-maid is a country wench that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of her's is able to put all face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her know- ledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk- worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long in bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions. Nature hath taught her, too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul : she rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new- made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity ; and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, bein^ her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next fair ; and in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for't. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none : yet, to say the truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones ; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell them $ only a Friday's dream is all her superstition ; that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she ,• and all her care is she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.' The love of the country has been sung by poets, and echoed by philosophers ; but the first have not attempted, and the last have been greatly puzzled to account for it. I do not know that any one has ever explained, satisfactorily, the true source of this feeling, or of that soothing emotion which the sight of the country, or a lively descrip- tion of rural objects hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects them 99 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS selves ; others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity which scenes of retirement afford ; others to the healthy and innocent employments of a country life ; others to the simplicity of country manners, and others to a variety of different causes ; but none to the right one. All these, indeed, have their effect ; but there is another principal one which has not been touched upon, or only slightly glanced at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Home Tooke, who after enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left posterity to pluck out ' the heart of his mystery.' I will say at once what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the individual ; the interest we feel in external nature is common, and transferable from one object to all others of the same class. Thus. Rousseau in his Confessions relates, that when he took possession of his room at Annecy, he found that he could see 'a little spot ot green ' from his window, which endeared his situation the more to him, because, he says, it was the first time he had had this object constantly before him since he left Boissy, the place where he was at school when a child. 1 Some such feeling as that here described will be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of this sort. W ere it not for the recollections habitually associated with them, natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the sky is beautiful, the clouds sail majestically along its bosom ; the sun is cheering ; there is something exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches ; the motion with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and lovely ; there is music in the babbling of a brook ; the view from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur ; nor can we behold the ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly sings, ' Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven, O!), how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven !* 1 Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post vihich stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up. IOO ON THOMSON AND COWPER It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire in Nature ; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often found connected with the strongest emotions ; we become attached to the most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have long known, and from whom we have received many benefits. It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention ; with change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends ; it is because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in pain ; because they have been one chief source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them as we do ourselves. There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love ot Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical objects ; the associations connected with any one object extending to the whole class. Our having been attached to any particular person does not make us feel the same attachment to the next person we may chance to meet ; but, if we have once associated strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same sort. I remember when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same trees and grass, that I had always been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in England ; the faces only were foreign to me. Whence comes this difference ? It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the individual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects. In the one case, the external appearance or physical structure is the least thing to be attended to ; in the other, it is every thing. The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another ; nor can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to others. A crowd of people presents a disjointed, confused, and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is nothing to IOI UN] LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general im- pression, unless when there is some common object of interest to fix their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house. The same principle will also account for that feeling of littleness, vacuity, and perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets of a populous city. Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal identity. Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels the same wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as a person would do who should be compelled to read through the first leaf of all the volumes in a library. But it is other- wise with respect to nature. A flock of sheep is not a contemptible, but a beautiful sight. The greatest number and variety of physical objects do not puzzle the will, or distract the attention, but are massed together under one uniform and harmonious feeling. The heart reposes in greater security on the immensity of Nature's works, * expatiates freely there,' and finds elbow room and breathing space. We are always at home with Nature. There is neither hvpocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, suspicion or disappointment : she smiles on us still the same. A rose is always sweet, a lily is always beautiful : we do not hate the one, nor envy the other. If we have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are sure that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same pleasure again ; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the same general idea ; and whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is immediately placed to the common account. The most opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same sentiment; and in our love of nature, there is all the force of in- dividual attachment, combined witli the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild interest, to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true lover of nature. It is the same setting sun that we see and remember year after year, through summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. The moon that shines above our heads, or plays through the checquered shade, is the same moon that we used to read of in Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. We see no difference in the trees first covered with leaves 1 02 ON THOMSON AND COWPER in the spring. The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream — the woods swept by the loud blast — the dark massy foliage of autumn — the grey trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter — the sequestered copse, and wide-extended heath — the glittering sunny showers, and December snows — are still the same, or accompanied with the same thoughts and feelings : there is no object, however trifling or rude, that does not in some mood or other find its way into the heart, as a link in the chain of our living being ; and this it is that makes good that saying of the poet — ' To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' Thus nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents to us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks ; for there is that consent and mutual harmony among all her works, one undivided spirit pervading them throughout, that to him who has well acquainted himself with them, they speak always the same well-known language, striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the music of one's native tongue heard in some far-off country. 4 My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky : So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man, So shall it be when I grow old and die. The child 's the father of the man, And I would have my years to be Linked each to each by natural piety.' The daisy that first strikes the child's eye in trying to leap over his own shadow, is the same flower that with timid upward glance implores the grown man not to tread upon it. Rousseau, in one of his botanical excursions, meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his knees, crying out — Ah ! voi/a de la pevuenche ! It was because he had thirty years before brought home the same flower with him in one of his rambles with Madame de Warens, near Chambery. It struck him as the same identical little blue flower that he remembered so well ; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his memory. That, or a thousand other flowers of the same name, were the same to him, to the heart, and to the eye ; but there was but one Madame Warens in the world, whose image was never absent from his thoughts ; with whom flowers and verdure sprung up beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and barren in nature and in his own breast. The cuckoo, ' that wandering voice,' that ro3 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one note from youth to age ; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller's path, repeats for ever the same sad story of Tereus and Philomel ! LECTURE VI ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &C. I shall in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, and endeavour to give a cursory account of the most eminent of our poets, of whom I have not already spoken, from that period to the present. The three principal poets among the wits of Queen Anne's reign, next to Pope, were Prior, Swift, and Gay. Parnell, though a good- natured, easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional versifier ; and Arbuthnot, who had as much wit as the best of them, chose to shew it in prose, and not in verse. He had a very notable share in the immortal History of John Bull, and the inimitable and praise-worthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. There has been a great deal said and written about the plagiarisms of Sterne ; but the only real plagiarism he has been guilty of (if such theft were a crime), is in taking Tristram Shandy's father from Martin's, the elder Scriblerus. The original idea of the character, that is, of the opinionated, captious old gentleman, who is pedantic, not from profession, but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot. — Arbuthnot's style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out every superfluous word ; is sparing of connecting particles, and intro- ductory phrases ; uses always the simplest forms of construction ; and is more a master of the idiomatic peculiarities and internal resources of the language than almost any other writer. There is a research in the choice of a plain, as well as of an ornamented or learned style ; and, in fact, a great deal more. Among common English words, there may be ten expressing the same thing with different degrees of force and propriety, and only one of them the very word we want, because it is the only one that answers exactly with the idea we have in our minds. Each word in familiar use has a different set of associations and shades of meaning attached to it, and distinguished from each other by inveterate custom ; and it is in having the whole of these at our command, and in knowing which to choose, as they are called for by the occasion, that the perfection of a pure conversa- tional prose-style consists. But in writing a florid and artificial style, 1 04 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. neither the same range of invention, nor the same quick, sense of pro- priety — nothing but learning is required. If you know the words, and their general meaning, it is sufficient : it is impossible you should know the nicer inflections of signification, depending on an endless variety of application, in expressions borrowed from a foreign or dead language. They all impose upon the ear alike, because they are not familiar to it ; the only distinction left is between the pompous and the plain ; the sesquipedalia verba have this advantage, that they are all of one length ; and any words are equally fit for a learned style, so that we have never heard them before. Themistocles thought that the same sounding epithets could not suit all subjects, as the same dress does not fit all persons. The style of our modern prose- writers is very fine in itself; but it wants variety of inflection and adaptation ; it hinders us from seeing the differences of the things it undertakes to describe. What I have here insisted on will be found to be the leading dis- tinction between the style of Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the other writers of the age of Queen Anne, and the style of Dr. Johnson, which succeeded to it. The one is English, and the other is not. The writers first mentioned, in order to express their thoughts, looked about them for the properest word to convey any idea, that the language which they spoke, and which their countrymen understood, afforded : Dr. Johnson takes the first English word that offers, and by translating it at a venture into the first Greek or Latin word he can think of, only retaining the English termination, produces an extraordinary effect upon the reader, by much the same sort of mechanical process that Trim converted the old jack-boots into a pair of new mortars. Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who liked to think and talk, better than to read or write ; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote. His long compound Latin phrases required less thought, and took up more room than others. What shews the facilities afforded by this style of imposing generalization, is, that it was instantly adopted with success by all those who were writers by profession, or who were not; and that at present, we cannot see a lottery puff or a quack advertisement pasted against a wall, that is not perfectly Johnsonian in style. Formerly, the learned had the privilege of translating their notions into Latin; and a great privilege it was, as it confined the reputation and emoluments of learning to themselves. Dr. Johnson may be said to have naturalised this privilege, by inventing a sort of jargon translated half-way out of one language into the other, which raised the Doctor's reputation, and confounded all ranks in literature. 105 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS In the short period above alluded to, authors professed to write as other men spoke; every body now affects to speak as authors write; and any one who retains the use of his mother tongue, either in writing or conversation, is looked upon as a very illiterate character. Prior and Gay belong, in the characteristic excellences of their t.tyle, to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and Sedley : the former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age of Charles u. and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King William. Prior has left no single work equal to Gay's Fables, or the Beggar's Opera. But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous gaiety. No one has exceeded him in the laughing grace with which he glances at a subject that will not bear examining, with which he gently hints at what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half con- ceals, and half draws aside the veil from some of the Muses' nicest mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who spends her time in playing at snap-dragon and blind-man's buff, who tells what she should not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs at the tricks she shews us, and blushes, or would be thought to do so, at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine's Tales from the French ; and they have lost nothing in the translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them : but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on all the ticklish parts of his subject, from their involuntarily shrinking under his grasp. Some of his imitations of Boileau's servile addresses to Louis xiv. which he has applied with a happy mixture of wit and patriotic enthusiasm to King William, or as he familiarly calls him, tc 'Little Will, the scourge of France, No Godhead, but the first of men,' are excellent, and shew the same talent for double-entendre and the same gallantry of spirit, whether in the softer lyric, or the more lively heroic. Some of Prior's bon mots are the best that are recorded. — His serious poetry, as his Solomon, is as heavy as his familiar style was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is a Magdalen, and should not have obtruded herself on public view. Henry and Emma is a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, and not so good as the original. In short, as we often see in other cases, where 1 06 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. men thwart their own genius, Prior's sentimental and romantic pro- ductions are mere affectation, the result not of powerful impulse or real feeling, but of a consciousness of his deficiencies, and a wish to supply their place by labour and art. Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematically, but inadvertently — from not being so well aware of what he was about ; nor was there the same necessity for caution, for his grossness is by no means so seductive or inviting. Gay's Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of the execution. They are, however, spun out too long ; the descriptions and narrative are too diffuse and desultory ; and the moral is some- times without point. They are more like Tales than Fables. The best are, perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, and the Fox at the Point of Death. His Pastorals are pleasing and poetical. But his capital work is his Beggar's Opera. It is indeed a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to say of morality. In composing it, he chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and he has prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, the precision, and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar play. So far from it, that I do not scruple to say that it appears to me one of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the materials : by ' happy alchemy of mind,' the author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind : but, by the sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highway- men, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once violating probability, or ' o'erstepping the modesty of nature.' In fact, Gay has turned the tables on the critics ; and by the assumed licence of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to do justice to nature, that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of the song, 'Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,' are only equaled by its characteristic propriety and naivete. Polly describes her lover going to the gallows, with the same touching simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of her affections. ' I see 107 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand ; the admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely end : — even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than consent to tie the fatal knot.' The preservation of the character and costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority — ' There is some soul of goodness in things evil ' : — and the Beggar s Opera is a good-natured but instructive comment on this text. The poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of despair, round the short- lived existence of his heroes ; while Peacbum and Lochitt are seen in the back-ground, parcelling out their months and weeks between them. The general view exhibited of human life is of the most subtle and abstracted kind. The author has, with great felicity, brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions almost in- separable from the lowest conditions ; and with the same penetrating glance, has detected the disguises which rank and circumstances lend to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire ; and I have seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the moral of the piece is to shew the vulgarity of vice ; or that the same violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and powerful, with the meanest and most contemptible of the species. What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters ? The exclamation ot Mrs. Peacbum, when her daughter marries Macheatb, « Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as it you had married a lord,' is worth all Miss Hannah More's laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of high life! I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own manner, and as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr. Locke, and knighted by King William in. 'See who ne'er was nor will be half-read, Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred ; Praised great Eliza in God's anger, Till all true Englishmen cried, ' Hang her ! '— Io8 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. Maul'd human wit in one thick satire ; Next in three books spoil'd human nature: Undid Creation at a jerk, And of Redemption made damn'd work. Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her Full in the middle of the Scripture. What wonders there the man, grown old, did ? Sternhold himself he out Sternholded. Made David seem so mad and freakish, All thought him just what thought King Achish. No mortal read his Solomon But judg'd Re'boam his own son. Moses he serv'd as Moses Pharaoh, And Deborah as she Siserah ; Made Jeremy full sore to cry, And Job himself curse God and die. What punishment all this must follow ? Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo ? Shall David as Uriah slay him ? Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him ? No ! — none of these ! Heaven spare his life! But send him, honest Job, thy wife ! ' Gay's Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as walking the streets must have been at the time when it was written. His ballad of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that can be imagined ; nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll's parody on it. Swift's reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by the greater splendour, by the natural force and inventive genius of his prose writings ; but if he had never written either the Tale of a Tub or Gulliver's Travels, his name merely as a poet would have come down to us, and have gone down to posterity with well-earned honours. His Imitations of Horace, and still more his Verses on his own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moralists in verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, in these productions of his pen ; but there is a touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of pleasantry and satire. His Description of the Morning in London, and of a City Shower, which were first published in the Tatler, are among the most delightful of the contents of that very delightful work. Swift shone as one of the most sensible of the poets ; he is also distinguished as one of the most nonsensical of them. No man has written so many !ack-a-daisical, slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish, fantastical verses as he, which are so little an imputation on the wisdom of the writer ; and which, in fact, only shew his readiness 109 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS to oblige others, and to forget himself. He has gone so far as to invent a new stanza of fourteen and sixteen syllable lines for Mary the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and for Mrs. Harris to gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall we have such another Rector of Laracor ! — The Tale of a Tub is one of the most masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof of the author's talents, that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift, would not allow that he wrote it. It is hard that the same performance should stand in the way of a man's promotion to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the same time be denied to be his, as having too much wit. It is a pity the Doctor did not find out some graver author, for whom he felt a critical kindness, on whom to father this splendid but unacknowledged production. Dr. Johnson could not deny that Gulliver's Travels were his ; he therefore disputed their merits, and said that after the first idea of them was conceived, they were easy to execute ; all the rest followed mechanically. I do not know how that may be ; but the mechanism employed is something very different from any that the author of Rasselas was in the habit of bringing to bear on such occasions. There is nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than this mode of criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest merit is supposed to be in the invention ; and you say, very wisely, that it is not in the execution. You might as well take away the merit of the invention of the telescope, by saving that, after its uses were explained and understood, any ordinary eyesight could look through it. Whether the excellence of Gulliver's Travels is in the conception or the execution, is of little consequence ; the power is somewhere, and it is a power that has moved the world. The power is not that of big words and vaunting common places. Swift left these to those who wanted them ; and has done what his acuteness and intensity of mind could enable any one to conceive or to perform. His object was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which external circumstances throw around them ; and for this purpose he has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of • and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the act predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as he wishes to shew the insignificance or the grossness of our over- weening self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision, with complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that < nines equally home to the understanding of the man and of the child, does not take away from the merit of the work or the genius of the author. He has taken a new view of human nature, such as a being of a higher sphere might take of it; he has torn the scales from off 1 10 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC his moral vision ; he has tried an experiment upon human life, and sifted its pretensions from the alloy of circumstances ; he has measured it with a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the most part, wanting and worthless — in substance and in shew. Nothing solid, nothing valuable is left in his system but virtue and wisdom. What a libel is this upon mankind ! What a convincing proof of misanthropy ! What presumption and what malice prepense, to shew men what they are, and to teach them what they ought to be ! What a mortifying stroke aimed at national glory, is that unlucky incident of Gulliver's wading across the channel and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu ! After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties was in the right. What a shock to personal vanity is given in the account of Gulliver's nurse Glumdalclitch ! Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to her personal charms, her good-nature remains the same amiable quality as before. I cannot see the harm, the misanthropy, the immoral and degrading tendency of this. The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world ; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, indeed, the way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of human nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the virtues they pretend to, and which they have not : but it was not Swift's way to cant morality, or any thing else ; nor did his genius prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind ! I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate of Swift's moral or intellectual character, given by an eminent critic, who does not seem :o have forgotten the party politics of Swift. I do not carry my political resentments so far back : I can at this time of day forgive Swift for having been a Tory. I feel little disturbance (whatever I might think of them) at his political sentiments, which died with him, :onsidering how much else he has left behind him of a more solid and imperishable nature! If he had, indeed, (like some others) merely left behind him the lasting infamy of a destroyer of his country, or :he shining example of an apostate from liberty, I might have thought the case altered. The determination with which Swift persisted in a preconcerted theory, savoured of the morbid affection of which he died. There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable. Swift was not a Frenchman. In this respect he differed from Rabelais and Voltaire. They have been accounted the three greatest wits in modern times ; but their wit was of a peculiar kind in each. They 1 1 j LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS are little beholden to each other ; there is some resemblance between Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub, and Rabelais' Friar John ; but in general they are all three authors of a substantive character in them- selves. Swift's wit (particularly in his chief prose works) was serious, saturnine, and practical ; Rabelais' was fantastical and joyous ; Voltaire's was light, sportive, and verbal. Swift's wit was the wit of sense ; Rabelais', the wit of nonsense ; Voltaire's, of indifference to both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen sense of impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the least absurdity. He separates, with a severe and caustic air, truth from falsehood, folly from wisdom, ' shews vice her own image, scorn her own feature ' ; and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness with which the separation is made, that excites our surprise, our admiration, and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that which offends good sense and good manners, which cannot be mistaken, and which holds it up to our ridicule and contempt ever after. His occasional disposition to trifling (already noticed) was a relaxation from the excessive earnestness of his mind. Indignat'w facit "versus. His better genius was his spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his temper that- sharpened his other faculties. The truth of his perceptions produced the pointed coruscations of his wit ; his playful irony was the result of inward bitterness of thought ; his imagination was the product of the literal, dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his understanding. He endeavoured to escape from the persecution of realities into the regions of fancy, and invented his Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians, Yahoos, and Houynhyms, as a diversion to the more painful knowledge of the world around him: they only made him laugh, while men and women made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutiniz- ing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failii.gs of its offspring ; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been supposed to have more affection for other people's children than their own. In other respects, and except from the sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift's brain was as 'dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.' He hated absurdity — Rabelais loved it, exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its endless varieties, rioted in nonsense, 'reigned there and revelled.' He dwelt on the absurd and ludicrous for the pleasure they gave him, not for the pain. He lived upon laughter, and died laughing. He indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly. He did not baulk his fancy or his readers. His wit was to him 'as riches fineless ' ; he saw no end of his wealth in that way, and set no limits to his extravagance : he was communicative, prodigal, boundless, and I I 2 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and the royalty, the health and long life. He is intoxicated with gaiety, mad with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood of mirth : his blood courses up and down his veins like wine. His thirst of enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink : his appetite for good things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply. Discourse is dry ; so they moisten their words in their cups, and relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats' tongues. It is like Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull. The flagons are set a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and their mirth flows as a river. How Friar John roars and lays about him in the vineyard ! How Panurge whines in the storm, and how dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard ! How much Pantagruel behaves like a wise king ! How Gargantua mewls, and pules, and slabbers his nurse, and demeans himself most like a royal infant ! what provinces he devours ! what seas he drinks up ! How he eats, drinks, and sleeps— sleeps, eats, and drinks ! The style of Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter. His words are of marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad wag, the king of good fellows, and prince 'of practical philosophers! Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school — Voltaire of the new. The wit of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment — of the other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had no enthusiasm for one thing or another : he made light of every thing. In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands of the en- chanter into little dry crumbling leaves ! He is a Parisian. He never exaggerates, is never violent : he treats things with the most provok- ing sangfroid; and expresses his contempt by the most indirect hints, and in the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them worth even his contempt. He retains complete possession of himself and of his subject. He does not effect his purpose by the eagerness of his blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he inflicted was so fine, as scarcely to be felt till it rankled and festered in its * mortal consequences.' His callousness was an excellent foil for the antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He took knaves and fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak from grave imposture. If he reduced other things below their true value, making them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade the pretensions of tyranny and superstition below their true value, by making them seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they were odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind ! !I 3 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS His Candide is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called ' the dull product of a scoffer's pen ' ; it is indeed the ' product of a scoffer's pen '; but after reading the Excursion, few people will think it dull. It is in the most perfect keeping, and without any appearance of effort. Every sentence tells, and the whole reads like one sentence. There is some- thing sublime in Martin's sceptical indifference to moral good and evil. It is the repose of the grave. It is better to suffer this living death, than a living martyrdom. 'Nothing can touch him further.' The moral of Candide (such as it is) is the same as that of Rasselas : the execution is different. Voltaire says, « A great book is a great evil.' Dr. Johnson would have laboured this short apophthegm into a voluminous common-place. Voltaire's traveller (in another work) being asked ' whether he likes black or white mutton best,' replies that ' he is indifferent, provided it is tender.' Dr. Johnson did not get at a conclusion by so short a way as this. If Voltaire's licentious- ness is objected to me, I say, let it be placed to its true account, the manners of the age and court in which he lived. The lords and ladies of the bedchamber in the reign of Louis xv. found no fault with the immoral tendency of his writings. Why then should our modern purists quarrel with them ? — But to return. Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has abused great powers both of thought and language. His moral reflections are sometimes excellent ; but he spoils their beauty by overloading them with a religious horror, and at the same time giving them all the smart turns and quaint expression of an enigma or repartee in verse. The well- known lines on Procrastination are in his best manner : ' Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer ; Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene. Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, " That all men are about to live," 1 1 ever on the brink of being born. All pay themselves the compliment to think They, one day, shall not drivel ; and their pride On this reversion takes up ready praise ; At least, their own; their future selves applauds ; How excellent that life they ne'er will lead ! Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vails : That lodg'd in Fate's, to Wisdom they consign ; king they can't but purpose, they postpone. "4 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. 'Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool ; And scarce in human Wisdom to do more. All Promise is poor dilatory man, And that through every stage. When young, indeed, In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest, Un-anxious for ourselves ; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to Resolve; Ii: all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same. And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread j But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, Soon close ; where past the shaft, no trace is found. As from the wing no scar the sky retains; The parted wave no furrow from the keel ; So dies in human hearts the thought of death. Ev'n with the tender tear which nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.' His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire ; but the effort takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent demands upon it. His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and scholastic. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of Iago. The finest lines in it are the burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is completed : 'Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep, Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,' &c. Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had perhaps less general power of mind than Young ; but he had that true vhnda vis, that genuine inspiration, which alone can give birth to the highest efforts of poetry. He leaves stings in the minds of his readers, certain traces of thought and feelings which never wear out, because nature had left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said that he might not have done the greatest things. The germ is there. He is some- times affected, unmeaning, and obscure ; but he also catches rich glimpses of the bowers of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after the highest seats of the Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and splendid patch-work, he has not been able to hide the solid sterling "5 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ore or genius. In his best works there is an attic simplicity, a pathos, and fervour of imagination, which make us the more lament that the efforts of his mind were at first depressed by neglect and pecuniary embarrassment, and at length buried in the gloom of an unconquerable and fatal malady. How many poets have gone through all the horrors of poverty and contempt, and ended their days in moping melancholy or moody madness ! ' We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in tempering them of too fine a clay, or of the world, that spurner of living, and patron of dead merit ? Read the account of Collins — with hopes frustrated, with faculties blighted, at last, when it was too late for himself or others, receiving the deceitful favours of relenting Fortune, which served only to throw their sunshine on his decay, and to light him to an early grave. He was found sitting with every spark of imagination extinguished, and with only the faint traces of memory and reason left — with only one book in his room, the Bible ; ' but that,' he said, 4 was the best.' A melancholy damp hung like an unwholesome mildew upon his faculties — a canker had consumed the flower of his life. He produced works of genius, and the public regarded them with scorn : he aimed at excellence that should be his own, and his friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions (particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear, the Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson's Grave, and his Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on the Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume emanates from it like the breath of genius ; a golden cloud envelopes it ; a honeyed paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the candied coat of the auricula. His Ode to Evening shews equal genius in the images and versification. The sounds steal slowly over the ear, like the gradual coming on of evening itself: ' I; aught of oaten stop or pastoral song May hope, (haste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs and dying gales, O nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-haired sun SitB on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed : 116 SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. Now air is husrTd, save where the weak-ey'd bat, With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum. Now teach me, maid compos'd, To breathe some soften'd strain, Whose numbers stealing through thy darkling vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As musing slow, I hail Thy genial, lov'd return ! For when thy folding star arising shews His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours and Elves Who slept in flow'rs the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet Prepare thy shadowy car ; Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile. Or upland fallows grey Reflect its last cool gleam. But when chill blust'ring winds, or driving rain, Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut, That from the mountain's side Views wilds and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim discover 'd spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his show'rs, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light ; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves j Or Winter yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes 5 So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Health, Thy gentlest influence own, And hymn thy favourite name.'' 117 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Hammond, whose poems are bound up with Collins's, in Bell's pocket edition, was a young gentleman, who appears to have fallen in love about the year 17 40, and who translated Tibullus into English verse, to let his mistress and the public know of it. I should conceive that Collins had a much greater poetical genius than Gray : he had more of that fine madness which is inseparable from it, of its turbid effervescence, of all that pushes it to the verge of agony or rapture. Gray's Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally given up at present: they are stately and pedantic, a kind of methodical borrowed phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor will the world be in any haste to part with his Elegy in a Country Church-yard : it is one of the most classical productions that ever was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind, moralising on human lire. Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life) says, that his friend Mr. Wordsworth had undertaken to shew that the language of the Elegy is unintelligible: it has, however, been understood! The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is more mechanical and common-place ; but it touches on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's ' stately heights,' or sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that we should think of him ; for he thought of others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad music of humanity.' — His Letters are inimitably fine. If his poems are sometimes finical and pedantic, his prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his thoughts out upon paper as they arise in his mind ; and they arise in his mind without pretence, or constraint, from the pure impulse of learned leisure and contemplative indolence. He is not here on stilts or in buckram ; but smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises through the loopholes of retreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the world, or on 'those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools!' He had nothing to do but to read and to think, and to tell his friends what he read and thought. His life was a luxurious, thoughtful dream. 'Be mine,' he says in one of his Letters, 'to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.' And in another, to shew Lis contempt for action and the turmoils of ambition, he says to some one, ' Don't you remember Lords and , who are now great ten, little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then.' What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, by being never any thing more than a looker-on i How different from Shenstone, who only wanted to be looked at: us ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. who withdrew from the world to be followed by the crowd, and courted popularity by affecting privacy ! His Letters shew him to have lived in a continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a finished literary coquet. He seems always to say, ' You will find nothing in the world so amiable as Nature and me : come, and admire us.' His poems are indifferent and tasteless, except his Pastoral Ballad, his Lines on Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, which last is a perfect piece of writing. Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a great poet. He improved his Pleasures of the Imagination in the subsequent editions, by pruning away a great many redundances of style and ornament. Armstrong is better, though he has not chosen a very exhilarating subject — The Art of Preserving Health. Churchill's Satires on the Scotch, and Characters of the Players, are as good as the subjects deserved — they are strong, coarse, and full of an air of hardened assurance. I ought not to pass over with- out mention Green's Poem on the Spleen, or Dyer's Grongar Hill. The principal name of the period we are now come to is that of Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to describe him as he ought to be described — amiable, various, and bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of excellence — with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart — performing miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the most flowing and elegant of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of artless nature which Pope had not, and with a peculiar felicity in his turns upon words, which he constantly repeated with delightful effect : such as — ' His lot, though small, He sees that little lot, the lot of all.* * * * * * ' And turn'd and look'd, and turn'd to look again.' As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. What reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so deliberately with the poker — for the knowledge of the guinea which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets — the adventure of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not be got into the house — and that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges in their hands — or for the story of the case of shagreen spectacles and the cosmogony ? 119 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston's face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor Goldsmith ! how happy he has made others ! how unhappy he was in himself! He never had the pleasure of reading his own works! He had only the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the necessities of others, and the consolation of being harassed to death with his own ! He is the most amusing and interesting person, in one of the muit amusing and interesting books in the world, Boswell's Life of Johnson. His peach-coloured coat shall always bloom in Boswell's writings, and his fame survive in his own ! — His genius was a mixture of originality and imitation : he could do nothing without some model before him, and he could copy nothing that he did not adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the latter part of the Vicar of Wakefield, and a great deal of the former, is taken from Joseph Andrews ; but the circumstances I have mentioned above are not. The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character of a country school-master, and that prophetic description of Burke in the Retaliation. His moral Essays in the Citizen of the World, are as agreeable chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic discourses. Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned with- out affectation. He had a happiness which some have been prouder ot than he, who deserved it less — he was poet-laureat. ' And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead, That laurel garland crown'd his living head.' But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task regularly. I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone (the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another circumstance ; I mean his being the author of some of the finest sonnets in the language — at least so they appear to me ; and as this species of composition has the necessary advantage of being short (though it is also sometimes both 'tedious and brief), I will here repeat two or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing and philosophical way. // r it ten in a blank lea} of Dugdales Monasticon 1 Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage, By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguil'd, Ot painful pedantry the poring child , Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC. Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage. Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smil'd On his lone hours ? Ingenuous views engage His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styl'd, Intent. While cloister'd piety displays Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days, Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur'd stores. Not rough nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers/ Sonnet. Written at Stonehenge. 1 Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle, Whether, by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore, Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile, T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile : Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore, Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore : Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil, To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, Rear'd the rude heap, or in thy hallow'd ground Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd ; Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd.' Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here displayed, or the inference from it, that it is of no use but as it leads to interesting thought and reflection. That written after seeing Wilton House is in the same style, but I prefer concluding with that to the river Lodon, which has a personal as well as poetical interest about it. ' Ah ! what a weaiy race my reet have run, Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown'd, And thought my way was all through fairy ground, Beneath the azure sky and golden sun : When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun ! While pensive memory traces back the round Which fills the varied interval between ; Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene. — Sweet native stream ! those skies and suns so pure No more return, to cheer my evening road ! Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow'd From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature, Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestow'd.' LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS I have thus gone through all the names of this period I could think of, but I find that there are others still waiting behind that I had never thought of. Here is a list of some of them — Pattison, Tickell, Hill, Somerville, Browne, Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw, Smart, Langhorne, Bruce, Greame, Glover, Lovibond, Penrose, Mickle, Jago, Scott, Whitehead, .lenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunning- ham, and Blacklock. — I think it wiil be best to let them pass and say nothing about them. It will be hard to persuade so many respectable persons that they are dull writers, and if we give them any praise, they will send others. But here comes one whose claims cannot be so easily set aside : they have been sanctioned by learning, hailed by genius, and hallowed by misfortune — I mean Chatterton. Yet I must say what I think of him, and that is not what is generally thought. I pass over the disputes between the learned antiquaries, Dr. Mills, Herbert Croft, and Dr. Knox, whether he was to be placed after Shakspeare and Dryden, or to come after Shakspeare alone. A living poet has borne a better testimony to him — ' I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ; And him > who walked in glory and in joy Beside his plough along the mountain side.' I am loth to put asunder whom so great an authority has joined together ; but I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so ordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a man of twenty. He did not shew extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lie knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill them- i their mind to them also 'a kingdom is.' With an un- accountaMe power coming over him at an unusual age, and with the youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was will- •■) set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had his best ; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into -l'.tna, to ensure immortality. The brazen slippers alone remain ! — 1 Burn*. — Ti, sc lines are taken from the introduction to Mr. Wonisworth'g tlir Lerch-gathimier. ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS LECTURE VII ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters. What I meant was less to call in question Chatterton's genius, than to object to the common mode of estimating its magnitude by its prematureness. The lists of fame are not rilled with the dates of births or deaths ; and the side-mark of the age at which they were done, wears out in works destined for immortality. Had Chatterton really done more, we should have thought less of him, for our attention would then have been fixed on the excellence of the works themselves, instead of the singularity of the circumstances in which they were produced. But because he attained to the full powers of manhood at an early age, I do not see that he would have attained to more than those powers, had he lived to be a man. He was a prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of nature was violently precipitated ; and it is therefore inferred, that he would have con- tinued to hold on his course, ' unslacked of motion.' On the contrary, who knows but he might have lived to be poet-laureat ? It is much better to let him remain as he was. Of his actual produc- tions, any one may think as highly as he pleases ; I would only guard against adding to the account of his quantum meruit, those possible productions by which the learned rhapodists of his time raised his gigantic pretensions to an equality with those of Homer and Shakspeare. It is amusing to read some of these exaggerated descriptions, each rising above the other in extravagance. In Anderson's Life, we find that Mr. Warton speaks of him 'as a prodigy of genius,' as 'a singular instance of prematurity of abilities' : that may be true enough, and Warton was at any rate a competent judge ; but Mr. Malone ' believes him to have been the greatest genius that England has produced since the days of Shakspeare.' Dr. Gregory says, ' he must rank, as a universal genius, above Dryden, and perhaps only second to Shakspeare.' Mr. Herbert Croft is still more unqualified in his praises ; he asserts, that « no such being, at any period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known.' He runs a parallel between Chatterton and Milton ; and asserts, that 'an army of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly before him,' 123 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS ing, I suppose, that Alexander the Great and Charles the Twelfth were nothing to him; 'nor,' he adds, 'does my memory supply me with any human being, who at such an age, with such advantages, has produced such compositions. Under the heathen mythology, superstition and admiration would have explained all, by bringing Apollo on earth ; nor would the God ever have descended with more credit to himself.' — Chatterton's physiognomy would at least have enabled him to pass incognito. It is quite different from the look of timid wonder and delight with which Annibal Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first Is he draws from a Pan's pipe, under the tutelage of the old Silenus ! If Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no less pathetic. ' The testimony of Dr. Knox,' says Dr. Anderson, , p. 144), 'does equal credit to the classical taste and amiable benevolence of the writer, and the genius and reputation of Chatterton.' ' When I read,' says the Doctor, ' the researches of those learned antiquaries who have endeavoured to prove that the poems attributed to Rowley were really written by him, I observe many ingenious remarks in confirmation of their opinion, which it would be tedious, if not difficult, to controvert.' Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole controversy might have been settled by any one but the learned antiquaries them selves, who had the smallest share of their learning, from this single circumstance, that the poems read as smooth as any modern poems, if you read them as modern compositions ; and that you cannot read them, Of make verse of them at all, if you pronounce or accent the words as they were spoken at the time when the poems were pretended to have been written. The whole secret of the imposture, which nothing but a deal of learned dust, raised by collecting and removing eat deal of learned rubbish, could have prevented our laborious critics from seeing through, lies on the face of it (to say nothing of the burlesque air which is scarcely disguised throughout) in the repetition of a few obsolete words, and in the mis-spelling of common ones. ' No sooner,' proceeds the Doctor, ' do I turn to the poems, than the labour of the antiquaries appears only waste of time ; and I am involuntarily forced to join in placing that laurel, which he seems so well to have deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The poems bear so many marks of superior genius, that they have deservedly excited the general attention of polite scholars, and are considered as the remarkaMc productions in modern poetry. We have many nces of poetical eminence at an early age; but neither Cowley, Milton, nor Pope, ever produced any thing while they were boys- 124 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS which can justly be compared to the poems of Chatterton. The learned antiquaries do not indeed dispute their excellence. They extol it in the highest terms of applause. They raise their favourite Rowley to a rivalry with Homer : but they make the very merits of the works an argument against their real author. Is it possible, say they, that a boy should produce compositions so beautiful and masterly ? That a common boy should produce them is not possible,' rejoins the Doctor ; ' but that they should be produced by a boy of an extraordinary genius, such as was that of Homer or Shakspeare, though a prodigy, is such a one as by no means exceeds the bounds of rational credibility.' Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or Homer were such early prodigies ; so that by this reasoning he must take precedence of them too, as well as of Milton, Cowley, and Pope. The reverend and classical writer then breaks out into the following melancholy raptures : — * Unfortunate boy ! short and evil were thy days, but thy fame shall be immortal. Hadst thou been known to the munificent patrons of genius. . . • Unfortunate boy ! poorly wast thou accommodated during thy short sojourning here among us ; — rudely wast thou treated — sorely did thy feelings suffer from the scorn of the unworthy ; and there are at last those who wish to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory. Severe too are the censures of thy morals. In the gloomy moments of despondency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and blasphemous thoughts. But let thy more rigid censors reflect, that thou wast literally and strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bitterest enemies reflect what were their own religious principles, and whether they had any at the age of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Surely it is a severe and unjust surmise that thou wouldst probably have ended thy life as a victim to the laws, if thou hadst not ended it as thou didst.' Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, and of the classical and benevolent testimony of Dr. Knox. Chatterton was, indeed, badly enough off; but he was at least saved from the pain and shame of reading this woful lamentation over fallen genius, which circulates splendidly bound in the fourteenth edition, while he is a prey to worms. As to those who are really capable of admiring Chatterton's genius, or of feeling an interest in his fate, I would only say, that I never heard any one speak of any one of his works as if it were an old well-known favourite, and had become a faith and a religion in his mind. It is his name, his youth, and what he might have lived to have done, that excite our wonder and admiration. He has the same 125 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS sort of posthumous fame that an actor of the last age has — an abstracted reputation which is independent of any thine; we know of his works. The admirers of Collins never think of him without recalling to their minds his Ode on Evening, or on the Poetical Character. Grav's Elegy, and his poetical popularity, are identified together, and inseparable even in imagination. It is the same with respect to Burns : when you speak of him as a poet, you mean his works, his Tarn o' Shanter, or his Cotter's Saturday Night. But the enthusiasts for Chatterton, if you ask for the proofs of his extraordinary genius, are obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps find there what thev seek ; but it is not in their minds ; and it is of that I spoke. The Minstrel's song in -/Ella is I think the best. ' O ! synge untoc my roundelaie, O ! droppe the brynie teare wythe mce, Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie, Lycke a rennynge ryver bee. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Black hys cryne as the wyntere nvght, Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe, Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Swote hys tongue as the throstles note, Quycke ynne daunce as thought cann bee, Defte his taboure, codgelle stote, O ! hee lys bie the wyllowe-tree. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Harke ! the ravenne flappes hys wynge, In the briered dell belowe ; Harke ! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge, To the nygthe-mares as theie goe. Mie love ys dedde, Gone to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. IJ6 See ! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie ; Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude ; ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS Whyterre yanne the mornynge side, Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree, Heere, upon mie true loves grave, Schalle the baren fleurs be layde, Ne one hallie seyncte to save Al the celness of a mayde. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to his deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Wythe mie hondes I Ml dent the brieres Rounde hys hallie corse to gre, Ouphante fairies, lyghte your tyres, Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Comme, wythe acorne-coppe and thorne, Drayne my hartys blodde awaie ; Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne, Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie. Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe-tree. Water wytches, crownede wythe revtes, Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde. I die 5 I comme ; mie true love waytes. Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.' To proceed to the more immediate subject of the present Lecture, the character and writings of Burns. — Shakspeare says of some one, that ' he was like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.' Burns, the poet, was not such a man. He had a strong mind, and a strong body, the fellow to it. He had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his bosom — you can almost hear it throb. Some one said, that if you had shaken hands with him, his hand would have burnt yours. The Gods, indeed, ' made him poetical ' ; but nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the right place. He did not 'create a soul under the ribs of death,' by tinkling siren sounds, or by piling up centos of poetic diction ; but for the artificial flowers of poetry, he plucked the mountain-daisy under his feet ; and a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined dwelling, could inspire him 127 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS with the sentiments of terror and pity. He held the plough or the pen with the same firm, manly grasp; nor did he cut out poetry as we cut out watch-papers, with finical dexterity, nor from the same flimsy materials. Burns was not like Shakspeare in the range of his genius ; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about him. He was not a sickly senti- mentalist, a namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any more than Shakspeare. He would as soon hear ' a brazen candle- stick tuned, or a dry wheel grate on the axletree.' He was as much of a man — not a twentieth part as much of a poet as Shakspeare With but little of his imagination or inventive power, he had the same life of mind : within the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and vigorously. He had an eye to see ; a heart to feel : — no more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are equal to any thing ; they come up to nature, and they cannot go bevond it. The sly jest collected in his laughing eye at the sight of the grotesque and ludicrous in manners — the large tear rolled down his manly cheek at the sight of another's distress. He has made us as well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be ; has let out the honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal conflict of the passions in his breast, with the same frankness and truth of description. His strength is not greater than his weakness : his virtues were greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius : his vices to his situation, which did not correspond to his genius. It has been usual to attack Burns' s moral character, and the moral tendency of his writings at the same time ; and Mr. Wordsworth, in a letter to Mr. Gray, Master of the High School at Edinburgh, in attempting to defend, has only laid him open to a more serious and unheard-of responsibility. Mr. Gray might very well have sent him , in return for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in Love's I iur's Lost: — • Via goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all this while.' The author of this performance, which is as weak in effect as it is pompous in pretension, shews a great dislike of Robespierre, Buonaparte, and of Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some unaccountable fatality, classes together as the three most formidable enemies of the human race that have appeared in his (Mr. Words- worth's) remembrance; but he betrays very little liking to Burns. He is, indeed, anxious to get him out of the unhallowed clutches of the Edinburgh Reviewers (as a mere matter of poetical privilege), only to bring him before a graver and higher tribunal, which is his own ; and after repeating and insinuating ponderous charges against him, shakes his head, and declines giving any opinion in so tremendous I2fe ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS a case ; so that though the judgment of the former critic is set aside, poor Burns remains just where he was, and nobody gains any thing by the cause but Mr. Wordsworth, in an increasing opinion of his own wisdom and purity. * Out upon this half-faced fellowship ! ' The author of the Lyrical Ballads has thus missed a fine opportunity of doing Burns justice and himself honour. He might have shewn himself a philosophical prose-writer, as well as a philosophical poet. He might have offered as amiable and as gallant a defence of the Muses, as my uncle Toby, in the honest simplicity of his heart, did of the army. He might have said at once, instead of making a parcel of wry faces over the matter, that Burns had written Tarn o' Shanter, and that that alone was enough ; that he could hardly have described the excesses of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial in- dulgence, which are the soul of it, if he himself had not ' drunk full ofter of the ton than of the well ' — unless ' the act and practique part of life had been the mistress of his theorique.' Mr. Wordsworth might have quoted such lines as — ' The landlady and Tarn grew gracious, Wi 1 favours secret, sweet, and precious ' ; — or, ' Care, mad to see a man so happy, E'en drown'd himself among the nappy' ; and fairly confessed that he could not have written such lines from a want of proper habits and previous sympathy ; and that till some great puritanical genius should arise to do these things equally well without any knowledge of them, the world might forgive Burns the injuries he had done his health and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship to experience, for the pleasure he had afforded them. Instead of this, Mr. Wordsworth hints, that with different personal habits and greater strength of mind, Burns would have written differently, and almost as well as he does. He might have taken that line of Gay's, ' The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,' — and applied it in all its force and pathos to the poetical character. He might have argued that poets are men of genius, and that a man of genius is not a machine ; that they live in a state of intellectual intoxication, and that it is too much to expect them to be distinguished by peculiar sang froid, circumspection, and sobriety. Poets are by nature men of stronger imagination and keener sensibilities than others; and it is a contradiction to suppose them at the same time governed only by the cool, dry, calculating dictates of reason and foresight. Mr. Wordsworth might have ascertained the boundaries that part the E 129 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS provinces of reason and imagination : — that it is the business of the understanding to exhibit things in their relative proportions and ultimate consequences — of the imagination to insist on their im- mediate impressions, and to indulge their strongest impulses ; but it is the poet's office to pamper the imagination of his readers and his own with the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, to snatch the swift- winged golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to banish the dull, prosaic, monotonous realities of life, both from his thoughts and from his practice. Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn how it is that all men of genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are liable to practical errors, from the very confidence their superiority inspires, which makes them fly in the face of custom and prejudice, always rashly, sometimes unjustly ; for, after all, custom and prejudice are not without foundation in truth and reason, and no one individual is a match for the world in power, very few in knowledge. The world may altogether be set down as older and wiser than any single person in it. Again, our philosophical letter-writer might have enlarged on the temptations to which Burns was exposed from his struggles with fortune and the uncertainty of his fate. He might have shewn how a poet, not born to wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of feverish anxiety with respect to his fame and the means of a precarious liveli- hood : that ' from being chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, he had passed into the sunshine of fortune, and was lifted to the very pinnacle of public favour ' ; yet even there could not count on the continuance of success, but was, ' like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep ! ' He might have traced his habit of ale-house tippling to the last long precious draught of his favourite usquebaugh, which he took in the prospect of bidding farewel for ever to his native land ; and his conjugal infidelities to his first disappointment in love, which would m> - have happened to him, if he had been born to a small estate in land, or bred up behind a counter ! Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn the incompatibility between the Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well to- gether, or met in one seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled on Rydal Mount. He must know (no man better) the distraction cd by the opposite calls of business and of fancy, the torment of extents, the plague of receipts laid in order or mislaid, the disagree- ableness of exacting penalties or paving the forfeiture ; and how all this (together with the broaching of casks and the splashing of beer- •ls) must have preyed upon a mind like Burns, with more than his natural sensibility and none of his acquired firmness. '3° ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance of the promotion of the Scottish Bard to be ' a gauger of ale-firkins,' in a poetical epistle to his friend Charles Lamb, calls upon him in a burst of heartfelt indignation, to gather a wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade, ' To twine The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility.' If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to write a letter in defence of Burns, how different would it have been from this of Mr. Words- worth's ! How much better than I can even imagine it to have been done ! It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty or genuine defence of Burns from the pen of Mr. Wordsworth ; for there is no common link of sympathy between them. Nothing can be more different or hostile than the spirit of their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth's poetry is the poetry of mere sentiment and pensive contemplation : Burns's is a very highly sublimated essence of animal existence. With Burns, ' self-love and social are the same ' — 1 And we '11 tak a cup of kindness yet, For auld lang syne." Mr. Wordsworth is ' himself alone,' a recluse philosopher, or a reluctant spectator of the scenes of many-coloured life ; moralising on them, not describing, not entering into them. Robert Burns has exerted all the vigour of his mind, all the happiness of his nature, in exalting the pleasures of wine, of love, and good fellowship : but in Mr. Wordsworth there is a total disunion and divorce of the faculties of the mind from those of the body ; the banns are forbid, or a separation is austerely pronounced from bed and board — a mensd et thoro. From the Lyrical Ballads, it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry or are given in marriage. If we lived by every sentiment that proceeded out of mouths, and not by bread or wine, or if the species were continued like trees (to borrow an expression from the great Sir Thomas Brown), Mr Wordsworth's poetry would be just as good as ever. It is not so with Burns : he is ' famous for the keeping of it up,' and in his verse is ever fresh and gay. For this, it seems, he has fallen under the displeasure of the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the still more formidable patronage of Mr. Wordsworth's pen. 'This, this was the ankindest cut of all.' I was going to give some extracts out of this composition in LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS support of what I have said, but I find them too tedious. Indeed (if I may be allowed to speak my whole mind, under correction) Mr. Wordsworth could not be in any way expected to tolerate or give a favourable interpretation to Burns's constitutional foibles — even his best virtues are not good enough for him. He is repelled and driven back into himself, not less by the worth than by the faults of others His taste is as exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is because so few things give him pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few people. It is not every one who can perceive the sublimity of a daisy, or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn ! To proceed from Burns's patrons to his poetry, than which no two things can be more different. His ' Twa Dogs ' is a very spirited piece of description, both as it respects the animal and human creation, and conveys a very vivid idea of the manners both of high and low life. The burlesque panegyric of the first dog, ' His locked, lettered, braw brass collar Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar" — reminds one of Launce's account of his dog Crabbe, where he is said, as an instance of his being in the way of promotion, ' to have got among three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke's table.' The ' Halloween ' is the most striking and picturesque description of local customs and scenery. The Brigs of Ayr, the Address to a Haggis, Scotch Drink, and innumerable others are, however, full of the same kind of characteristic and comic painting. But his master- piece in this way is his Tam o' Shanter. I shall give the beginning of it, but I am afraid I shall hardly know when to leave off. ' When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors, neebors meet, As market-days are wearing late, .And folk begin to tak the gate ; While we sit bousing at the nappy, And getting fou and unco happy, We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles, That lie between us and our hame, Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering .storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, As he frae Ayr ae night did canter ; (Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses, For honest men and bonny lasses.) I32 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise, As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice ! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ; That frae November till October Ae market-day thou was na sober; That ilka melder, wi' the miller, Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on, The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ; That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday, Thou drank wi' Kirton Jean till Monday — She prophesy'd, that late or soon, Thou wad be found deep drown'd in Doon ; Or catcht wi' warlocks in the mirk, By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet, To think how mony counsels sweet, How mony lengthen'd, sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises ! But to our tale : Ae market night, Tam had got planted unco right Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely; And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony; Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither ; They had been fou for weeks thegither. The night drave on wi' sangs an clatter, And aye the ale was growing better: The landlady and Tam grew gracious Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious i The Souter tauld his queerest stories ; The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : The storm without might rair and rustle, Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. Care, mad to see a man sae happy, E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy; As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure, The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure : Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills of life victorious! But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r — its bloom is shed; Or like the snow, falls in the river, A moment white — then melts for ever; 13* LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Or like the Borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place 5 Or like the rainbow's lovely form, Evanishing amid the storm. — Nae man can tether time or tide, The hour approaches, Tarn maun ride ; That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hour he mounts his beast in, And sic a night he taks the road in, As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last; The rattling showers rose on the blast, The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd, Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellovv'd 1 That night a child might understand, The Deil had business on his hand. Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tarn skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and tire ; Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares ; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. — By this time Tarn was crois the lord, Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor'd ; And past the birks and meikle stane. Whare drunken Charlie brak 's neck-bane j And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, Where hunters fand the murder'd bairn ; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. — Before him Doon pours all his floods ; The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; The lightnings flash from pole to pole ; Near and more near the thunders roll : Whan, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze; Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing; And loud resounded mirth and dancing. Inspiring bold John Barleycorn ! What dangers thou canst make us scorn ! WT Tippenny, we fear nae evil, Wi' Usqueba, we '11 face the devil ! 134 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddie, Fair play, he car'd na de'ils a boddie. But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, Till by the heel and hand admonish'd, She ventur'd forward on the light, And, vow ! Tam saw an unco sight ! Warlocks and witches in a dance, Nae light cotillion new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. As winnock-bunker, in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge ; He screw'd the pipes, and gait them skirl, Till roof and rafters a 1 did dirl — Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And, by some devilish cantrip slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light — By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns ; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; A thief, new cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wP bluid red rusted ; Five scimitars, wi 1 murder crusted ; A garter, which a babe had strangled ; A knife, a father's throat had mangled. Whom his ain son o' life bereft, The grey hairs yet stack to the heft ; Wi' mair, o' horrible and awfu', Which e'en to name wad be unlawfu'. As Tammie glowr'd amaz'd, and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: The Piper loud and louder blew ; The dancers quick and quicker flew ; They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, Till ilka Carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark ! Now Tam, O Tam ! had they been queans A' plump and strapping in their teens; Their sarks, instead o' creeshie fiannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hundred linen ! *35 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair, 1 wad hae gi'en them aff my hurdies, For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! But wither'd beldams, auld and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Luiiping and flinging on a crummock, I wonder did na turn thy stomach. But Tarn ken'd what was what fif brawly, There was ae winsome wench and waly, That night enlisted in the core, (Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore ; For mony a beast to dead she shot, And perish'd mony a bonnie boat, And shook baith meikle corn and bear, And kept the country-side in fear — ) Her cutty sark o' Paisley harn, That while a lassie she had worn, In longitude tho' sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vaunty. — Ah ! little ken'd thy reverend grannie, That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches), Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches ! But here my Muse her wing maun cour j Sic flights are far beyond her power: To sing how Nannie lap and flang, (A souple jade she was, and Strang) And how Tarn stood like ane bewitch d, And thought his very een enrich'd ; Ev'n Satan glowrM and fidg'd fu' fain, And hotch't, and blew wi' might and main j Till first ae caper, syne anither, Tarn tint his reason a' thegither, And roars out, ' Weel done, Cutty Sark ! * And in an instant all was dark ; And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, When out the hellish legion sallied. As bees biz out wi' angry fyke When plundering herds assail their byke; As open pussie's mortal foes, When, pop! she starts before their nose ; As eager rins the market-crowd, When ' Catch the thief! ' resounds aloud j So Maggie rins — the witches follow, Wi' mony an eldritch skreech and hollow, 1 36 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS Ah, Tarn ! ah, Tarn ! thou '11 get thy fairin' I In hell they '11 roast thee like a herrin' ! In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' ! Kate soon will be a waefif woman ! Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, And win the key-stane o' the brig; There, at them thou thy tail may toss, A running stream they dare na cross ; But ere the key-stane she could make, The fient a tail she had to shake ! For Nannie, far before the rest, Hard upon noble Maggie prest, And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle ; But little wist she Maggie's mettle — Ae spring brought off her master hale, But left behind, her ain grey tail : The Carlin claught her by the rump, And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, Ilk man and mother's son tak heed : Whane'er to drink you are inclin'd, Or Cutty Sarks rin in your mind, Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear; Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mare.' Burns has given the extremes of licentious eccentricity and con- vivial enjoyment, in the story of this scape-grace, and of patriarchal simplicity and gravity in describing the old national character of the Scottish peasantry. The Cotter's Saturday Night is a noble and pathetic picture of human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe. It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. The soul of the poet aspires from this scene of low-thoughted care, and reposes, in trembling hope, on 'the bosom of its Father and its God.' Hardly any thing can be more touching than the following stanzas, for instance, whether as they describe human interests, or breathe a lofty devotional spirit. ' The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise and glee. 137 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonilie, His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant, prattling on his knee, Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil. Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, amang the farmers roun', Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rill A cannie errand to a neebor town ; Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gou n, Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. Wi' joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers ; The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic'd fleet ; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears : The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view ; The mither, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new 5 The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same. Tells how a neebor lad cam o'er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; With heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name, While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; Weel pleas'd the mother hears it's nae wild, worthless rake. Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; A strappan youth ; he taks the mother's eye ; Blithe Jenny sees the visit 's no ill ta'en ; The father craks of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave ; t>]r;ts\l to think her bairn's respected like the lave. '3* Bui now the supper crowns their simple board, The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food; ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS The soupe their only hawkie does afford, That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood • The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell. An' aft he 's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid ; The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How 'twas a towmond auld, sin 1 lint was i' the bell. The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ; The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride: His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion wi' judicious care ; And 'Let us worship God ! ' he says, with solemn air. They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim : Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise, Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name ; Or noble Elgin beets the heav'n-ward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame ; The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise ; Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.' — Burns's poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for the touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of friendship they display. Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a brother poet, are among the best: — they are 'the true pathos and sublime of human life.' His prose-letters are sometimes tinctured with affectation. They seem written by a man who has been admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasions to shine. Those in which he expresses his ideas of natural beauty in reference to Alison's Essay on Taste, and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of old customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written. His English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such as the The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. nor do I much admire his ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.' In this strain of didactic or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glencairn are the most happy, and impressive. His imitations of the old humorous ballad style of Ferguson's songs are no whit inferior to the admirable originals, such as « John Anderson, my Joe,' and many more. But of all his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he no LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS has left behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines to Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy. ' Here 's a health to ane I lo'e dear — Here 's a health to ane I lo'e dear — Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, And soft as their parting tear — Jessy ! Altho 1 thou maun never be mine, Altho' even hope is denied ; *Tis sweeter for thee despairing, Than aught in the world beside — Jessy 1 * The conclusion of the other is as follows. •Yestreen, when to the trembling string The dance gaed through the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw. Tho 1 this was fair, and that was bra', And yon the toast of a' the town, I sighed and said among them a", Ye are na' Mary Morison/ That beginning, ' Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,' is a piece of rich and fantastic description. One would think that nothing could surpass these in beauty of expression, and in true pathos : and nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery —the thistle's glittering down, the gillifiower on the old garden-wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk on its perch — a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and longer deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave, and ' thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.' We seem to feel that those who wrote and sung them (the earlv minstrels) lived in the open air, wandering on from place to place with restless feet and thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war or love, floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and moving the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation's heart. I low line an illustration of this is that passage in Don Ouixote, where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea, inquire their way of the countryman, who was driving his mules to plough before break of day, • singing the ancient ballad of Ronces- 140 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS valles.' Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still accompanied with fragments of old songs. One of the best and most striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring, giving an account of a confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales. ' That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite much keener than the knife I ate with. We had our music too ; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures that Hogarth would have given any price for. The harper was in his true place and attitude ; a man and woman stood before him, singing to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was playing with the bottom of the harp ; a woman in a sick night-cap hanging over the stairs ; a boy with crutches fixed in a staring attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, interrupted in her business by the charms of the music ; all ragged and dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining picture, and would please you or any man of observation ; and one reflection gave me a particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated, that even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music/ I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recommended to take this group as the subject of his admirable pencil ; he has painted a picture of Bathsheba, instead. In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I need do no more than mention the name of Auld Robin Gray. The effect of reading this old ballad is as if all our hopes and fears hung upon the last fibre of the heart, and we felt that giving way. What silence, what loneli- ness, what leisure for grief and despair ! * My father pressed me sair, Though my mother did na' speak j But she looked in my face Till my heart was like to break.' The irksomeness of the situations, the sense of painful dependence, is excessive ; and yet the sentiment of deep-rooted, patient affection triumphs over all, and is the only impression that remains. Lady 141 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Ann Bothwell's Lament is not, I think, quite equal to the lines beginning — 1 O waly, waly, up the bank, And waly, waly, down the brae, And waly, waly, yon burn side, Where I and my love wont to gae. I leant my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree ; But first it bow'd, and syne it brak, Sae my true-love 's forsaken me. O waly, waly, love is bonny, A little time while it is new; But when its auld, it waxeth cauld, And fades awa' like the morning dew. When cockle-shells turn siller bells, And muscles grow on every tree, Whan frost and snaw sail warm us aw, Then sail my love prove true to me. Now Arthur seat sali be my bed, The sheets sail ne'er be fyld by me : Saint Anton's well sail be my drink, Since my true-love 's forsaken me. Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw, And shake the green leaves affthe tree r gentle death, whan wilt thou cum, And tak' a life that wearies me ! 'Tis not the frost that freezes sae, \or blawing snaw's inclemencie, 'Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry, But my love's heart grown cauld to me. Whan we came in by Glasgow town, We were a comely sight to see, My love was clad in black velvet, And I myself in cramasie. But had I wist before I kist, That love had been sae hard to win ; 1 \i lockt my heart in case of gowd, And pinn'd it with a siller pin. And oh ! if my poor babe were born, And set upon the nurse's knee, And I mysel in the cold grave ! Since my true-love 's forsaken me.* The finest modern imitation of this style is the Braes of Yarrow ; and perhaps the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any 142 ON THE LIVING POETS modern book, is that told in Turner's History of England, of a Mahometan woman, who having fallen in love with an English merchant, the father of Thomas a Becket, followed him all the way to England, knowing only the word London, and the name of her lover, Gilbert. But to have done with this, which is rather too serious a subject. — The old English ballads are of a gayer and more lively turn. They are adventurous and romantic ; but they relate chiefly to good living and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood is the chief of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood Forest. The archers green glimmer under the waving branches ; the print on the grass remains where they have just finished their noon-tide meal under the green-wood tree ; and the echo of their bugle-horn and twanging bows resounds through the tangled mazes of the forest, as the tall slim deer glances startled by. * The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good ; The grass beneath them now is dimly green : Are they deserted all ? Is no young mien, With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood ? No arrow found — foil'd of its antler'd food — Struck in the oak's rude side ? — Is there nought seen To mark the revelries which there have been, In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood ? Go there with summer, and with evening — go In the soft shadows, like some wandVing man — And thou shalt far amid the forest know The archer-men in green, with belt and bow, Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl and swan, With Robin at their head, and Marian.'' : LECTURE VIII ON THE LIVING POETS ' No more of talk where God or Angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent.' Genius is the heir of fame ; but the hard condition on which the bright reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the recompense not of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame 1 Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds, Esq. 143 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS stands upon the grave : the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal putf, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship ; but it is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over the intellect, and the lasting homage which is paid to it, as such, independently of time and circumstances, purified from partiality and evil-speaking. Fame is the sound which the stream of high thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes as it flows — deep, distant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty ocean. He who has ears truly touched to this music, is in a manner deaf to the voice of popularity. — The love of fame differs from mere vanity in this, that the one is immediate and personal, the other ideal and abstracted. It is not the direct and gross homage paid to himself, that the lover of true fame seeks or is proud of; but the indirect and pure homage paid to the eternal forms of truth and beauty as they are reflected in his mind, that gives him confidence and hope. The love of nature is the first thing in the mind of the true poet : the admiration of himself the last. A man of genius cannot well be a coxcomb ; for his mind is too full of other things to be much occupied with his own person. He who is conscious of great powers in himself, has also a high standard of excellence with which to compare his efforts : he appeals also to a test and judge of merit, which is the highest, but which is too remote, grave, and impartial, to flatter his II love extravagantly, or puff him up with intolerable and vain conceit. This, indeed, is one test of genius and of real greatness of mind, whether a man can wait patiently and calmly for the award of posterity, satisfied with the unwearied exercise of his faculties, retired within the sanctuary of his own thoughts ; or whether he is eager to forestal his own immortality, and mortgage it for a newspaper puff. He who thinks much of himself, will be in danger of being forgotten by the rest of the world : he who is always trying to lay violent hands on reputation, will not secure the best and most lasting. If the restless candidate for praise takes no pleasure, no sincere and heartfelt delight in his works, but as they are admired and applauded by others, what should others see in them to admire or applaud ? They cannot be expected to admire them because they are bis ; but for the truth and nature contained in them, which must first be inly felt and copied with severe delight, from the love of truth and nature, before it can ever appear there. Was Raphael, think you, when he painted his pictures of the Virgin and Child in all their inconceivable i 44 ON THE LIVING POETS truth and beauty of expression, thinking most of his subject or of himself? Do you suppose that Titian, when he painted a landscape, was pluming himself on being thought the finest colourist in the world, or making himself so by looking at nature ? Do you imagine that Shakspeare, when he wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking of any thing but Lear and Othello ? Or that Mr. Kean, when he plays these characters, is thinking of the audience ? — No : he who would be great in the eyes of others, must first learn to be nothing in his own. The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is onlv another name for the love of excellence ; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority— that of time. Those minds, then, which are the most entitled to expect it, can best put up with the postponement of their claims to lasting fame. They can afford to wait. They are not afraid that truth and nature will ever wear out ; will lose their gloss with novelty, or their effect with fashion. If their works have the seeds of immortality in them, they will live ; if they have not, they care little about them as theirs. They do not complain of the start which others have got of them in the race of everlasting renown, or of the impossibility of attaining the honours which time alone can give, during the term of their natural lives. They know that no applause, however loud and violent, can anticipate or over-rule the judgment of posterity ; that the opinion of no one individual, nor of any one generation, can have the weight, the authority (to say nothing of the force of sympathy and prejudice), which must belong to that of successive generations. The brightest living reputation cannot be equally imposing to the imagination, with that which is covered and rendered venerable with the hoar of innumerable ages. No modern production can have the same atmosphere of sentiment around it, as the remains of classical antiquity. But then our moderns may console themselves with the reflection, that they will be old in their turn, and will either be remembered with still increasing honours, or quite forgotten! I would speak of the living poets as I have spoken of the dead (for I think highly of many of them) ; but I cannot speak of them with the same reverence, because I do not feel it ; with the same confidence, because I cannot have the same authority to sanction my opinion. I cannot be absolutely certain that any body, twenty years hence, will think any thing about any of them ; but we may be pretty sure that Milton and Shakspeare will be remembered twenty years hence. We are, therefore, not without excuse if we husband our enthusiasm a little, and do not prematurely lay out our whole stock in untried ventures, and what may turn out to be false bottoms. I 145 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS have myself out-lived one generation of favourite poets, the Darwins, the Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them now ? — If, however, I have not the verdict of posterity to bear me out in bestowing the most unqualified praises on their immediate successors, it is also to be remembered, that neither does it warrant me in condemning them. Indeed, it was not my wish to go into this ungrateful part of the subject ; but something of the sort is expected from me, and I must run the gauntlet as well as I can. Another circumstance that adds to the difficulty of doing justice to all parties is, that I happen to have had a personal acquaintance with some of these jealous votaries of the Muses ; and that is not the likeliest way to imbibe a high opinion of the rest. Poets do not praise one another in the language of hyperbole. I am afraid, therefore, that I labour under a degree of prejudice against some of the most popular poets of the day, from an early habit of deference to the critical opinions of some of the least popular. I cannot say that I ever learnt much about Shakspeare or Milton, Spenser or Chaucer, from these professed guides ; for I never heard them say much about them. They were always talking of themselves and one another. Nor am I certain that this sort of personal intercourse with living authors, while it takes away all real relish or freedom of opinion with regard to their contemporaries, greatly enhances our respect for themselves. Poets are not ideal beings ; but have their prose-sides, like the commonest of the people. We often hear persons say, What they would have given to have seen Shakspeare ! For my part, I would give a great deal not to have seen him ; at least, if he was at all like any body else that I have ever seen. But why should he ; for his works are not ! This is, doubtless, one great advantage which the dead have over the living. It is always fortunate for ourselves and others, when we are prevented from exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid vision that in youth haunts our idea of the poetical character, fades, upon acquaintance, into the light of common day ; as the azure tints that deck the mountain's brow are lost on a nearer approach to them. It is well, according to the moral of one of the Lyrical Ballads, — 'To leave Yarrow unvisited.' But to leave this 'face-making,' and . — 1 .mi a great admirer of the female writers of the present day ; they appear to me like so many modern Muses. I could be in love with Mrs. Inchbald, romantic with Mrs. Radcliffe, and sarcastic with Madame D'Arblay : but they are novel-writers, and, like Audrey, may 'thank the Gods for not having made them poetical.' Did any one here ever read Mrs. Leicester's School? If they have Dot, I wish they would ; there will be just time before the next three i \() ON THE LIVING POETS volumes of the Tales of My Landlord come out. That is not a school of affectation, but of humanity. No one can think too highly of the work, or highly enough of the author. The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose works I became acquainted before those of any other author, male or female, when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for children. I became acquainted with her poetical works long after in Enfield's Speaker ; and remember being much divided in my opinion at that time, between her Ode to Spring and Collins's Ode to Evening. I wish I could repay my childish debt of gratitude in terms of appropriate praise. She is a very pretty poetess; and, to my fancy, strews the flowers of poetry most agreeably round the borders of religious controversy. She is a neat and pointed prose-writer. Her ' Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Human Expectations,' is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays in the language. There is the same idea in one of Barrow's Sermons. Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated modern poetess, and I believe still living. She has written a great deal which I have never read. Miss Baillie must make up this trio of female poets. Her tragedies and comedies, one of each to illustrate each of the passions, separately from the rest, are heresies in the dramatic art. She is a Unitarian in poetry. With her the passions are, like the French republic, one and indivisible : they are not so in nature, or in Shakspeare. Mr. Southey has, I believe, somewhere expressed an opinion, that the Basil of Miss Baillie is superior to Romeo and Juliet. I shall not stay to contradict him. On the other hand, I prefer her De Mont- fort, which was condemned on the stage, to some later tragedies, which have been more fortunate — to the Remorse, Bertram, and lastly, Fazio. There is in the chief character of that play a nerve, a continued unity of interest, a setness of purpose and precision of outline which John Kemble alone was capable of giving ; and there is all the grace which women have in writing. In saying that De Montfort was a character which just suited Mr. Kemble, I mean to pay a compliment to both. He was not ' a man of no mark or likeli- hood ' : and what he could be supposed to do particularly well, must have a meaning in it. As to the other tragedies just mentioned, there is no reason why any common actor should not ' make mouths in them at the invisible event,' — one as well as another. Having thus expressed my sense of the merits of the authoress, I must add, that her comedy of the Election, performed last summer at the Lyceum with indifferent success, appears to me the perfection of baby-house theatricals. Every thing in it has such a do-me-good air, is so insipid 147 LECTUKES ON THE ENGLISH POETS and amiable. Virtue seems such a pretty playing at make-believe, and vice is such a naughty word. It is a theory of some French author, that little girls ought not to be suffered to have dolls to play with, to call them pretty dears, to admire their black eyes and cherry cheeks, to lament and bewail over them if they fall down and hurt their faces, to praise them when they are good, and scold them when they are naughty. It is a school of affectation : Miss Baillie has profited of it. She treats her grown men and women as little girls treat their dolls — makes moral puppets of them, pulls the wires, and they talk virtue and act vice, according to their cue and the title prefixed to each comedy or tragedy, not from any real passions of their own, or love either of virtue or vice. The transition from these to Mr. Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, is not far : he is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but feeble writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine words ; is full of enigmas with no meaning to them ; is studiously inverted, and scrupulously far-fetched ; and his verses are poetry, chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose. He differs from Milton in this respect, who is accused of having inserted a number of prosaic lines in Paradise Lost. This kind of poetry, which is a more minute and inoffensive species of the Delia Cruscan, is like the game of asking what one's thoughts are like. It is a tortuous, tottering, wriggling, fidgetty translation of every thing from the vulgar tongue, into all the tantalizing, teasing, tripping, lisping mimminee-pimminee of the highest brilliancy and fashion of poetical diction. You have nothing like truth of nature or simplicity of expression. The fastidious and languid reader is never shocked by meeting, from the rarest chance in the world, with a single homely phrase or intelligible idea. You cannot see the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for the finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined, and frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy and tremulous imbecility. — There is no other fault to be found with the Pleasures of Memory, than a want of taste and genius. The sentiments are amiable, and the notes at the end highly interesting, particularly the one relating to the Countess Pillar (as it is called) between Appleby and Penrith, erected (as the inscription tells the thoughtful traveller) by Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year 1648, in memory of her last parting with her good and pious mother in the same place in the year 161 6. * To shew that power of love, how great Beyond all human estimate.' I48 ON THE LIVING POETS This story is also told in the poem, but with so many artful innuendos and tinsel words, that it is hardly intelligible ; and still less does it reach the heart. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is of the same school, in which a painful attention is paid to the expression in proportion as there is little to express, and the decomposition of prose is substituted for the composition of poetry. How much the sense and keeping in the ideas are sacrificed to a jingle of words and epigrammatic turn of expression, may be seen in such lines as the following : — one of the characters, an old invalid, wishes to end his days under * Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.'' Now the antithesis here totally fails : for it is the breeze, and not the tree, or as it is quaintly expressed, hamlet shade, that affords health, though it is the tree that affords shelter in or from the storm. Instances of the same sort of curiosa infelicitas are not rare in this author. His verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden have considerable spirit and animation. His Gertrude of Wyoming is his principal performance. It is a kind of historical paraphrase of Mr. Words- worth's poem of Ruth. It shews little power, or power enervated by extreme fastidiousness. It is ' — Of outward show Elaborate; of inward less exact.' There are painters who trust more to the setting of their pictures than to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to me to be thinking how his poetry will look when it comes to be hot- pressed on superfine wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to points and commas, and dread of errors of the press. He is so afraid of doing wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does little or nothing. Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands still. He writes according to established etiquette. He offers the Muses no violence. If he lights upon a good thought, he immediately drops it for fear of spoiling a good thing. When he launches a sentiment that you think will float him triumphantly for once to the bottom of the stanza, he stops short at the end of the first or second line, and stands shivering on the brink of beauty, afraid to trust himself to the fathomless abyss. Tutus nimium, timidusque procellarum. His very circumspection betrays him. The poet, as well as the woman, that deliberates, is undone. He is much like a man whose heart fails him just as he is going up in a balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging himself out of it 149 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often maims and mangles his ideas before they are full formed, to fit them to the Procustes' bed of criticism ; or strangles his intellectual offspring in the birth, lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. He plays the hypercritic on himself, and starves his genius to death from a needless apprehension of a plethora. No writer who thinks habitually of the critics, either to tremble at their censures or set them at defiance, can write well. It is the business of reviewers to watch poets, not of poets to watch reviewers. — There is one admirable simile in this poem, of the European child brought by the sooty Indian in his hand, ' like morning brought by night.' The love-scenes in Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a balmy voluptuousness of sentiment ; but they are generally broken off in the middle ; they are like the scent of a bank of violets, faint and rich, which the .-ale suddenly conveys in a different direction. Mr. Campbell is careful of his own reputation, and economical of the pleasures of his readers. He treats them as the fox in the fable treated his guest the stork ; or, to use his own expression, his fine things are 'Like angels' vi- its, few, and far between.' 1 There is another fault in this poem, which is the mechanical structure of the fable. The most striking events occur in the shape of antitheses. The story is cut into the form of a parallelogram There is the same systematic alternation of good and evil, of violence and repose, that there is of light and shade in a picture. The Indian, who is the chief agent in the interest of the poem, vanishes and returns after long intervals, like the periodical revolutions of the planets. He unexpectedly appears just in the nick of time, after years of absence, and without any known reason but the convenience of the author and the astonishment of the reader ; as if nature were a machine constructed on a principle of complete contrast, to produce a theatrical effect. Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus. Mr. Campbell's savage never appears but upon great occasions, and then his punctuality is preternatural and alarming. He is the most wonderful instance on record of poetical reliability. The most Iful mischiefs happen at the most mortifying moments; and when your expectations are wound up to the highest pitch, you are sure to have them knocked on the head by a premeditated and 1 There is the same idea in Blair's I ' Its visits. Like those of angels, short, and far between. Mr. Campbell in altering the expression hag spoiled it. 'Few,' and 'far between,' are the same thing. I 5 ON THE LIVING POETS remorseless stroke of the poet's pen. This is done so often for the convenience of the author, that in the end it ceases to be for the satisfaction of the reader. Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heed- less, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects that people the sun's beam. * So work the honey-bees,' extracting liquid sweets from opening buds ; so the butterfly expands its wings to the idle air ; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over summer seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of fairy fiction — 4 Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster, And gaudy butterflies frolic around.' The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead weight upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The infinite delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys ; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which he indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full force to the masses of things, from connecting them into a whole. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the great and permanent ; it glances over the surfaces, the first impressions of things, instead of grappling with the deep- rooted prejudices of the mind, its inveterate habits, and that ' perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.' His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful, wants momentum and passion. It requires the same principle to make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well, the feeling of continued identity. The impressions of Mr. Moore's poetry are detached, desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten and fade like the rainbow's. Its sweetness evaporates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers ! His gay laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love or wine, is better '5 1 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best : it is first-rate. His Twopenny Post- Bag is a perfect 'nest of spicery ' ; where the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen. In this too, our bard resembles the bee — he has its honey and its sting. Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion and a consequent disappointment of public expectation. He should have left it to others to break conventions with nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any rate, have kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is not what people wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do ; namely, whether he could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. The interest, however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the execution still turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of mind is the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding to the love and admiration of his age, and more than one country ' Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.' '1 be aame might be said of Mr. Moore's seeking to bind an epic crown, or the shadow of one, round his other laurels. If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron (judging from the tone of his writings) might be thought to have Buffered too much to be a truly great poet. If Mr. Moore lays himself too open to all the various impulses of things, the outward shews of earth and sky, to every breath that blows, to every stray M-ntiment that crosses his fancy ; Lord Byron shuts himself up too 152 ON THE LIVING POETS much in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries the natural light of things in ' nook, monastic.' The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same person, and they are apparently all himself. The everlasting repetition of one subject, the same dark ground of fiction, with the darker colours of the poet's mind spread over it, the unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror's head, steels the mind against the sense of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied Siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr. Moore's poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure. Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Mr. Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of all the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherish- ing but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, eating into the heart of poetry. But still there is power ; and power rivets attention and forces admiration. ' He hath a demon : ' and that is the next thing to being full of the God. His brow collects the scattered gloom : his eye flashes livid fire that withers and consumes. But still we watch the progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the contracted range of his imagination, he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and glittering ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the storm, pirates and men that ' house on the wild sea with wild usages.' He gives the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style and force of conception, he in one sense surpasses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. He who wishes for ' a curse to kill with,' may find it in Lord Byron's writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over charnel-houses and the grave ! There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of writing, on which I wish he would not write — Buonaparte. Not that I quarrel with his writing for him, or against him, but with his writing both f 53 LECTURES ON THE ExXGLISH POETS for him and against him. What right has he to do this? Buonaparte's character, be it what else it may, does not change every hour accord- ing to his Lordship's varying humour. He is not a pipe for Fortune's finger, or for his Lordship's Muse, to play what stop she pleases on. Why should Lord Byron now laud him to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreak his disappointment on the God of his idolatry ? The man he writes of does not rise or fall with circumstances : but ' looks on tempests and is never shaken.' Besides, he is a subject for history, and not for poetry. 'Great princes* favourites their fair leaves spread, But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried ; For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior, famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd.' If Lord Byron will write any thing more on this hazardous theme, let him take these lines of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them in the spirit of the original — they will then be worthy of the subject. Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity and effect than any body else. He has no excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie beyond the reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out ; but he has all the good qualities which all the world agree to understand. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent: his sentiments, of which his style is an easy and natural medium, are common to him with his readers. He has none of Mr. Wordsworth's idiosyncracy. He differs from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of expression. His poetry belongs to the class of improvisator! poetry. It has neither depth, height, nor breadth in it ; neither uncommon strength, nor uncommon refinement of thought, sentiment, or lan- c It has no originality. But if this author has no research, no moving power in his own breast, he relies with the greater safety and success on the force of his subject. He selects a story such as is sure to please, full of incidents, characters, peculiar manners, costume, and scenery ; and he tells it in a way that can offend no one. He never wearies or disappoints you. He is communicative and garrulous ; but he is not his own hero. He never obtrudes him- self on your notice to prevent your seeing the subject. What passes in the poem, passes much as it would have done in reality. The author has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Scott has great •54 ON THE LIVING POETS intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing externa! objects and events before the eye. The force of his mind is pic- turesque, rather than moral. He gives more of the features of nature than the soul of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather than 'their mortal consequences.' He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment : but he has more picturesque power than any of them ; that is, he places the objects themselves, about which they might feel and think, in a much more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress and attitude, and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time. Few descriptions have a more complete reality, a more striking appearance of life and motion, than that of the warriors in the Lady of the Lake, who start up at the command of Rhoderic Dhu, from their conceal- ment under the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best of his works. The Goblin Page, in the first of these, is a very interesting and inscrutable little personage. In reading these poems, I confess I am a little disconcerted, in turning over the page, to find Mr. Westall's pictures, which always seem facsimiles of the persons represented, with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be a compliment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter Scott. The truth is, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history or tradition in mas- querade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off with time, — the substance is grown comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth ; but the spirit is effeminate and frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise I have given to his pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has been no obstacle to its drawing-room success. He has just hit the town between the romantic and the fashionable ; and between the two, secured all classes of readers on his side. In a word, I conceive that he is to the great poet, what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. It has no results. The reader rises up from the perusal with new images and associations, but he remains the same man that he was before. A great mind is one that moulds the minds of others. Mr. Scott has put the Border Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of the country into easy, animated verse. But the Notes to his poems are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are only entertaining. 1 55 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses His poetrv is not external, but internal ; it does not depend upon tradition, or story, or old song ; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many of the Lvrical Ballads, it is not possible to speak in terms of too high praise, such as Hart-leap Well, the Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan, parts of the Leech-gatherer, the lines to a Cuckoo, to * Daisy, the Complaint, several of the Sonnets, and a hundred others of incon- ceivable beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. They open a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times has done, or attempted. He has produced a deeper impression, and on a smaller circle, than any other of his contemporaries. His powers have been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly under- stand them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought, drawn rrom his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn from the iEolian harp by the wandering gale. — He is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry. His Excursion, taken as a whole, not- withstanding the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands stock-still. The reader makes no way from the first line to the last. It is more than any thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe's boat, which would have been an excellent good boat, and would have carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get it out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to help to launch it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however, one or those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius. It is not my way to cry * Long life to the conqueror.' Success and desert are not with me synonymous terms ; and the less Mr. Words- worth's general merits have been understood, the more necessary is it to ins-iist upon them. This is not the place to repeat what I have already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in the Round Table. I do not think, however, there is any thing in the larger poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads. As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little known to the public, or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here give an entire poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that the reader may know what it is that the admirers of this author find to be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty and the force of it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring farther. I 5 6 ON THE LIVING POETS HART-LEAP WELL The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor With the slow motion of a summer's cloud ; He turned aside towards a vassal's door, And, " Bring another horse ! " he cried aloud. " Another horse ! " — That shout the vassal heard, And saddled his best steed, a comely gray; Sir Walter mounted him ; he was the third Which he had mounted on that glorious clay. Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes : The horse and horseman are a happy pair ; But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies, There is a doleful silence in the air. A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall, That as they galloped made the echoes roar j But horse and man are vanished, one and all ; Such race, I think, was never seen before. Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain : Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind, Follow, and up the weary mountain strain. The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern; But breath and eye-sight fail ; and, one by one, The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern. Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ? The bugles that so joyfully were blown ? — This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ; Sir Walter and the hart are left alone. The poor hart toils along the mountain side ; I will not stop to tell how far he fled, Nor will I mention by what death he died ; But now the knight beholds him lying dead. Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn ; He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy : He neither smacked his whip, nor blew his horn, But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy. Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act ; Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned ; And foaming like a mountain cataract. 157 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Upon his side the hart was lying stretched : His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill, And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched The waters of the spring were trembling still. And now, too happy for repose or rest, (Was never man in such a joyful ca^e !) Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west, And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place. And climbing up the hill — (it was at least Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found, Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast Had left imprinted on the verdant ground. Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, "Till new Such sight was never seen by living eyes : Three leaps have borne him from this lotly brow, Down to the very fountain where he lies. I Ml build a pleasure-house upon this spot, And a small arbour, made for rural joy; 'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot, A place of love for damsels that are coy. A cunning artist will I have to frame A bason for that fountain in the dell ; And they, who do make mention of the same From this day forth, shall call it Hart-leap Well. And, gallant brute ! to make thy praises known, Another monument shall here be raised ; Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone, And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed. And, in the summer-time when days are long, I will come hither with my paramour; And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song, We will make merry in that pleasant bower. Till the foundations of the mountains fail, My mansion with its arbour shall endure ; — The joy of them who till the fields of Swale, And them who dwell among the woods of Ure ! " 'I hen home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead, With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring. — Soon did the knight perform what he had said, And far and wide the fame thereof did rinse. I 5 8 ON THE LIVING POETS Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered, A cup of stone received the living well ; Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared, And built a house of pleasure in the dell. And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,- Which soon composed a little sylvan hall, A leafy shelter from the sun and wind. And thither, when the summer-days were long, 6ir Walter journeyed with his paramour; And with the dancers and the minstrel's song Made merriment within that pleasant bower. The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, And his bones lie in his paternal vale.; — But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add another tale/ PART SECOND 1 The moving accident is not my trade : To freeze the blood I have no ready arts : 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts. As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair, It chanced that I saw standing in a dell Three aspens at three corners of a square, And one, not four yards distant, near a well. What this imported I could ill divine : And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop, I saw three pillars standing in a line, The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top. The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head ; Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green ; So that you just might say, as then I said, " Here in old time the hand of man hath been." I looked upon the hill both far and near, More doleful place did never eye survey; It ;,eemed as if the spring-time came not here, And Nature here were willing to decay. I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost, When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired, Came up the hollow : — Him did I accost, And what this place might be I then inquired. 159 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS The shepherd stopped, and that same story told Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed. " A jolly place," said he, " in times of old ! But something ails it now ; the spot is curst. You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood — Some say that they are beeches, others elms — These were the bower ; and here a mansion stood, The finest palace of a hundred realms ! The arbour does its own condition tell ; You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream ; But as to the great lodge ! you might as well Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. There *s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep, Will wet his lips within that cup of stone ; And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep, This water doth send forth a dolorous groan. Some say that here a murder has been done, And blood cries out for blood : but, for my part, I've guessed, when I 've been sitting in the sun, That it was all for that unhappy hart. What thoughts must through the creature's brain have passed ! Even from the top-most stone, upon the steep, Are but three bounds — and look, Sir, at this last — — O Master ! it has been a cruel leap. For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race} And in my simple mind we cannot tell What cause the hart might have to love this place, And come and make his death-bed near the well. Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide; This water was perhaps the first he drank When he had wandered from his mother's side. In April here beneath the scented thorn He heard the birds their morning carols sing; And lie, perhaps, for aught we know, was born Not half a furlong from that self-same spring. But now here 's neither grass nor pleasant shade ; The sun on drearier hollow never shone; So will it be, as I have often said, Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.* 160 ON THE LIVING POETS ' Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine i This beast not unobserved by Nature fell ; His death was mourned by sympathy divine. The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep, and reverential care For the unoffending creatures whom he loves. The pleasure-house is dust : — behind, before, This is no common waste, no common gloom; But Nature, in due course of* time, once more Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. She leaves these objects to a slow decay, That what we are, and have been, may be known j But at the coining of the milder day, These monuments shall all be overgrown. One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated the Lake school of poetry ; a school which, with all my respect for it, I do not think sacred from criticism or exempt from faults, of some of which faults I shall speak with becoming frankness ; for I do not see that the liberty of the press ought to be shackled, or free- dom of speech curtailed, to screen either its revolutionary or renegado extravagances. This school of poetry had its origin in the French revolution, or rather in those sentiments and opinions which produced that revolution ; and which sentiments and opinions were indirectly imported into this country in translations from the German about that period. Our poetical literature had, towards the close of the last century, degenerated into the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all things, in the hands of the followers of Pope and the old French school of poetry. It wanted something to stir it up, and it found that some- thing in the principles and events of the French revolution. From the impulse it thus received, it rose at once from the most servile imitation and tamest common-place, to the utmost pitch of singularity and paradox. The change in the belles-lettres was as complete, and to many persons as startling, as the change in politics, with which it went hand in hand. There was a mighty ferment in the heads of statesmen and poets, kings and people. According to the prevailing notions, all was to be natural and new. Nothing that was established f 161 LECTURES OX THE ENGLISH POETS was to be tolerated. All the common-place figures of poetry, tropes, allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were instantly discarded; a classical allusion was considered as a piece of antiquated foppery ; capital letters were no more allowed in print, than letters-patent of nobility were permitted in real life ; kings and queens were dethroned from their rank and station in legitimate tragedy or epic poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere ; rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre was abolished along with regular government. Authority and fashion, elegance or arrangement, were hooted out of countenance, as pedantry and prejudice. Every one did that which was good in his own eyes. The object was to reduce all things to an absolute level ; and a singularly affected and outrageous simplicity prevailed in dress and manners, in style and sentiment. A striking effect produced where it was least expected, something new and original, no matter whether good, bad, or indifferent, whether mean or lofty, extravagant or childish, was all that was aimed at, or considered as compatible with sound philosophy and an age of reason. The licentiousness grew extreme : Coryate's Crudities were nothing to it. The world was to be turned topsy-turvy ; and poetry, by the good will of our Adam- wits, was to share its fate and begin de novo. It was a time of promise, a renewal of the world and of letters ; and the Deucalions, who were to perform this feat of regeneration, were the present poet- laureat and the two authors of the Lyrical Ballads. The Germans, who made heroes of robbers, and honest women of cast-off mistresses, had already exhausted the extravagant and marvellous in sentiment and situation : our native writers adopted a wonderful simplicity of style and matter. The paradox they set out with was, that all things are by nature equally fit subjects for poetry ; or that if there is any preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most unpro- mising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had with them ' neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant bed and procrc-ant cradle.' It was not ' born so high : its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.' It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was hidden in it like a truffle, which it required a particular sagacity and industry to find out and dig up. They founded the new school on a principle of sheer humanity, on pure nature void of art. It could not be said of these sweeping reformers and dictators in the republic of letters, that ' in their train walked crowns and crownets ; that realms and islands, like plates, dropt from their pockets': but they were surrounded, in company with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle [62 ON THE LIVING POETS apprentices and Botany Bay convicts, female vagrants, gipsies, meek daughters in the family of Christ, of ideot boys and mad mothers, and after them 'owls and night-ravens flew.' They scorned 'degrees, priority, and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom in all line of order ' : — the distinctions of birth, the vicissitudes of fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and levelling calculation of human nature. He who was more than man, with them was none. They claimed kindred only with the commonest of the people : peasants, pedlars, and village-barbers were their oracles and bosom friends. Their poetry, in the extreme to which it professedly tended, and was in effect carried, levels all distinctions of nature and society ; has ' no figures nor no fantasies,' which the prejudices of superstition or the customs of the world draw in the brains of men ; ' no trivial fond records ' of all that has existed in the history of past ages ; it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or circumstance, to set it off; 'the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe'; neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony, 'that to great ones 'longs ' : it breaks in pieces the golden images of poetry, and defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them down in the mould of common humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. They took the same method in their new-fangled ' metre ballad-mongering ' scheme, which Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes — of exciting attention by reversing the established standards of opinion and estimation in the world. They were for bringing poetry back to its primitive simplicity and state of nature, as he was for bringing society back to the savage state : so that the only thing remarkable left in the world by this change, would be the persons who had produced it. A thorough adept in this school of poetry and philanthropy is jealous of all excellence but his own. He does not even like to share his reputation with his subject ; for he would have it all proceed from his own power and originality of mind. Such a one is slow to admire any thing that is admirable ; feels no interest in what is most interesting to others, no grandeur in any thing grand, no beauty in anything beautiful. He tolerates only what he himself creates ; he sympathizes only with what can enter into no competition with him, with 'the bare trees and mountains bare, and grass in the green field.' He sees nothing but himself and the universe. He hates all greatness and all pretensions to it, whether well or ill-founded. His egotism is in some respects a madness ; for he scorns even the admiration of himself, thinking it a presumption in any one to suppose that he has taste or sense enough to understand him. He hates all science and all art ; he hates chemistry, he hates conchology ; he hates Voltaire ; he hates Sir Isaac Newton ; he 163 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS hates wisdom ; he hates wit ; he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them ; he hates prose ; he hates all poetry but his own ; he hates the dialogues in Shakespeare ; he hates music, dancing, and painting ; he hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian ; he hates Vandyke ; he hates the antique ; he hates the Apollo Belvidere ; he hates the Venus of MeJicis. This is the reason that so few people take an interest in his writings, because he takes an interest in nothing that others do! — The effect has been perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle has never been distinctly traced to its source before, as far as I know. The proofs are to be found every where — in Mr. Southey's Botany Bay Eclogues, in his book of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscrip- tions, so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Review, in his Joan of Arc, and last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler : ' When Adam delved, and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman ? ' ( — or the poet laureat either, we may ask?) — In Mr. Coleridge's Ode to an Ass's Foal, in his Lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings ; and in his and Mr. Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, passim. Of Mr. Southey's larger epics, I have but a faint recollection at this distance of time, but all that I remember of them is mechanical and extravagant, heavy and superficial. His affected, disjointed style is well imitated in the Rejected Addresses. The difference between him and Sir Richard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy and the other light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical, the one phlegmatic and the other flippant ; and that there is no Gay in the present time to give a Catalogue Raisonne of the performances of the living undertaker of epics. Kehama is a loose sprawling figure, such as we see cut out of wood or paper, and pulled or jerked with wire or thread, to make sudden and surprising motions, without meaning, grace, or nature in them. By far the best of his works are some of his shorter personal compositions, in which there is an ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as his lines on a picture of Gaspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, his Description of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting, beautiful, and modest retrospect on his own character. May the aspiration with which it concludes be fulfilled ! l — But the little he has done of true ; ' U reader ! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly Tree ? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves, ' r >4 ON THE LIVING POETS and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the quantity of indifferent matter which he turns out every year, 'prosing or versing,' with equally mechanical and irresistible facility. His Essays, or political and moral disquisitions, are not so full of original matter as Montaigne's. They are second or third rate compositions in that class. It remains that I should say a few words of Mr. Coleridge ; and there is no one who has a better right to say what he thinks of him Ordered by an intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen ; No grazing cattle through their prickly round Can reach to wound ; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear. I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralize ; And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree Can emblems see Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, Such as may profit in the after time. So, though abroad perchance I might appear Harsh and austere, To those who on my leisure would intrude Reserved and rude, Gentle at home amid my friends I 'd be, Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree ? So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng, So would I seem amid the young and gay More grave than they, That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly Tree.' — I6 5 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS than I have. ' Is there here any dear friend of Caesar ? To him I say, that Brutus's love to Caesar was no less than his.' But no matter. — His Ancient Mariner is his most remarkable performance, and the only one that I could point out to any one as giving an adequate idea of his great natural powers. It is high German, however, and in it he seems to ' conceive of poetry but as a drunken dream, reckless, careless, and heedless, of past, present, and to come.' His tragedies (for he has written two) are not answerable to it; they are, except a few poetical passages, drawling sentiment and meta- physical jargon. He has no genuine dramatic talent. There is one fine passage in his Christabel, that which contains the description of the quarrel between Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine, who had been friends in youth. ' Alas ! they had been friends in youth, But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above ; And life is thorny ; and youth is vain 5 And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain : And thus it chanc'd as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words ot high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother, And parted ne'er to meet again ! But neither ever found another To free the hollow heart from paining — They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between, But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away I ween The marks of that which once hath been. Sir Leoline a moment's space Stood gazing on the damsel's face ; And the youthful lord of Tryermaine Came back upon his heart again.' It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm, and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally fine idea of the state of youthful enthusiasm in which he composed it. 1 66 ON THE LIVING POETS 'Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die, If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry — That in no after moment aught less vast Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout Black Horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout From the more with'ring scene diminish 'd pass'd. Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye, Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood ! Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood, Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy ! ' — His Conc'tores ad Populum, Watchman, &c. are dreary trash. Of his Friend, I have spoken the truth elsewhere. But I may say of him here, that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius. He is the only person from whom I ever learnt any thing. There is only one thing he could learn from me in return, but that he has not. He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever ; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort ; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the ear like the pealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of thought. His mind was clothed with wings ; and raised on them, he lifted philosophy to heaven. In his descriptions, you then saw the progress of human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending and descending, and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder. And shall I, who heard him then, listen to him now ? Not I ! .... That spell is broke ; that time is gone for ever ; that voice is heard no more : but still the recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of long-past years, and rings in my ears with never-dying sound. '■ What though the radiance which was once so bright, Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the fiow'r; I do not grieve, but rather find Strength in what remains behind $ In the primal sympathy, 167 LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS Which having been, must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In years that bring the philosophic mind ! ' — I have thus gone through the task I intended, and have come at last to the level ground. I have felt my subject gradually sinking from under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in nothing. The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every successive step of the progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or second act. This, however, I could not help. I have done as well as I could. End of Lectures on the English Poets it>8 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE JEREMY BENTHAM Mr. Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that ' A prophet has most honour out of his own country.' His reputa- tion lies at the circumference ; and the lights of his understanding are reflected, with increasing lustre, on the other side of the globe. His name is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico. He has ofFered constitutions for the New World, and legislated for future times. The people of Westminster, where he lives, hardly dream of such a person ; but the Siberian savage has received cold comfort from his lunar aspect, and may say to him with Caliban — ' I know thee, and thy dog and thy bush ! ' The tawny Indian may hold out the hand of fellowship to him across the Great Pacific. We believe that the Empress Catherine corresponded with him ; and we know that the Emperor Alexander called upon him, and presented him with his miniature in a gold snuff-box, which the philosopher, to his eternal honour, returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater man at the hustings, Lord Rolle at Plymouth Dock ; but Mr. Bentham would carry it hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is, that our author's influence is purely intellectual. He has devoted his life to the pursuit of abstract and general truths, and to those studies — ' That waft a thought from Indus to the Pole ' — and has never mixed himself up with personal intrigues or party politics. He once, indeed, stuck up a hand-bill to say that he (Jeremy Bentham) being of sound mind, was of opinion that Sir Samuel Romilly was the most proper person to represent Westminster ; but this was the whim of the moment. Otherwise, his reasonings, if true at all, are true everywhere alike : his speculations concern humanity at large, and are not confined to the hundred or the bills of mortality. It is in moral as in physical magnitude. The little is seen best near : the great appears in its proper dimensions, only from 171 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE a more commanding point of view, and gains strength with time, and elevation from distance ! Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among poets : — in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell, reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few, who have the privilege of the entree, are always admitted one by one. He does not like to have witnesses to his conversation. He talks a great deal, and listens to nothing but facts. When any one calls upon him, he invites them to take a turn round his garden with him (Mr. Bentham is an economist of his time, and sets apart this portion of it to air and exercise) — and there you may see the lively old man, his mind still buoyant with thought and with the prospect of futurity, in eager conversation with some Opposition Member, some expatriated Patriot, or Transatlantic Adventurer, urging the extinction of Close Boroughs, or planning a code of laws for some ' lone island in the watery waste,' his walk almost amount- ing to a run, his tongue keeping pace with it in shrill, cluttering accents, negligent of his person, his dress, and his manner, intent only on his grand theme of Utility — or pausing, perhaps, for want of breath and with lack-lustre eye to point out to the stranger a stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overarched by two beautiful cotton-trees) Inscribed to the Prince of Poets, which marks the house where Milton formerly lived. To show how little the refinements of taste or fancy enter into our author's system, he proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the garden where he had breathed the air of Truth and Heaven for near half a century into a paltry Chrestomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble or Westminster to pass backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. Let us not, however, be getting on too fast — Milton himself taught school! There is something not altogether dissimilar between Mr. Bentham's appearance, and the portraits of Milton, the same silvery tone, a few dishevelled hairs, a peevish, yet puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double-chin and 6leek thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and animated acutcness of the other. His eye is quick and lively ; but it glances not from object to object, but from thought to thought. He is evidently a man occupied with some train of fine JEREMY BENTHAM and inward association. He regards the people about him no more han the flies of a summer. He meditates the coming age. He lears and sees only what suits his purpose, or some ' foregone conclusion ' ; and looks out for facts and passing occurrences in order tc put them into his logical machinery and grind them into the dust aid powder of some subtle theory, as the miller looks out for grist to hi; mill ! Add to this physiognomical sketch the minor points of costume, the open shirt-collar, the single-breasted coat, the old fasaioned half-boots and ribbed stockings ; and you will find in Mr. Berrham's general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents a striking illustration of the difference between the philosophical and the regal look ; that is, between the merely abstracted and the merey personal. There is a lack-adaisical honhommie about his whole aspee, none of the fierceness of pride or power ; an unconscious neglect of his own person, instead of a stately assumption of superiority ; a good-humoured, placid intelligence, instead of a lynx- eyed watchfulness, as if it wished to make others its prey, or was afraid they might turn and rend him ; he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not lording it over it ; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which, without that fear and wonder, would in itself be nothing ! Mr. Bentham, perhaps, over-rates the importance of his own theories. He has been heard to say (without any appearance of pride or affectation) that 'he should like to live the remaining years of his life, a year at a time at the end of the next six or eight centuries, to see the effect which his writings would by that time have had upon the world.' Alas! his name will hardly live so long ! Nor do we think, in point of fact, that Mr. Bentham has given any new or decided impulse to the human mind. He cannot be looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legislation or morals. He has not struck out any great leading principle or parent- truth, from which a number of others might be deduced ; nor has he enriched the common and established stock of intelligence with original observations, like pearls thrown into wine. One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so : for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed. But Mr. Bentham's forte is arrangement ; and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects 173 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE of which he treats, in a masterly and scientific manner ; but we should find a difficulty in adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closelv reasoned) any new element of thought, or even t n-.w fact or illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as books of reference, as bringing down the account of intellectual inquiry to the present period, and disposing the results in a con- pendious, connected, and tangible shape ; but books of reference gre chiefly serviceable for facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, aid are constantly liable to be superseded and to grow out of fashion with its progress, as the scaffolding is thrown down as soon as the builoing is completed. Mr. Bentham is not the first writer (by a great msny) who has assumed the principle of utility as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral and political reasoning: — his merit is, th.it he has applied this principle more closely and literally ; that h« has brought all the objections and arguments, more distinctly labelled and ticketted, under this one head, and made a more constant and explicit reference to it at every step of his progress, than any other writer. Perhaps the weak side of his conclusions also is, that he has carried this single view of his subject too far, and not made sufficient allow- ance for the varieties of human nature, and the caprices and irregu- larities of the human will. ' He has not allowed for the wind.' It is nor that you can be said to see his favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the material) — but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific, leaden mace, that he had 1 bound volatile Hermes,' and reduced the theory and practice of human life to a caput mortuum of reason, and dull, plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital logician ; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider man as a logical animal. We fear this view of the matter will hardly hold water. If we attend to the moral man, the constitution of his mind will scarcely be found to be built up of pure reason and a regard to consequences : if we consider the criminal man (with whom the legislator has chiefly to do) v will be found to be still less so. Every pleasure, says Mr. Bentham, is equally a good, and is to be taken into the account as such in a moral estimate, whether it be the pleasure of sense or of conscience, whether it arise from the exercise ot \irtue or the perpetration of crime. We are afraid the human mind does not readily come into this doctrine, this ultima ratio philoso- pborum, interpreted according to the letter. Our moral sentiments made up of sympathies and antipathies, of sense and imagination, D Lerstanding and prejudice. The soul, by reason of its weakness, '7' JEREMY BENTHAM is an aggregating and an exclusive principle ; it clings obstinately to ome things, and violently rejects others. And it must do so, in a jreat measure, or it would act contrary to its own nature. It needs hips and stages in its progress, and ' all appliances and means to bot,' which can raise it to a partial conformity to truth and good (he utmost it is capable of) and bring it into a tolerable harmony wth the universe. By aiming at too much, by dismissing collateral aics, by extending itself to the farthest verge of the conceivable and posible, it loses its elasticity and vigour, its impulse and its direction. Th» moralist can no more do without the intermediate use of rules and principles, without the 'vantage ground of habit, without the leves of the understanding, than the mechanist can discard the use of wheds and pulleys, and perform every thing by simple motion. If the nind of man were competent to comprehend the whole of truth and good, and act upon it at once, and independently of all other considerations, Mr. Bentham's plan would be a feasible one, and tie truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, would be the best possible ground to place morality upon. But it is not so. In ascertaining the rules of moral conduct, we must have regard not merely to the nature of the object, but to the capacity of the agent, and to his fitness for apprehending or attaining it. Pleasure is that which is so in itself: good is that which approves itself as such on reflection, or the idea of which is a source of satisfaction. All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking) equally a good ; for all pleasure does r.ot equally bear reflecting on. There are some tastes that are sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly ; and there is a similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man. Again, what would become of the Posthac meminisse jwvabit of the poet, if a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal truism ? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes us more powerfully than at a distance : things thrown into masses give a greater blow to the imagination than when scattered and divided into their component parts. A number of mole-hills do not make a mountain, though a mountain is actually made up of atoms : so moral truth must present itself under a certain aspect and from a certain point of view, in order to produce its full and proper effect upon the mind. The laws of the affections are as necessary as those of optics. A calculation of consequences is no more equivalent to a sentiment, than a seriatim enumeration of square yards or teet touches the fancy like the sight of the Alps or Andes. 175 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity affect an extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have beei accused of neglecting their duties to their friends and next-doer neighbours. Well, then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no doubt, as much worth in himself, inde- pendently of the circumstances of time or place, as another; but heis not of so much value to us and our affections. Could our imaginaton take wing Cwith our speculative faculties) to the other side of :he globe or to the ends of the universe, could our eyes behold whatrver our reason teaches us to be possible, could our hands reach as fa" as our thoughts and wishes, we might then busy ourselves to advartage with the Hottentots, or hold intimate converse with the inhabitants of the Moon ; but being as we are, our feelings evaporate in so la"ge a space — we must draw the circle of our affections and duties somewhat closer — the heart hovers and fixes nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural affection, are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as frequently to do harm instead of good : but the present question is whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them ? Whether we should shake them oif at pleasure and without mercy, as the only bar to the triumph ot truth and justice ? Or whether benevolence, constructed upon a logical scale, would not be merely nominal, whether duty, raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into callous indifference or hollow selfishness ? Again, is it not to exact too high a strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree of abhorrence we feel against a murderer by taking into our cool consideration the pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge ? We are hardly so formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and his victim. The degree of ire the former may feel, instead of extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shows the depth of his malignity. Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is itself well-disposed ; or the siow process of reason would afford but a feeble resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to give consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so much candour and courtesy to the antagonist principle of evil: virtue, to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and manu- factures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to sweeten 176 JEREMY BENTHAM their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial, as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk, of — this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the bare scheme of contingent utility ; but on the ground that we have stated, it must pass for mere irony. What the proportion between the good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may be a question to the understanding ; but to the imagination and the heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none ! Mr. Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too little stress on the co-operation of the natural prejudices of mankind, and the habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are more particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legis- lation) are philosophers, and governed by their reason : criminals, for whose controul laws are made, are a set of desperadoes, governed only by their passions. What wonder that so little progress has been made towards a mutual understanding between the two parties ! They are quite a different species, and speak a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues, outlaws, and vagabonds ? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his cat ! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an inquiry into the barbarity and the defects of penal laws, the practical improvements have been mostly suggested by reformed cut-throats, turnkeys, and thief-takers. What even can the Honourable House, who when the Speaker has pronounced the well-known, wished-for sounds, ' That this house do now adjourn,' retire, after voting a royal crusade or a loan of millions, to lie on down, and feed on plate in spacious palaces, know of what passes in the hearts of wretches in garrets and night-cellars, petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with their own hands ? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are, therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard, with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the county prisons or the Hulks, and would make a clear breast, some data might be found out to proceed upon ; but as it is, the criminal mind of the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the inside 1 177 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE Mr. Bentham, in his attempts to revise and amend our criminal jurisprudence, proceeds entirely on his favourite principle of Utility. Convince highwaymen and housebreakers that it will be for their interest to reform, and they will reform and lead honest lives; according to Mr. Benrham. He says, 'All men act from calculation, even madmen reason.' And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim to Bedlam or St. Luke's, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by reason ; for it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences both to ourselves and others. You may as well preach philosophy to a drunken man, or to the dead, as to those who are under the instigation of any mischievous passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he ought to be sober ; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform ; he is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course ; he gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible ; he has lost his character, and you advise him to get into some reputable service or lucrative situation ; vice becomes a habit with him, and you request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you warn him if he breaks the law, he will be hanged. None of this reasoning reaches the mark it aims at. The culprit, who violates and suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the dupe of ignorance, but the slave of passion, the victim of habit or necessity. To argue with strong passion, with inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dispelled, and taught better ; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative. They are, in general, too knowing by half. You tell a person of this stamp what is his interest; he says he does not care about his interest, or the world and he differ on that particular. But there is one point on which he must agree with them, namely, what they think of his conduct, and that is the only hold you have of him. A man may be callous and indifferent to what happens to himself; but he is never indifferent to public opinion, or proof against open scorn and infamy. Shame, then, not . is the sheet-anchor of the law. He who is not afraid of being pointed at as a thief, will not mind a month's hard labour. He who is prepared to take the life of another, is already reckless of his own. But every one makes a sorry figure in the pillory ; and the being launched from the New Drop lowers a man in his own opinion. The lawless and violent spirit, who is hurried by head-strong self-will to break the laws, does not like to have the ground of pride and 178 JEREMY BENTHAM obstinacy struck from under his feet. This is what gives the stvells of the metropolis such a dread of the tread-mill — it makes them ridiculous. It must be confessed, that this very circumstance renders the reform of criminals nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension of being stigmatized by public opinion, the fear of what will be thought and said of them, that deters men from the violation of the laws, while their character remains unimpeached ; but honour once lost, all is lost. The man can never be himself again ! A citizen is like a soldier, a part of a machine, who submits to certain hardships, privations, and dangers, not for his own ease, pleasure, profit, or even conscience, but — -for shame. What is it that keeps the machine together in either case ? Not punishment or discipline, but sympathy. The soldier mounts the breach or stands in the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic plies his ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a coward, the other a rogue : but let the one turn deserter and the other vagabond, and there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity, which is no other than a name, a breath, loses its force ; he is no longer sustained by the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his place in society, a useless clog ! Mr. Bentham takes a culprit, and puts him into what he calls a Panopticon, that is, a sort of circular prison, with open cells, like a glass bee-hive. He sits in the middle, and sees all the other does. He gives him work to do, and lectures him if he does not do it. He takes liquor from him, and society and liberty ; but he feeds and clothes him, and keeps him out of mischief; and when he has convinced him, by force and reason together, that this life is for his good, he turns him out upon the world a reformed man, and as confident of the success of his handy-work, as the shoemaker of that which he has just taken off the last, or the Parisian barber in Sterne, of the buckle of his wig. ' Dip it in the ocean,' said the perruquier, ' and it will stand ! ' But we doubt the durability of our projector's patchwork. Will our convert to the great principle of Utility work when he is from under Mr. Bentham's eye, because he was forced to work when under it ? Will he keep sober, because he has been kept from liquor so long ? Will he not return to loose company, because he has had the pleasure of sitting vis-a-vis with a philosopher of late : Will he not steal, now that his hands are untied ? Will he not take the road, now that it is free to him ? Will he not call his benefactor all the names he can set his tongue to, the moment his back is turned ? All this is more than to be feared. The charm of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in hardship, iu danger, and in the contempt of death, iu one word, iu extraoidiuary excite- ment ; and he who has tasted of it, will no mote rtturu to regular 179 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE habits of life, than a man will take to water after drinking brandy, or than a wild beast will give over hunting its prey. Miracles never cease, to be sure ; but they are not to be had wholesale, or to order. Mr. Owen, who is another of those proprietors and patentees ot reform, has lately got an American savage with him, whom he carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an antithesis to his New Vieiu of Society, and as winding up his reasoning to what it mainly wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent visionary of the Lanark cotton-mills really think this natural man will act as a foil to his artificial man : Does he for a moment imagine that his Address to the higher and middle classes, with all its advantages of fiction, makes any thing like so interesting a romance as Hunter s Captivity among the North American Indians ? Has he any thing to show, in all the apparatus of New Lanark and its desolate monotony, to excite the thrill of imagination like the blankets made of wreaths ot snow under which the wild wood-rovers bury themselves for weeks in winter? Or the skin of a leopard, which our hardy adventurer slew, and which served him for great-coat and bedding ? Or the rattle-snake that he found by his side as a bedfellow ? Or his rolling himself into a ball to escape from him ? Or his suddenly placing himself against a tree to avoid being trampled to death by the herd of wild buffaloes, that came rushing on like the sound of thunder? Or his account of the huge spiders that prey on blue-bottles and gilded rlies in green pathless forests ; or of the great Pacific Ocean, that the natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity, and that is to waft them to the spirits of their fathers ? After all this, Mr Hunter must find Mr. Owen and his parallelograms trite and flat, and will, we suspect, take an opportunity to escape from them ! Mr. Bentham's method of reasoning, thougli comprehensive and exact, labours under the defect of most systems — it is too topical. It includes every thing ; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. 1 very possible suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted as much as enlightened by this perplexing accuracy. The exceptions as important as the rule. By attending to the minute, we overlook the great ; and in summing up an account, it will not do merely to insist on the number of items without considering their amount. Our author's page presents a very nicely dove-tailed mosjic pavement ot legal common-places. We slip and slide over its even surface without being arrested any where. Or his view of the human mind resembles a map, rather than a picture : the outline, the disposition is correct, but it wants colouring and relief. There b a technicality of manner, which renders his writings of more value 1 80 JEREMY BENTHAM to thp professional inquirer than to the general reader. Again, his style is unpopular, not to say unintelligible. He writes a language of his own, that darkens knowledge. His works have been translated into French — they ought to be translated into English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and it would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of Manuscript author — he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key to. The construction of his sentences is a curious frame-work with pegs and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance, but almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses, formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin ; and what makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-Jeeds. This is over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has acquired this disability — it is not natural to him. His admirable little work On Usury, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr. Bentham has shut himself up since then 'in nook monastic,' conversing only with followers of his own, or with ' men of Ind,' and has endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style, with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault with the purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style. Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary char- acter. He is a little romantic, or so ; and has dissipated part of a handsome fortune in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises or their conclusions, thinks himself bound in reason to stake his money on the venture. Strict logicians are licenced vision- aries. Mr. Bentham is half-brother to the late Mr. Speaker Abbott ' — Proh pudor! He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about a passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil. He was 1 Now Lord Colchester. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE afterwards at the University, and he has described the scruples or an ingenuous youthful mind about subscribing the articles, in a passage in his Church-of-Englandism, which smacks of truth and honour both, and does one good to read it in an age, when ' to be honest ' (or not to laugh at the very idea of honesty) 'is to be one man picked out of ten thousand ! ' Mr. Bentham relieves his mind sometimes, after the fatigue of study, by playing on a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's prints. He turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn men in the same manner. He has no great fondness for poetry, and can hardly extract a moral out of Shakespeare. His house is warmed and lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees, and is for referring everv thing to Utility. There is a little narrowness in this ; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great fault of this able and extra- ordinary man, that he has concentrated his faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has not ' looked enough abroad into universality.' l WILLIAM GODWIN The Spirit of the Age was never more fully shown than in its treatment of this writer — its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission to prejudice and to the fashion of the day. Five-and- twenty years ago he was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwhole- some popularity ; he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation ; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice was the theme, his name was not tar off: — now he has sunk below the horizon, and enjoys the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality. Mr. Godwin, during his lifetime, ha secured to himself the triumphs and the mortifications of an extreme notoriety and of a sort of posthumous fame. His bark, after being tossed in the revolutionary tempest, now raised to heaven by all the fury of popular breath, now almost dashed in pieces, and buried in the quicksands of ignorance, or scorched with the lightning of momentary indignation, at length floats on the calm wave that is to bear it down the stream of time. Mr. Godwin's person is not known, he is not pointed out in the street, his conversation is not ted, his opinions are not asked, he is at the head of no cabal, 1 Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning. i J2 WILLIAM GODWIN he belongs to no party in the State, he has no train of admirers, no one thinks it worth his while even to traduce and vilify him, he has scarcely friend or foe, the world make a point (as Goldsmith used to say) of taking no more notice of him than if such an individual had never existed ; he is to all ordinary intents and purposes dead and buried ; but the author of Political Justice and of Caleb Williams can never die, his name is an abstraction in letters, his works are standard in the history of intellect. He is thought of now like any eminent writer a hundred-and-fifty years ago, or just as he will be a hundred-and-fifty years hence. He knows this, and smiles in silent mockery of himself, reposing on the monument of his fame — ' Sedet, in eternumque sedebit infelix Theseus.* No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Tom Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him ; Paley an old woman ; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode ; and these were the oracles of thought. ' Throw aside your books of chemistry,' said Wordsworth to a young man, a student in the Temple, ' and read Godwin on Necessity.' Sad necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable ? Is it one thing at twenty, and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, an ^ below zero in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense ! Let us pause here a little. — Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of the time. What then ? Because those opinions were overcharged, were they therefore altogether groundless ? Is the very God of our idolatry all of a sudden to become an abomination and an anathema ? Could so many young men of talent, of education, and of principle have been hurried away by what had neither truth, nor nature, not one particle of honest feeling nor the least show of reason in it ? Is the Modern Philosophy (as it has been called) at one moment a youthful bride, and the next a withered beldame, like the false Duessa in Spenser? Or is the vaunted edifice of Reason, like his House of Pride, gorgeous in front, and dazzling to approach, while 'its hinder parts are ruinous, decayed, and old?' Has the main prop, which supported the mighty fabric, been shaken and given way under the strong grasp of some Samson ; or has it not rather been undermined by rats and vermin ? At one time, it almost seemed, that ' if this failed, The pillar' d firmament was rottenness, And earth's base built of stubble : ' 183 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE now scarce a shadow of it remains, it is crumbled to dust, nor is it even talked of! ' What, then, went ye forth for to see, a reed Bhaken with the wind ? ' Was it for this that our young gownsmen of the greatest expectation and promise, versed in classic lore, steeped in dialectics, armed at all points for the foe, well read, well nurtured, well provided for, left the University and the prospect of lawn sleeves, tearing asunder the shackles of the free born spirit, and the cobwebs of school -divinity, to throw themselves at the feet of the new Gamaliel, and learn wisdom from him ? Was it for this, that students at the bar, acute, inquisitive, sceptical (here only wild enthusiasts) neglected for a while the paths of preferment and the law as too narrow, tortuous, and unseemly to bear the pure and broad light of reason ? Was it for this, that students in medicine missed their way to Lecturerships and the top of their profession, deeming lightly of the health of the body, and dreaming only of the renova- tion of society and the march of mind ? Was it to this that Mr. Southey's Inscriptions pointed? to this that Mr. Coleridge's Religious Musings tended ? Was it for this, that Mr. Godwin himself sat with arms foiled, and, 'like Cato, gave his little senate laws?' Or rather, like another Prospero, uttered syllables that with their enchanted breath were to change the world, and might almost stop the stars in their courses ? Oh ! and is all forgot ? Is this sun of intellect blotted from the sky ? Or has it suffered total eclipse ? Or is it we who make the fancied gloom, by looking at it through the paltry, broken, stained fragments of our own interests and pre- judices? Were we fools then, or are we dishonest now? Or was the impulseof the mind less likely to be true and sound when it arose from high thought and warm feeling, than afterwards, when it was warped and debased by the example, the vices, and follies of the world? The fault, then, of Mr. Godwin's philosophy, in one word, was too much ambition — 'by that sin fell the angels ! ' He conceived too nobly of his fellows (the most unpardonable crime against them, for there is nothing that annoys our self-love so much as being compli- mented on imaginary achievements, to which we are wholly unequal) — he raised the standard of morality above the reach of humanity, and by directing virtue to the most airy and romantic heights, made her path dangerous, solitary, and impracticable. The author of the Political Justice took abstract reason for the rule of conduct, and abstract good for its end. He places the human mind on an elevation, from which it commands a view of the whole line of moral con- sequences ; and requires it to conform its acts to the larger and more enlightened conscience which it has thus acquired. He absolves man from the gross and narrow ties of sense, custom, authority, private 184 WILLIAM GODWIN and local attachment, in order that he may devote himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence. Mr. Godwin gives no quarter to the amiable weaknesses of our nature, nor does he stoop to avail himself of the supplementary aids of an imperfect virtue. Gratitude, promises, friendship, family affection give way, not that they may be merged in the opposite vices or in want of principle ; but that the void may be filled up by the disinterested love of good, and the dictates of inflexible justice, which is * the law of laws, and sovereign of sovereigns.' All minor considerations yield, in his system, to the stern sense of duty, as they do, in the ordinary and established ones, to the voice of necessity. Mr. Godwin's theory, and that of more approved reasoners, differ only in this, that what are with them the exceptions, the extreme cases, he makes the every-day rule. No one denies that on great occasions, in moments of fearful excitement, or when a mighty object is at stake, the lesser and merely instrumental points of duty are to be sacrificed without remorse at the shrine of patriotism, of honour, and of conscience. But the disciple of the Neiv School (no wonder it found so many impugners, even in its own bosom ! ) is to be always the hero of duty ; the law to which he has bound himself never swerves nor relaxes ; his feeling of what is right is to be at all times wrought up to a pitch of enthusiastic self- devotion ; he must become the unshrinking martyr and confessor of the public good. If it be said that this scheme is chimerical and impracticable on ordinary occasions, and to the generality of mankind, wel! and good ; but those who accuse the author of having trampled on the common feelings and prejudices of mankind in wantonness or insult, or without wishing to substitute something better (and only unattainable, because it is better) in their stead, accuse him wrongfully. We may not be able to launch the bark of our affections on the ocean- tide of humanity, we may be forced to paddle along its shores, or shelter in its creeks and rivulets : but we have no right to reproach the bold and adventurous pilot, who dared us to tempt the uncertain abyss, with our own want of courage or of skill, or with the jealousies and impatience, which deter us from undertaking, or might prevent us from accomplishing the voyage ! The Enquiry concerning Political Justice (it was urged by its favourers and defenders at the time, and may still be so, without either profaneness or levity) is a metaphysical and logical commentary on some of the most beautiful and striking texts of Scripture. Mr. Godwin is a mixture of the Stoic and of the Christian philosopher. To break the force of the vulgar objections and outcry that have been raised against the Modern Philosophy, as if it were a new and monstrous birth in morals, it may be worth noticing, that volumes of THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE sermons have been written to excuse the founder of Christianity for not including friendship and private affection among its golden rules, but rather excluding them. 1 Moreover, the answer to the question, ' Who is thy neighbour ? ' added to the divine precept, • Thou shah love thy neighbour as thyself,' is the same as in the exploded pages of our author, — ' He to whom we can do most good.' In determining this point, we were not to be influenced by any extrinsic or collateral considerations, by our own predilections, or the expectations of others, by our obligations to them or any services they might be able to render us, by the climate they were born in, by the house they lived in, by rank or religion, or party, or personal ties, but by the abstract merits, the pure and unbiassed justice of the case. The artificial helps and checks to moral conduct were set aside as spurious and unnecessary, and we came at once to the grand and simple question — * In what manner we could best contribute to the greatest possible good ? ' This was the paramount obligation in all cases whatever, from which we had no right to free ourselves upon any idle or formal pretext, and of which each person was to judge for himself, under the infallible authority of his own opinion and the inviolable sanction of his self- approbation. ' There was the rub that made philosophy of so short life ! ' Mr. Godwin's definition of morals was the same as the admired one of law, reason without passion ; but with the unlimited scope of private opinion, and in a boundless field of speculation (for nothing less would satisfy the pretensions of the New School), there was danger that the unseasoned novice might substitute some prag- matical conceit of his own for the rule of right reason, and mistake a heartless indifference for a superiority to more natural and generous ags. Our ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his 'trenchant-blade' on every vulnerable point of human infirmity ; but there is a want in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, where 'all is ience and tender heart.' Man was indeed screwed up, by mood and iigure, into a logical machine, that was to forward the public good with the utmost punctuality and effect, and it might go very well on smooth ground and under favourable circumstances ; but would it work up-hill or against the grain ? It was to be feared that •he proud Temple of Reason, which at a distance and in stately apposition shone like the palaces of the New Jerusalem, might (when placed on actual ground) be broken up into the sordid styes of J Shaftesbury made this an objection to Christianity, which was answered by r, Leland, and other eminent divines, on the ground that Christianity had a r object in view, namely, general philanthropy. WILLIAM GODWIN sensuality, and the petty huckster's shops of self-interest ! Every man (it was proposed — 'so ran the tenour of the bond ') was to be a Regulus, a Codrus, a Cato, or a Brutus — every woman a Mother of' the Gracchi, ' Tt was well said. And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well.' But heroes on paper might degenerate into vagabonds in practice, Corinnas into courtezans. Thus a refined and permanent individual attachment is intended to supply the place and avoid the incon- veniences of marriage; but vows of eternal constancy, without church security, are found to be fragile. A member of the ideal and perfect commonwealth of letters lends another a hundred pounds for immedi- ate and pressing use ; and when he applies for it again, the borrower has still more need of it than he, and retains it for his own especial, which is tantamount to the public good. The Exchequer of pure reason, like that of the State, never refunds. The political as well as the religious fanatic appeals from the overweening opinion and claims of others to the highest and most impartial tribunal, namely, his own breast. Two persons agree to live together in Chambers en principles of pure equality and mutual assistance — but when it comes to the push, one of them finds that the other always insists on his fetching water from the pump in Hare-court, and cleaning his shoes for him. A modest assurance was not the least indispensable virtue in the new perfectibility code ; and it was hence discovered to be a scheme, like other schemes where there are all prizes and no blanks, for the accommodation of the enterprizing and cunning, at the expence of the credulous and honest. This broke up the system, and left no good odour behind it! Reason has become a sort of bye-word, and philosophy has, 'fallen first into a fasting, then into a sadness, then into a decline, and last, into the dissolution of which we all complain ! ' This is a worse error than the former : we may be said to have ' lost the immortal part of ourselves, and what remains is beastly! ' The point of view from which this matter may be fairly considered, is two-fold, and may be stated thus : — In the first place, it by no means follows, because reason is found not to be the oniy infallible or safe rule of conduct, that it is no rule at all ; or that we are to discard it altogether with derision and ignominy. On the contrary, if not the sole, it is the principal ground of action; it is, 'the guide, the stay and anchor of our purest thoughts, and soul of all our moral being.' In proportion as we strengthen and expand this principle, and bring our affections and subordinate, but perhaps more powerful motives of action into harmony with it, it will not admit of a doubt that we 187 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE advance to the goal of perfection, and answer the ends of our creation, those ends which not only morality enjoins, but which religion sanctions. If with the utmost stretch of reason, man cannot (as some seemed inclined to suppo r e) soar up to the God, and quit the ground of human frailty, yet, stripped wholly of it, he sinks at once into the brute. Jf it cannot stand alone, in its naked simplicity, but requires other props to buttress it up, or ornaments to set it off; yet with- out it the moral structure would fall flat and dishonoured to the ground. Private reason is that which raises the individual above his mere animal instincts, appetites, and passions : public reason in its gradual progress separates the savage from the civilized state. Without the one, men would resemble wild beasts in their dens ; without the other, they would be speedily converted into hordes of barbarians or banditti. Sir Walter Scott, in his zeal to restore the spirit of loyalty, of passive obedience and non-resistance as an acknowledgment for his having been created a Baronet by a Prince of the House of Brunswick, may think it a fine thing to return in imagination to the good old times, ' when in Auvergne alone, there were three hundred nobles whose most ordinary actions were robbery, rape, and murder,' when the castle of each Norman baron was a strong hold from which the lordly proprietor issued to oppress and plunder the neighbouring districts, and when the Saxon peasantry were treated by their gay and gallant tyrants as a herd of loathsome swine — but for our own parts, we beg to be excused ; we had rather live in the same age with the author ot Waverley and Blackwood's Magazine. Reason is the meter and alnager in civil intercourse, by which each person's upstart and con- tradictory pretensions are weighed and approved or found wanting, and without which it could not subsist, any more than traffic or the exchange of commodities could be carried on without weights and measures. It is the medium of knowledge, and the polisher or manners, by creating common interests and ideas. Or in the words ot a contemporary writer, ' Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain let down from heaven, which links all accountable and all intelligent natures in one common system — and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation and fanatic prejudice, we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world, to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break in pieces this golden chain ! We are to discard and throw from us with loud taunts and bitter execrations that reason, which has been the lofty theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose name was not first named to be 188 WILLIAM GODWIN abused by the enthusiasts of the French Revolution, or to be blas- phemed by the madder enthusiasts, the advocates of Divine Right, but which is coeval with, and inseparable from the nature and faculties of man — is the image of his Maker stamped upon him at his birth, the understanding breathed into htm with the breath of life, and in the participation and improvement of which alone he is raised above the brute creation and his own physical nature ! ' — The overstrained and ridiculous pretensions of monks and ascetics were never thought to justify a return to unbridled licence of manners, or the throwing aside of all decency. The hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism, often attendant on peculiar professions of sanctity, have not banished the name of religion from the world. Neither can 'the unreasonableness of the reason ' of some modern sciolists so ' unreason our reason,' as to debar us of the benefit of this principle in future, or to dis- franchise us of the highest privilege of our nature. In the second place, if it is admitted that Reason alone is not the sole and self- sufficient ground of morals, it is to Mr. Godwin that we are indebted for having settled the point. No one denied or distrusted this principle (before his time) as the absolute judge and interpreter in all questions of difficulty ; and if this is no longer the case, it is because he has taken this principle, and followed it into its remotest consequences with more keenness of eye and steadiness of hand than any other expounder of ethics. His grand work is (at least) an experimentum cruets to show the weak sides and imperfections of human reason as the sole law of human action. By overshooting the mark, or by ' flying an eagle flight, forth and right on,' he has pointed out the limit or line of separation, between what is practicable and what is barely conceivable — by imposing impossible tasks on the naked strength of the will, he has discovered how far it is or is not in our power to dispense with the illusions of sense, to resist the calls of affection, to emancipate ourselves from the force of habit ; and thus, though he has not said it himself, has enabled others to say to the towering aspirations after good, and to the over-bearing pride of human intellect — ' Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther ! ' Captain Parry would be thought to have rendered a service to naviga- tion and his country, no less by proving that there is no North- West Passage, than if he had ascertained that there is one : so Mr. Godwin has rendered an essential service to moral science, by attempting (in vain) to pass the Arctic Circle and Frozen Regions, where the understanding is no longer warmed by the affections, nor fanned by the breeze of fancy ! This is the effect of all bold, original, and power- ful thinking, that it either discovers the truth, or detects where error lies; and the only crime with which Mr. Godwin can be charged as 180. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE a political and moral reasoner is, that he has displayed a more ardent spirit, and a more independent activity of thought than others, in establishing the fallacy (if fallacy it be) of an old popular prejudice that the Just and True were one, by ' championing it to the Outrance,' and in the iinal result placing the Gothic structure of human virtue on an humbler, but a wider and safer foundation than it had hitherto occupied in the volumes and systems of the learned. Mr. Godwin is an inventor in the regions of romance, as well as a skilful and hardy explorer of those of moral truth. Caleb Williams and St. Leon are two of the most splendid and impressive works or the imagination that have appeared in our times. It is not merely that these novels are very well for a philosopher to have produced — they are admirable and complete in themselves, and would not lead you to suppose that the author, who is so entirely at home in human character and dramatic situation, had ever dabbled in logic or meta- physics. The first of these, particularly, is a master-piece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the finest possible manner in the character of Falkland 1 ; as in Caleb Williams (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece) we see the very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which these two char- acters are contrived to relieve and set off each other, has never been surpassed in any work of fiction, with the exception of the immortal satire of Cervantes. The restless and inquisitive spirit of Caleb Williams, in search and in possession of his patron's fatal secret, haunts the latter like a second conscience, plants stings in his tortured mind, fans the flames of his jtalous ambition, struggling with agonized remorse ; and the hapless but noble-minded Falkland at length falls a martyr to the persecution of that morbid and overpowering interest, of which his mingled virtues and vices have rendered him the object. We conceive no one ever began Caleb Williams that did not read it through : no one that ever read it could possibly forget it, or speak of it alter any length of time but with an impression as if the events and feelings had been personal to himself. This is the case also with the story of St. Leon, which, with less dramatic interest and intensity of purpose, is set off by a more gorgeous and flowing eloquence, and by a crown of preternatural imagery, that waves over it like a palm- tree ! It is the beauty and the charm of Mr. Godwin's descriptions 1 Mr. Fuseli used to object to this striking delineation a want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an hypercriticisr.i, from all we remember of books of chivalry and heroes of romance. I90 WILLIAM GODWIN that the reader identifies himself with the author ; and the secret of this is, that the author has identified himself with his personages. Indeed, he has created them. They are the proper issue of his brain, lawfully begot, not foundlings, nor the 'bastards of his art.' He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them. There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness of borrowed wealth ; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy, staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given subject from nature or from books, and then fills it up with the ardent workings of his own mind, with the teeming and audible pulses of his own heart. The effect is entire and satisfactory in proportion. The work (so to speak) and the author are one. We are not puzzled to decide upon their respective pretensions. In reading Mr. Godwin's novels, we know what share of merit the author has in them. In reading the Scotch Novels, we are perpetually embarrassed in asking ourselves this question ; and perhaps it is not altogether a false modesty that prevents the editor from putting his name in the title-page — he is (for anything we know to the contrary) only a more voluminous sort of Allen-a-Dale. At least, we may claim this advantage for the English author, that the chains with which he rivets our attention are forged out of his own thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm : we see the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded into stately and ideal forms ; and this is so far better than peeping into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores ! There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition ; namely, that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony. He who draws upon his own resources, easily comes to an end of his wealth. Mr. Godwin, in all his writings, dwells upon one idea or exclusive view of a subject, aggrandises a sentiment, exaggerates a character, or pushes an argument to extremes, and makes up by the force of style and continuity of feeling for what he wants in variety of incident or ease of manner. This necessary defect is observable in his best works, and is still more so in Fleetwood and Mandeville ; the one of which, compared with his more admired performances, is mawkish, and the other morbid. Mr. Godwin is also an essayist, an historian 191 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE — in short, what is lie not, that belongs to the character of an in- defatigable and accomplished author ? His Life of Chaucer would have given celebrity to any man of letters possessed of three thousand a vear, with leisure to write quartos : as the legal acuteness displayed in his Remarks on Judge Eyre's Charge to the Jury would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his profession. This temporary effusion did more — it gave a turn to the trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives of twelve innocent individuals, marked out as political victims to the Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne, and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr. Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and of a life of Chatham. 1 Mr Fawcett (an old friend and fellow-student of our author, and who always spoke of his writings with admiration, tinctured with wonder) used to mention a circumstance with respect to the last- mentioned work, which may throw some light on the history and progress of Mr. Godwin's mind. He was anxious to make his biographical account as complete as he could, and applied for this purpose to many of his acquaintance to furnish him with anecdotes or to suggest criticisms. Amongst others Mr. Fawcett repeated to him what he thought a striking passage in a speech on General Warrants delivered by Lord Chatham, at which he (Mr Fawcett) had been present. 'Every man's house' (said this emphatic thinker and speaker) ' has been called his castle. And why is it called his castle ? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be open to all the elements : the wind may enter in, the rain may enter in— but the king cannot enter in ! ' His friend thought that the point was here palpable enough : but when he came to read the printed volume, he lound it thus transposed'. 'Every man's house is his castle. And why is it called so ? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat ? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements : the rain may enter into it, all the iv'inds of Heaven may whistle round it, but the king cannot, &c.' This was what Fawcett called a defect 1 Wr had forgotten the tragedies of Antonio and Ferdinand. Peace be with thrir n- [92 WILLIAM GODWIN of natural imagination. He at the same time admitted that Mr. Godwin had improved his native sterility in this respect ; or atoned for it by incessant activity of mind and by accumulated stores of thought and powers of language. In fact, his forte is not the spon- taneous, but the voluntary exercise of talent. He fixes his ambition on a high point of excellence, and spares no pains or time in attaining it. He has less of the appearance of a man of genius, than any one who has given such decided and ample proofs of it. He is ready only on reflection : dangerous only at the rebound. He gathers himself up, and strains every nerve and faculty with deliberate aim to some heroic and dazzling achievement of intellect : but he must make a career before he flings himself, armed, upon the enemy, or he is sure to be unhorsed. Or he resembles an eight-day clock that must be wound up long before it can strike. Therefore, his powers of conversation are but limited. He has neither acuteness of remark, nor a flow of language, both which might be expected from his writings, as these are no less distinguished by a sustained and impas- sioned tone of declamation than by novelty of opinion or brilliant tracks of invention. In company, Home Tooke used to make a mere child of him — or of any man ! Mr Godwin liked this treat- ment, 1 and indeed it is his foible to fawn on those who use him cavalierly, and to be cavalier to those who express an undue or unqualified admiration of him. He looks up with unfeigned respect to acknowledged reputation (but then it must be very well ascertained before he admits it) — and has a favourite hypothesis that Understanding and Virtue are the same thing. Mr. Godwin possesses a high degree of philosophical candour, and studiously paid the homage of his pen and person to Mr. Malthus, Sir James Mackintosh, and Dr. Parr, for their unsparing attacks on him ; but woe to any poor devil who had the hardihood to defend him against them ! In private, the author of Political Justice at one time reminded those who knew him of the metaphysician engrafted on the Dissenting Minister. There was a dictatorial, captious, quibbling pettiness of manner. He lost this with the first blush and awkwardness of popularity, which surprised him in the retirement of his study ; and he has since, with the wear and tear of society, from being too pragmatical, become somewhat too careless. He is, at present, as easy as an old glove. Perhaps there x To be sure, it was redeemed by a high respect and by some magnificent com- pliments. Once in particular, at his own table, after a good deal of badinage and cross-questioning about his being the author of the Reply to Judge Eyre's Charge, on Mr. Godwin's acknowledging that he was, Mr. Tooke said, ' Come here then,' — and when his guest went round to his chair, he took his hand, and pressed it to his lips, saying — 'I can do no less for the hand that saved my life !' THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE is a little attention to effect in this, and he wishes to appear a foil to himself. His best moments are with an intimate acquaintance or two, when he gossips in a fine vein about old authors, Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, or Burnet's History of his oivn Time; and you perceive by your host's talk, as by the taste of seasoned wine, that he has a cellarage in his understanding! Mr. Godwin also has a correct acquired taste in poetry and the drama. He relishes Donne and Ben Jonson, and recites a passage from either with an agreeable mixture of pedantry and lonhommie. He is not one of those who do not grow wiser with opportunity and reflection : he changes his opinions, and changes them for the better. The alteration of his taste in poetry, from an exclusive admiration of the age of Queen Anne to an almost equally exclusive one of that of Elizabeth, is, we suspect, owing to Mr. Coleridge, who some twenty years ago, threw a great stone into the standing pool of criticism, which splashed some persons with the mud, but which gave a motion to the surface and a reverberation to the neighbouring echoes, which has not since subsided. In common company, Mr. Godwin either goes to sleep himself, or sets others to sleep. He is at present engaged in a History of the Commonwealth of England. — Esto perpetua ! In size Mr. Godwin is below the common stature, nor is his deportment graceful or animated. His face is, however, fine, with an expression of placid temper and recondite thought. He is not unlike the common portraits of Locke. There is a very admirable likeness of him by Mr. Northcote, which a more heroic and dignified air, only does justice to the profound sagacity and benevolent aspirations of our author's mind. Mr. Godwin has kept the best company of his time, but he has survived most of the celebrated persons with whom he lived in habits of intimacy. He speaks of them with enthusiasm and with discrimination ; and sometimes dwells with peculiar delight on a day passed at John Kemble's in company with Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Curran, Mrs. Wolstonecraft and Mrs. Inchbald, when the conversation took a most animated turn, and the subject was of Love. Of all these our author is the only one remaining. Frail tenure, on which human life and genius are lent us for a while to improve or to enjoy ! MR. COLERIDGE The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers ; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Aits and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, I'M MR. COLERIDGE that we are lost in wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb or add to it ; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the looker-on. What niche remains unoccupied ? What path untried? What is the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who have gone before us ? What hope is there of this? We are like those who have bc?n to see some noble monument of art, who are content to admire without thinking of rivalling it ; or like guests after a feast, who praise the hospitality of the donor ' and thank the bounteous Pan '—perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments ; or like the spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound afar off, and the clashing of armour and the neighing of the war-horse and the shout of victory is in their ears, like the rushing of innumerable waters ! Mr. Coleridge has 'a mind reflecting ages past ' ; his voice is like the echo of the congregated roar of the 'dark rearward and abyss' of thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a chrystal lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye: he who has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a world of vapours), has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and ever-varying forms — ' That which was now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water.' Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) tangential. There is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which he has rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expansive, 'quick, forgetive, apprehensive,' beyond all living precedent, few traces of it will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions alike ; he gives up his mind and liberty of thought to none. He is a general lover of art and science, and wedded to no one in particular. He pursues knowledge as a mistress, with outstretched hands and winged speed; but as he is about to embrace her, his Daphne turns — alas! not to a laurel ! Hardly a speculation has been left on record from the earliest time, but it is loosely folded up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat tattered piece of tapestry : we might add (with more seeming than real extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of man, but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head with rustling pinions. On what- ever question or author you speak, he is prepared to take up the theme with advantage — from Peter Abelard down to Thomas Moore, from 195 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE .btlest metaphysics to the politics of the Courier. There is no man of genius, in whose praise, he descants, but the critic seems to stand above the author, and what in him is weak, to strengthen, what is low, to raise and support ' : nor is there any work of genius that docs not come out of his hands like an illuminated Missal, sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest writer ; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. If he had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician ; if he had not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, he might have soared to the very summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying to subject the Muse to transcendental theories : in his abstract reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with flowers. All that he has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago : since then, he may be said to have lived on the sound of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too rich in intellectual wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery : he has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or losing themselves in endless obscurity — ' And by the force of blear illusion, They draw him on to his confusion.' What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up a name, or to polish an idle fancy ? He walks abroad in the majesty of an universal understanding, eyeing the « rich strond,' or golden sky above him, and 'goes sounding on his way,' in eloquent accents, uncompelled and free ! Persons of the greatest capacity are often those, who for this reason do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view, amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it .seems trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the con- dition of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is hard to concentrate all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, real progress can be made in any one thing. It is not merely •he mind is not capable of the effort ; it does not think the effort worth making. Action is one ; but thought is manifold. He whose eye glances through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have 'his own nothings monslered ' : but he must do MR. COLERIDGE this, before he can give his whole soul to them. The rain J, after ' letting contemplation have its fill,' or ' Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air,' sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerlesss, in- active ; or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and obvious ; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams! A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character than a mere author. The first looks at the numberless volumes of a library, and says, * All these are mine ' : the other points to a single volume (perhaps it may be an immortal one) and says, 'My name is written on the back of it.' This is a puny and groveling ambition, beneath the lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wayward soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow, things mightier and more various ! — Let us draw the curtain, and unlock the shrine. Learning rocked him in his cradle, and while yet a child, ' He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.' At sixteen he wrote his Ode on Chatterton, and he still reverts to that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for that string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than otherwise) but as exemplifying the youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks of himself, without being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged in the abstract and general. He distinguished himself at school and at the University by his knowledge of the classics, and gained several prizes for Greek epigrams. How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated names in literature) who having done the same thing in their youth, have no other idea all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of a fellowship and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would look down on our author as a mere strolling bard ! At Christ's Hospital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among his schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish studies the music of thought and of humanity ; and he was usually attended round the cloisters by a group of these (inspiring and inspired) whose hearts, even then, burnt within them as he talked, and where the sounds yet linger to mock Elia on his way, still turning pensive to the past ! One of the finest and rarest parts of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, is when he expatiates on the Greek tragedians (not that he is not v/ell acquai: TQ7 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE when he pleases, with the epic poets, or the philosophers, or orators, or historians of antiquity) — on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos of Euripides, on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove ; on the high-wrought trumpet-tongued eloquence of iEschylus, whose Prometheus, above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a plead- ing with Providence, his thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock, and his afflicted will (the emblem of mortality) 'Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.' As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would think you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, con- tending with the wild winds as they roar, and his eye glitters with the spirit of Antiquity ! Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, 'etherial braid, thought-woven,' — and he busied himself for a year or two with vibrations and vibratiuncles and the great law of association that binds all things in its mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the mild teacher of Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to come — and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter and Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's Materialism, where he felt himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's fairy- world, 1 and used in all companies to build the universe, like a brave poetical fiction, of fine words — and he was deep-read in Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, unwieldy, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the fir.e thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age — and Leibnitz's Pre-Establ\shed Harmony reared its arch above his head, like the rainbow in the cloud, convenanting with the hopes of man — and then he : ell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved him harmless) into the hortus siccus of Dissent, where he pared religion down to the standard of reason, and stripped faith of mystery, and 1 Mr. Co!crid(.'c named bis eldest son (the writer of some beautiful Sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished— 'And so by many winding nooks it strays, With willing sport to the wild ocean !' 198 MR. COLERIDGE preached Christ crucified and the Unity of the Godhead, and so dwelt for a while in the spirit with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and ran through Neal's History of the Puritans, and Calamy's Non-Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with them — but then Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of being in his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of all things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the mighty Pan — but poetry redeemed him from this spectral philosophy, and he bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the golden light of heaven, and drank of the spirit of the universe, and wandered at eve by fairy-stream or fountain, ' When he saw nought but beauty, When he heard the voice of that Almighty One In every breeze that blew, or wave that murmured ' — and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of Proclus and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind, and unfolded all mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, and walked hand in hand with Sweden- borg through the pavilions of the New Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the promise and in the word in his Religious Musings — and lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised himself on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and studied Cowper's blank verse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's), and dallied with the British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire, and Marivaux, and Crebillon, and thousands more — now ' laughed with Rabelais in his easy chair ' or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, or spoke with rapture of Raphael, and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out of his pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of the picture of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and shrink before it ; 199 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE and in that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas, — or wandered into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who — this was long after, but all the former while, he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in darkness and in blood, and had kindled his affections at the blaze of the French Revolution, and sang for joy when the towers of the Bastile and the proud places of the insolent and the oppressor fell, and would have floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, across the Atlantic wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom — ' In Philarmonia's undivided dale !' Alas ! ' Frailty, thy name is Genius ! ' — What is become of all this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and humanity ? It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing paragraphs in the Courier. — Such and so little is the mind of man ! It was not to be supposed that Mr. Coleridge could keep on at the rate he set off; he could not realize all he knew or thought, and less could not fix his desultory ambition ; other stimulants supplied the place, and kept up the intoxicating dream, the fever and the madness of his early impressions. Liberty (the philosopher's and the poet's bride) had fallen a victim, meanwhile, to the murderous practices of the hag, Legitimacy. Proscribed by court-hirelings, too romantic for the herd of vulgar politicians, our enthusiast stood at bay, and at last turned on the pivot of a subtle casuistry to the unclean side : but his discursive reason would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed that well-known ' bourne from whence no traveller returns ' — and so has sunk into torpid, uneasy repose, tantalized by useless resources, haunted by vain imaginings, his lips idly moving, but his heart for ever still, or, as the shattered chords vibrate of them- selves, making melancholy music to the ear of memory ! Such is the fate of genius in an age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice and loathsome power. Of all Mr. Coleridge's productions, the Ancient Mariner is the only one that we could with confidence put into any person's hands, on whom wc wished to impress a favourable idea of his extraordinary 200 MR. COLERIDGE powers. Let whatever other objections be made to it, it is unques- tionably a work or genius — of uild, irregular, overwhelming imagina- tion, and has that rich, varied movement in the verse, which gives a distant idea of the lofty or changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice. In the Christabel, there is one splendid passage on divided friendship. The Translation of Schiller s Wallenste'tn is also a masterly production in its kind, faithful and spirited. Among his smaller pieces there are occasional bursts of pathos and fancy, equal to what we might expect from him ; but these form the exception, and not the rule. Such, for instance, is his affecting Sonnet to the author of the Robbers. ' Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die, If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry — That in no after-moment aught less vast Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout From the more withVing scene diminish'd pass'd. Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, WandVing at eve, with finely frenzied eye, Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood ! Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood, Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy.' His Tragedy, entitled Remorse, is full of beautiful and striking passages, but it does not place the author in the first rank of dramatic writers. But if Mr. Coleridge's works do not place him in that rank, they injure instead of conveying a just idea of the man, for he himself is certainly in the first class of general intellect. If our author's poetry is inferior to his conversation, his prose is utterly abortive. Hardly a gleam is to be found in it of the brilliancy and richness of those stores of thought and language that he pours out incessantly, when they are lost like drops of water in the ground. The principal work, in which he has attempted to embody his general views of things, is the Friend, of which, though it contains some noble passages and fine trains of thought, prolixity and obscurity are the most frequent characteristics. No two persons can be conceived more opposite in character or genius than the subject of the present and of the preceding sketch. Mr. Godwin, with less natural capacity, and with fewer acquired advantages, by concentrating his mind on some given object, and doing what he had to do with all his might, has accomplished much, and will leave more than one monument of a powerful intellect behind 201 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE him ; Mr. Coleridge, by dissipating his, and dallying with every subject by turns, has done little or nothing to justify to the world or to posterity, the high opinion which all who have ever heard him converse, or known him intimately, with one accord entertain of him. Mr. Godwin's faculties have kept at home, and plied their task in the workshop of the brain, diligently and effectually : Mr. Coleridge's have gossiped away their time, and gadded about from house to house, as if life's business were to melt the hours in listless talk. Mr. Godwin is intent on a subject, only as it concerns himself and his reputation ; he works it out as a matter of duty, and discards from his mind whatever does not forward his main object as impertinent and vain. Mr. Coleridge, on the other hand, delights in nothing but episodes and digressions, neglects whatever he undertakes to perform, and can act only on spontaneous impulses, without object or method. 'He cannot be constrained by mastery.' While he should be occupied with a given pursuit, he is thinking of a thousand other things ; a thousand tastes, a thousand objects tempt him, and distract his mind, which keeps open house, and entertains all comers ; and after being fatigued and amused with morning calls from idle visitors, finds the day consumed and its business unconcluded. Mr. Godwin, on the contrary, is somewhat exclusive and unsocial in his habits of mind, entertains no company but what he gives his whole time and attention to, and wisely writes over the doors of his understanding, his fancy, and his senses — ' No admittance except on business.' He has none of that fastidious refinement and false delicacy, which might lead him to balance between the endless variety of modern attain- ments. He does not throw away his life (nor a single half-hour of it) in adjusting the claims of different accomplishments, and in choos- ing between them or making himself master of them all. He sets about his task, (whatever it mav be) and goes through it with spirit and fortitude. He has the happiness to think an author the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest author in it. Mr. Coleridge, in writing an harmonious stanza, would stop to consider whether there was not more grace and beauty in a Pas de trois, and would not proceed till he had resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning without end. Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him, which he can do best. He does not waste himself in vain aspirations and effeminate sympathies. He is blind, deaf, insensible to all but the trump of Fame. Plays, operas, painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth, fashion, titles, lords, ladies, touch him not — all these are no more to him than to the magician in his cell, and he writes on to the end of the chapter, through good report and evil report. Pingo in eternitatem — is his motto. He neither envies nor 202 MR. COLERIDGE admires what others are, but is contented to be what he is, and strives to do the utmost he can. Mr. Coleridge has flirted with the Muses as with a set of mistresses : Mr. Godwin has been married twice, to Reason and to Fancy, and has to boast no short-lived progeny by each. So to speak, he has valves belonging to his mind, to regulate the quantity of gas admitted into it, so that like the bare, unsightly, but well-compacted steam-vessel, it cuts its liquid way, and arrives at its promised end : while Mr. Coleridge's bark, ' taught with the little nautilus to sail,' the sport of every breath, dancing to every wave, ' Youth at its prow, and Pleasure at its helm,' flutters its gaudy pennons in the air, glitters in the sun, but we wait in vain to hear of its arrival in the destined harbour. Mr. Godwin, with less variety and vividness, with less subtlety and susceptibility both of thought and feeling, has had firmer nerves, a more determined purpose, a more comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the results are as we find them. Each has met with his reward : for justice has, after all, been done to the pretensions of each ; and we must, in all cases, use means to ends ! It was a misfortune to any man of talent to be born in the latter end of the last century. Genius stopped the way of Legitimacy, and therefore it was to be abated, crushed, or set aside as a nuisance. The spirit of the monarchy was at variance with the spirit of the age. The flame of liberty, the light of intellect, was to be extinguished with the sword — or with slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword. The war between power and reason was carried on by the first of these abroad — by the last at home. No quarter was given (then or now) by the Government-critics, the authorised censors of the press, to those who followed the dictates of independence, who listened to the voice of the tempter, Fancy. Instead of gathering fruits and flowers, immortal fruits and amaranthine iiowers, they soon found themselves beset not only by a host of prejudices, but assailed with all the engines of power, by nicknames, by lies, by all the arts of malice, interest and hypocrisy, without the possibility of their defending themselves ' from the pelting of the pitiless storm,' that poured down upon them from the strong-holds of corruption and authority. The philosophers, the dry abstract reasoners, submitted to this reverse pretty well, and armed themselves with patience ' as with triple steel,' to bear discomfiture, persecution, and disgrace But the poets, the creatures of sympathy, could not stand the frowns both of king and people. They did not like to be shut out when places and pensions, when the critic's praises, and the laurel-wreath were about to be distributed. They did not stomach being sent to 20? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE Coventry, and Mr. Coleridge sounded a retreat for them by the help of casuistry, and a musical voice. — ' His words were hollow, but they pleased the ear ' of his friends of the Lake School, who turned back disgusted and panic-struck from the dry desert of unpopularity, like Hassan the camel-driver, ' And curs'd the hour, and cursM the luckless day, When first from Shiraz' walls they bent their way.' They are safely inclosed there, but Mr. Coleridge did not enter with them ; pitching his tent upon the barren waste without, and having no abiding place nor city of refuge ! REV. MR. IRVING Thi.- gentleman has gained an almost unprecedented, and not an altogether unmerited popularity as a preacher. As he is, perhaps, though a burning and a shining light, not ' one of the fixed,' we shall take this opportunity of discussing his merits, while he is at his meridian height ; and in doing so, shall ' nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.' Few circumstances show the prevailing and preposterous rage for novelty in a more striking point of view, than the success of Mr. Irving' s oratory. People go to hear him in crowds, and come away with a mixture of delight and astonishment — they go again to see if the effect will continue, and send others to try to find out the mystery — and in the noisy conflict between extravagant encomiums and splenetic objections, the true secret escapes observation, which is, that the whole thing is, nearly from beginning to end, a transposition of ideas. If the subject of these remarks had come out as a player, with all his advantages of figure, voice, and action, we think he would have failed ; if, as a preacher, he had kept within the strict bounds of pulpit-oratory, he would scarcely have been much dis- tinguished among his Calvinistic brethren : as a mere author, he would have excited attention rather by his quaintness and affectation of an obsolete style and mode of thinking, than by any thing else. But he has contrived to jumble these several characters together in an unheard-of and unwarranted manner, and the fascination is altogether irresistible. Our Caledonian divine is equally an anomaly in religion, in literature, in personal appearance, and in public speaking. To hear a person spout Shakspeare on the stage is nothing — the charm is nearly worn out — but to hear any one spout Shakspeare (and that 204 REV. MR. IRVING not in a sneaking under-tone, but at the top of his voice, and with the full breadth of his chest) from a Calvinistic pulpit, is new and wonderful. The Fancy have lately lost something of their gloss in public estimation, and after the last fight, few would go far to see a Neat or a Spring set-to ; — but to see a man who is able to enter the ring with either of them, or brandish a quarter-staff with Friar Tuck, or a broad-sword with Shaw the Life-guard's man, stand up in a strait-laced old-fashioned pulpit, and bandy dialectics with modern philosophers, or give a cross-buttock to a cabinet minister, there is something in a sight like this also, that is a cure for sore eyes. It is as if Crib or Molyneux had turned Methodist parson, or as if a Patagonian savage were to come forward as the patron-saint of Evangelical religion. Again, the doctrine ot eternal punishment was one of the staple arguments with which, everlastingly drawled out, the old school of Presbyterian divines used to keep their audiences awake, or lull them to sleep ; but to which people of taste and fashion paid little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his cast-iron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan, set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the Scripture-caution, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on old garments. He has, with an unlimited and daring licence, mixed the sacred and the profane together, the carnal and the spiritual man, the petulance of the bar with the dogmatism of the pulpit, the theatrical and theo- logical, the modern and the obsolete; — what wonder that this splendid piece of patchwork, splendid by contradiction and contrast, has delighted some and confounded others ? The more serious part of his congregation indeed complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor has converted their meeting-house into a play-house : but when a lady of quality, introducing herself and her three daughters to the preacher, assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of resort, the opera, the theatre, assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings, and Exeter-Change, and have been equally entertained no where else, we apprehend that no remonstrances of a committee of ruling-elders will be able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet, but ill-assorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has been extolled, but to a combination of qualities, the more striking in their immediate effect, in proportion as they are unlooked-for and heterogeneous, like the violent opposition 205 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE of light and shade in a picture. We shall endeavour to explain this view of the subject more at large. Mr. Irving, then, is no common or mean man. He has four or five qualities, possessed in a moderate or in a paramount degree, which, added or multiplied together, fill up the important space he occupies in the public eye. Mr. Irving's intellect itself is of a superior order ; he has undoubtedly both talents and acquirements beyond the ordinary run of every-day preachers. These alone, however, we hold, would not account for a twentieth part of the effect he has produced : they would have lifted him perhaps out of the mire and slough of sordid obscurity, but would never have launched him into the ocean-stream of popularity, in which he ' lies floating many a rood ' ; — but to these he adds uncommon height, a graceful figure and action, a clear and powerful voice, a striking, if not a fine face, a bold and fiery spirit, and a most portentous obliquity of vision, which throw him to an immeasurable distance bevond all competition, and effectually relieve whatever there might be of common-place or bombast in his style of composition. Put the case that Mr. Irving had been five feet high — Would he ever have been heard of, or, as he does now, have * bestrode the world like a Colossus ? ' No, the thing speaks for itself. He would in pain have lifted his Lilliputian arm to Heaven, people would have Lm. ied at his monkey-tricks. Again, had he been as tall as he is, but had wanted other recommendations, he would have been nothing. ' The player's province they but vainly try, Who want these powers, deportment, voice, and eye.' Conceive a rough, ugly, shock-headed Scotchman, standing up in the Caledonian Chapel, and dealing ' damnation round the land ' in a broad northern dialect, and with a harsh, screaking voice, what ear polite, what smile serene would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not consigned him to utter neglect and derision ? But the Rev. Edward Irving, with all his native wildness, ' hath a smooth aspect framed to make women ' saints ; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of gesture ; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the otherwise 'faultless monster' within the bounds of humanity, and, when admiration is exhausted and curiosity ceases, excites a new interest by leading to the idle question whether it is an advantage to the preacher or not. Farther, give him all his 206 REV. MR. IRVING actual and remarkable advantages of body and mind, let him be as tall, as strait, as dark and clear of skin, as much at his ease, as silver- tongued, as eloquent and as argumentative as he is, yet with all these, and without a little charlatanery to set them off he had been nothing. He might, keeping within the rigid line of his duty and professed calling, have preached on for ever ; he might have divided the old-fashioned doctrines of election, grace, reprobation, predestina- tion, into his sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth heads, and his lastly have been looked for as a ' consummation devoutly to be wished ' ; he might have defied the devil and all his works, and by the help of a loud voice and strong-set person — ' A lusty man to ben an Abbot able ; ' — have increased his own congregation, and been quoted among the godly as a powerful preacher of the word ; but in addition to this, he went out of his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something superior in him, to look over the shining close- packed heads of his congregation to have a hit at the Great Juris- consult in his study. He next, ere the report of the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced an eye at Mr. Canning; mystified Mr. Coleridge, and stultified Lord Liverpool in his place — in the Gallery. It was rare sport to see him, ' like an eagle in a dovecote, flutter the Volscians in Corioli.' He has found out the secret of attracting by repelling. Those whom he is likely to attack are curious to hear what he says of them : they go again, to show that they do not mind it. It is no less interesting to the bystanders, who like to witness this sort of onslaught — like a charge of cavalry, the shock, and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress ; — he merely makes use of the strong-hold of religion as a resting-place, from which he sallies forth, armed with modern topics and with penal fire, like Achilles of old rushing from the Grecian tents, against the adversaries of God and man. Peter Aretine is said to have laid the Princes of Europe under contribution by penning satires against them : so Mr. Irving keeps the public in awe by insulting all their favourite idols. He does not spare their politicians, their rulers, their moralists, their 207 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE poets, their players, their critics, their reviewers, their magazine- writers ; he levels their resorts of business, their places of amusement, at a blow — their cities, churches, palaces, ranks and professions, refinements, and elegances — and leaves nothing standing but himself, a mighty landmark in a degenerate age, overlooking the wide havoc he has made ! He makes war upon all arts and sciences, upon the faculties and nature of man, on his vices and his virtues, on all existing institutions, and all possible improvements, that nothing may be left but the Kirk of Scotland, and that he may be the head of it. He literally sends a challenge to all London in the name of the King of Heaven, to evacuate its streets, to disperse its population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to renounce its vanities and pomp ; and for what ? — that he may enter in as the King of Glory ; or after enforcing his threat with the battering-ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the cross-fire of his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath, with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God according to the root of the matter, and where an old man with a blue bonnet, a fair-haired girl, and a little child would form the flower of his flock ! Such is the pretension and the boast of this new Peter the Hermit, who would get rid of all we have done in the way of improvement on a state of barbarous ignorance, or still more barbarous prejudice, in order to begin again on a tabula rasa of Calvinism, and have a world of his own making. It is not very surprising that when nearly the whole mass and texture of civil society is indicted as a nuisance, and threatened to be pulled down as a rotten building ready to fall on the heads of the inhabitants, that all classes of people run to hear the crash, and to see the engines and levers at work which are to effect this laudable purpose. What else can be the meaning of our preacher's taking upon himself to denounce the sentiments of the most serious professors in great cities, as vitiated and stark-naught, of relegating religion to his native glens, and pretending that the hymn of praise or the sigh of contrition cannot ascend acceptably to the throne of grace from the crowded street as well as from the barren rock or silent valley ? Why put this affront upon his hearers ? Why belie his own aspirations ? ' God made the country, and man made the town.* So says the poet ; does Mr. Irving say so ? If he does, and finds the air of the city death to his piety, why does he not return home ? But if he can breathe it with impunity, and still retain the fervour of his early enthusiasm, and the simplicity and purity of the faith that was once delivered to the saints, why not extend the benefit 208 REV. MR. IRVING of his own experience to others, instead of taunting them with a vapid pastoral theory? Or, if our popular and eloquent divine finds a change in himself, that flattery prevents the growth of grace, that he is becoming the God of his own idolatry by being that of others, that the glittering of coronet-coaches rolling down Holborn-Hill to Hatton Garden, that titled beauty, that the parliamentary complexion of his audience, the compliments of poets, and the stare of peers discompose his wandering thoughts a little ; and yet that he cannot give up these strong temptations tugging at his heart ; why not extend more charity to others, and show more candour in speaking of himself? There is either a good deal of bigoted intolerance with a deplorable want of self-knowledge in all this ; or at least an equal degree of cant and quackery. To which ever cause we are to attribute this hyperbolical tone, we hold it certain he could not have adopted it, if he had been a little man. But his imposing figure and dignified manner enable him to hazard sentiments or assertions that would be fatal to others. His controversial daring is bached by his bodily prowess ; and by bringing his intellectual pretensions boldly into a line with his physical accomplishments, he, indeed, presents a very formidable front to the sceptic or the scoffer. Take a cubit from his stature, and his whole manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he overcrows the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one less than himself. It may be said, that individuals with great personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers ; and Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing can be more insignificant as to mere outward ap] earance, and yet he is listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible, cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth, now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a large estate, the ' saints,' and the population of Yorkshire to swell his influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more than 'hitting the house between wind and water.' Yet he is probably a cleverer man than Mr. Irving. There is a Mr. Fox, a Dissenting Minister, as fluent a speaker, with a sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr. Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting, takes a hand at whist, and is the darling of his congregation ; but he is no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is 209 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE not seen above the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in miniature, hut the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower, and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to produce this equality without a single personal advantage ; but we deny that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses. We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power, that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking, and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, how- ever paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions. He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the esprit de corps. He has brought back the doctrines of Calvinism in all their inveteracy, and relaxed the inveteracy of his northern accents. He has turned religion and the Caledonian Chapel topsy-turvy. He has held a play-book in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and quoted Shakespeare and Melancthon in the same breath. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is no longer, with his grafting, a dry withered stump ; it shoots its branches to the skies, and hangs out its blossoms to the gale — • Miraturque novos fructus, et non sua poma.' He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, and garlanded them with the flowers of modern literature. He has done all this, relying on the strength of a remarkably fine person and manner, and through that he has succeeded — otherwise he would have perished miserably. Dr. Chalmers is not by any means so good a looking man, nor so accomplished a speaker as Mr. Irving ; yet he at one time almost equalled his oratorical celebrity, and certainly paved the way for him. He has therefore more merit than his admired pupil, as he has done as much with fewer means. He has more scope of intellect and more intensity of purpose. Both his matter and his manner, setting aside his face and figure, are more impressive. Take the volume of ' Sermons on Astronomy,' by Dr. Chalmers, and the « Four Orations for the Oracles of God ' which Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country, were the darlings of 2JO REV. MR. IRVING watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, 1 and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while the ' Orations' get on but slowly, on Milton's stilts, and are pompously announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The reason is, that the ground work of his compositions is trashy and hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected phraseology ; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his periods have nothing in them ; and that he himself is the only idea with which he has yet enriched the public mind ! He must play off his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his diamond- ring. The small frontispiece prefixed to the ' Orations ' does not serve to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the man, nor of the ease and freedom of his motions in the pulpit. How different is Dr. Chalmers! He is like 'a monkey-preacher' to the other. He cannot boast of personal appearance to set him off. But then he is like the very genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither airs nor graces at command ; he thinks nothing of himself: he has nothing theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and rival) ; but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing them with his hands, and strain- ing his eyeballs till they almost start out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like a Highland-seer with his second sight. The description of Balfour of Burley in his cave, with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the other, contending with the imaginary enemy of mankind, gasping for breath, and with the cold moisture running down his face, gives a lively idea of Dr. Chalmers's prophetic fury in the pulpit. If we could have looked in to have seen Burley hard-beset ' by the coinage of his heat- oppressed brain,' who would have asked whether he was a handsome man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the deter- mined way in which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets sceptics and gain-sayers, arrests attention in spite of every other circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites such interest and such eagerness in his own breast ! Besides, he is a logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to 1 We remember finding the volume in the orchard at Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree. We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving'f book, the same compliment of reading it at a sitting. 211 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE advance, and weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. 'There's magic in the web.' Whatever appeals to the pride of the human understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers, and upon the readers of his ' Astronomical Dis- courses.' No one was satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a riddle. ' By his so potent art,' the art of laying down problematical premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible, conclusions, ' he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and the azure vault set roaring war,' and almost compel the stars in their courses to testify to his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information 'now of the planetary and now of the fixed,' might put one in mind of ite's mocie of ascending in a machine from the stage, 'midst troops of spirits,' in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The styie of these ' Discourses ' also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The impression on the reader was proportionate ; for, what- ever were the merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking ; and the train of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness, was bold, well-sustained, and consistent with itself. Air. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which distinguishes his rival — and shines by patches and in bursts. He does not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the highest point of genius or fanaticism, but ' in the very storm and whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may give it smoothness.' He has the self-possession and masterly execution of an experienced player or fencer, and does not seem to express his natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal appearance, which 'to be admired needs but to be seen,' and does not require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use any violent contortions to gain attention 2 12 THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOK I 2 or to keep it. These two celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a little anthropomorphihsm, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from that scandal. THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE Mr. Horne Tooke was one of those who may be considered as connecting links between a former period and the existing generation. His education and accomplishments, nay, his political opinions, were of the last age ; his mind, and the tone of his feelings were modern. There was a hard, dry materialism in the very texture of his under- standing, varnished over by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great scope of attainment, ind great versatility of pursuit ; but the same shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same literalness of perception, and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly all he did, said, or wrote. He was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!) — no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public. His mind (so to speak) had no religion in it, and very little even of the moral qualities of genius ; but he was a man of the world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was also a wit, and a for- midable one : yet it may be questioned whether his wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty : it did not consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of the understanding. ' The law is open to every one : so,' said Mr. Tooke, ' is the London Tavern ! ' It is the previous deduction formed in the mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that beats about the bush for, and at last finds the apt illustra- tion ; not the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that points out an absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Allan Gardiner (who was a candidate for Westminster) had objected to Mr. Fox, that 'he was always against the minister, 21.1 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE •whether right or wrong,' and Mr. Fox, in his reply, had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke immediately seized on it, and said, ' he thought it at least an equal objection to Sir Allan, that he was alwavs tvith the minister, whether right or wrong.' This retort had all the effect, and produced the same surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy: yet it was only the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a kind of legal pertinacity, or rather by a rigid and constant habit of attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence. Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer ; but it was applied to a vast variety of topics and general trains of speculation. Mr. Home Tooke was in private company, and among his friends, the finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fasci- nating as his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the burden of the song of ' The King's Old Courtier, and an Old Courtier of the King's.' He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of fashionable nonchalance, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition, or in the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle of deference for the opinion of others, nor of sympathy with their feelings ; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend — ' Lord of himself, uncumbered with a creed V He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the losing side ; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them. He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the ontu probandi on his adversary ; and so could maintain almost any opinion, however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the conversation of every other person to be flat in the 214 THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE comparison ; but that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wish- ing to know the meaning of the common copulative, Is. Once at G 's, he defended Pitt from a charge of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not maintain?) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the prefer- ence he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the living ; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in the same breath, that Addison's stvle was without modulation, and that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and gave law to his guests — and to the world ! No man knew better bow to manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, ' Speak up, young man ! ' — and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of Mr. Home Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time, after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to show that it was still full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the Road to Ruin) was one of the most violent and fiery- spirited of all that motley crew of persons, who attended the Sunday meetings at Wimbledon. One day he was so enraged by some paradox or raillery of his host, that he indignantly rose from his chair, and said, * Mr. Tooke, you are a scoundrel ! ' His opponent with- out manifesting the least emotion, replied, ' Mr. Holcroft, when is it that I am to dine with you ? shall it be next Thursday ? ' — « If you please, Mr. Tooke ! ' answered the angry philosopher, and sat down again. — It was delightful to see him sometimes turn from these waspish or ludicrous altercations with over-weening antagonists to some old friend and veteran politician seated at his elbow ; to hear him recal the time of Wilkes and Liberty, the conversation mellow- 215 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ing like the wine with the smack, of age ; assenting to all the old man said, bringing out his pleasant traits, and pampering him into childish self-importance, and sending him away thirty years younger than he came As a public or at least as a parliamentary speaker, Mr. Tooke did not answer the expectations that had been conceived of him, or probably that he had conceived of himself. It is natural for men who have felt a superiority over all those whom they happen to have encountered, to fancv that this superiority will continue, and that it will extend from individuals to public bodies. There is no rule in the case ; or rather, the probability lies the contrary way. That which constitutes the excellence of conversation is of little use in addressing large assemblies of people ; while other qualities are required that are hardly to be looked for in one and the same capacity. The way to move great masses of men is to show that you yourself are moved. In a private circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph of the speaker — it is a personal contest, and depends on personal and momentary advantages. But in appealing to the public, no one triumphs but in the triumph of some public cause, or by showing a sympathy with the general and pre- dominant feelings of mankind. In a private room, a satirist, a sophist may provoke admiration by expressing his contempt for each of his adversaries in turn, and by setting their opinion at defiance — but when men are congregated together on a great public question and for a weighty object, they must be treated with more respect ; they are touched with what affects themselves or the general weal, not with what flatters the vanity of the speaker ; they must be moved altogether, if they are moved at all ; they are impressed with gratitude for a luminous exposition of their claims or for zeal in their cause ; and the lightning of generous indignation at bad men and bad measures is followed by thunders of applause — even in the House of Commons. But a man may sneer and cavil and puzzle and fly-blow every question that comes before him — be despised and feared by others, and admired by no one but himself. He who thinks first of himself, either in the world or in a popular assembly, will be sure to turn attention away from his claims, instead of fixing it there. He must make common cause with his hearers. To lead, he must follow the general bias. Mr. Tooke did not therefore succeed as a speaker in parliament. He stood aloof, he played antics, he exhibited his peculiar talent — while he was on his legs, the question before the 216 THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE House stood still ; the only point at issue respected Mr. Tooke himself, his personal address and adroitness of intellect. Were there to be no more places and pensions, because Mr. Tooke's style was terse and epigrammatic ? Were the Opposition benches to be inflamed to an unusual pitch of « sacred vehemence,' because he gave them plainly to understand there was not a pin to choose between Ministers and Opposition ? Would the House let him remain among them, because, if they turned him out on account of his black coat, Lord Camelford had threatened to send his black servant in his place? This was a good joke, but not a practical one. Would he gain the affections of the people out of doors, by scouting the question of reform ? Would the King ever relish the old associate of Wilkes ? What interest, then, what party did he represent ? He represented nobody but himself. He was an example of an ingenious man, a clever talker, but he was out of his place in the House of Commons ; where people did not come (as in his own house) to admire or break a lance with him, but to get through the business of the day, and so adjourn ! He wanted effect and momentum. Each of his sentences told very well in itself, but they did not altogether make a speech. He left off where he began. His eloquence was a succession of drops, not a stream. His arguments, though subtle and new, did not affect the main body of the question. The coldness and pettiness of his manner did not warm the hearts or expand the understandings of his hearers. Instead of encouraging, he checked the ardour of his friends ; and teazed, instead of overpowering his antagonists. The only palpable hit he ever made, while he remained there, was the comparing his own situation in being rejected by the House, on account of the supposed purity of his clerical character, to the story of the girl at the Magdalen, who was told * she must turn out and qualify.' 1 This met with laughter and loud applause. It was a home thrust, and the House (to do them justice) are obliged to any one who, by a smart blow, relieves them of the load of grave responsibility, which sits heavy on their shoulders. — At the hustings, or as an election-candidate, Mr. Tooke did better. There was no great question to move or carry — it was an affair of political sparring between himself and the other candidates. He took it in a very cool and leisurely manner — watched his competitors with a wary, sarcastic eye ; picked up the mistakes or absurdities that fell from them, and retorted them on their heads ; told a story to the mob ; and smiled and took snuff with a gentlemanly and becoming air, as if he was already seated in the House. But a Court of Law was the place 1 'They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen, Go thou and do likewise' — Junius. ~ x 7 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be said to be 'native and endued unto that element.' He had here to s.and merely on the defensive — not to advance himself, but to block up the way— not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he wanted was negative success ; and to this no one was better qualified to aspire. Cross purposes, moot-points, pleas, demurrers, flaws in the indictment, double meanings, cases, incon- >equentialities, these were the play-things, the darlings of Mr. Tooke's mind ; and with these he baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a masterpiece of acuteness, dexterity, modest assurance, and leeal effect. It is much like his examination before the Commissioners of the Income-Tax — nothing could be got out of him in either case ! Mr. Tooke, as a political leader, belonged to the class of trimmers % or at most, it was his delight to make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be against himself than for any body else. He v/as neither a bold nor a safe leader. He enticed others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason with a saving clause ; and instil sedition into the public mind, through the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir Francis Burden his spokesman in the House and to the country, often venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his friend ; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that ' others might have gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow,' as if to go farther might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go, according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop short, though this was the oblique in- ference liable to be drawn from his line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual with him — ' They want our blood — blood — blood ! ' It was somewhat ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in 1 charge of High Treason (and indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of an intercepted letter 218 THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE relating to an engagement for a private dinner-party) — his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this respect he was a mere petti- fogger, full of chicane, and captious objections, and unmeaning discontent ; but he had none of the grand whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the time of Junius and Wilkes — and even if his understanding had gone along with more modern and unqualified principles, his cautious temper would have prevented his risking them in practice. Home Tooke (though not of the same side in politics) had much of the tone of mind and more of the spirit of moral feeling of the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury. The narrow scale and fine-drawn distinctions of his political creed made his conversation on such subjects infinitely amusing, particularly when contrasted with that of persons who dealt in the sounding common- places and sweeping clauses of abstract politics. He knew all the cabals and jealousies and heart-burnings in the beginning of the late reign, the changes of administration and the springs of secret in- fluence, the characters of the leading men, Wilkes, Barre, Dunning, Chatham, Burke, the Marquis of Rockingham, North, Shelbuine, Fox, Pitt, and all the vacillating events of the American war : — these formed a curious back-ground to the more prominent figures that occupied the present time, and Mr. Tooke worked out the minute details and touched in the evanescent traits with the pencil of a master. His conversation resembled a political camera obscura — as quaint as it was magical. To some pompous pretenders he might seem to narrate fabellas aniles (old wives' fables) — but not to those who study human nature, and wish to know the materials of which it is composed. Mr. Tooke's faculties might appear to have ripened and acquired a finer flavour with age. In a former period of his life he was hardly the man he was latterly ; or else he had greater abilities to contend against. He no where makes so poor a figure as in his controversy with Junius. He has evidently the best of the argument, yet he makes nothing out of it. He tells a long story about himself, without wit or point in it ; and whines and whimpers like a school-boy under the rod of his master. Junius, after bringing a hasty charge against him, has not a single fact to adduce in support of it ; but keeps his ground and fairly beats his adversary out of the field by the mere force of style. One would think that ' Parson Home ' knew who Junius was, and was afraid of him. ' Under him his genius is' quite 'rebuked.' With the best cause to defend, he comes off more shabbily from the contest than any other person in 219 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE the Letters, except Sir William Draper, who is the very hero of defeat. The great thing which Mr. Home Tooke has done, and which he has left behind him to posterity, is his work on Grammar, oddly enough entitled The Diversions of Purley. Many people have taken it up as a description of a game — others supposing it to be a novel. It is, in truth, one of the few philosophical works on Grammar that were ever written. The essence of it (and, indeed, almost all that is really valuable in it) is contained in his Letter to Dunning, published about the year 1775. Mr. Tooke's work is truly elementary. Dr. Lowth described Mr. Harris's Hermes as ' the finest specimen of analysis since the days of Aristotle ' — a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of old associations wound round language, that is a kind of veil over its natural features ; and custom puts on the mask of ignorance. But this veil, this mask the author of The Diversions of Purley threw aside and penetrated to the naked truth of things, by the literal, matter-of- fact, unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to ' bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born ' — with womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of effeminate — hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half- savage — and who saw language stripped of the clothing of habit or sentiment, or the disguises of doting pedantry, naked in its cradle, and in its primitive state. Our author tells us that he found his dis- covery on Grammar among a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge ? The whole of his reasoning turns upon showing that the Conjunction That is the pronoun That, which ; itself the participle of a verb, and in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the Verb and Noun. ' I affirm that gold is yellow,' that is, ' I affirm that fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow.' The secret of the Conjunction on which so many 220 THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE fine heads had split, on which so many learned definitions were thrown away, as if it was its peculiar province and inborn virtue to announce oracles and formal propositions, and nothing else, like a Doctor of Laws, is here at once accounted for, inasmuch as it is clearly nothing but another part of speech, the pronoun, that, with a third part of speech, the noun, thing, understood. This is getting at a solution of words into their component parts, not glossing over one difficulty by bringing another to parallel it, nor like saying with Mr. Harris, when it is asked, ' what a Conjunction is ? ' that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any one chooses to hunt out ' with laborious foolery.' Our author hit upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent being entrapped by them ; or rather, this circumstance might itself be traced to the habit of satisfying his own mind as to the precise sense in which he himself made use of words. Mr. Tooke, though he had no objection to puzzle others, was mightily averse to being puzzled or mystified himself. All was, to his determined mind, either complete light or complete darkness. There was no hazy, doubtful chiaroscuro in his understanding. He wanted something ' palpable to feeling as to sight.' ' What,' he would say to himself, 'do I mean when I use the conjunction that? Is it an anomaly, a class by itself, a word sealed against all inquisitive attempts ? Is it enough to call it a copula, a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences ? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin I ' Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satis- factorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, 'familiar as his garter,' when he said, * It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it.' So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers upon Grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a logician, charged him with having found ' a mare's-nest ' ; but it is not to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and last longer than Mr. Windham's ingenious derivation of the practice of bull-baiting from the principles of humanity ! Having thus laid the corner-stone, he proceeded to apply the same method of reasoning to other undecyphered and impracticable terms. Thus the word, Jnd, he explained clearly enough to be the verb add, or a corruption of the old Saxon, anandad. ' Two and two make four,' that is, • two add two make four.' Mr. Tooke, in fact, treated words as the chemists do substances ; he separated those which are compounded of others from those which are not decompoundable. 11 T THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE He did not explain the obscure by the more obscure, but the difficult by the plain, the complex by the simple. This alone is proceeding Qi on the true principles of science : the rest is pedantry and petit- maitresbip. Our philosophical writer distinguished all words into names of things, and directions added for joining them together, or originally into nouns and verbs. It is a pity that he has left this matter short, by omitting to define the Verb. After enumerating sixteen different definitions (all of which he dismisses with scorn and contumely) at the end of two quarto volumes, he refers the reader for the true solution to a third volume, which he did not live to finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a satisfaction of their doubts ; but why should he treat posterity in the same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it ? I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended nostrum, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles a hedge-hog, he did not find it too much for him, and leave it to its fate. It is also a pity that Mr. Tooke spun out his great work with prolix and dogmatical dis- sertations on irrelevant matters ; and after denying the old meta- ical theories of language, should attempt to found a metaphysical I v of his own on the nature and mechanism of language. The nature of words, he contended (it was the basis of his whole system) had no connection with the nature of things or the objects of thought ; yet he afterwards strove to limit the nature of things and of the human • by the technical structure of language. Thus he endeavours to show that there are no abstract ideas, by enumerating two thousand uces of words, expressing abstract ideas, that are the past participles of certain verbs. It is difficult to know what he means by this. On the other hand, he maintains that * a complex idea is as U an absurdity as a complex star,' and that words only are com- plex. He also makes out a triumphant list of metaphysical and moral non-entities, proved to be so on the pure principle that the Dames of these non-entities are participles, not nouns, or names of things. That is strange in so close a reasoner, and in one who main- tained that all language was a masquerade of words, and that the class which they grammatically belonged had nothing to do with the "i ideas they represented. It is now above twenty years since the two quarto volumes of the D'roersiom of Parley were published, and fifty since the same theory tted in the celebrated Letter to Dunning. Yet it is a curious example of the Spirit of the Age that Mr. Lindley Murray's SIR WALTER SCOTT Grammar (a work out of which Mr. C*** helps himself to English, and Mr. M*** to style 1 ) has proceeded to the thirtieth edition in complete defiance of all the facts and arguments there laid down. He defines a noun to be the name of a thing. Is quackery a thing, i.e. a substance ? He defines a verb to be a word signifying to be, to do, or to suffer. Are being, action, suffering, verbs ? He defines an adjective to be the name of a quality. Are not wooden, golden, sub- stantial adjectives ? He maintains that there are six cases in English nouns, that is, six various terminations without any change of termina- tion at all, 2 and that English verbs have all the moods, tenses, and persons that the Latin ones have. This is an extraordinary stretch of blindness and obstinacy. He very formally translates the Latin Grammar into English, (as so many had done before him) and fancies he has written an English Grammar ; and divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and English scholars carry on the jest, while Home Tooke's genuine anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum ? That our clergy do not relish Parson Home ? That the world at large are alarmed at acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this to do with the formation of the English language or with the first conditions and necessary foundation of speech itself? Is there nothing beyond the reach of prejudice and party-spirit ? It seems in this, as in so many other instances, as if there was a patent for absurdity in the natural bias of the human mind, and that folly should be stereotyped \ SIR WALTER SCOTT Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age— the 'lord of the ascendant' for the time being. He is just half what the human intellect is capable of being : if you take the universe, and divide it into two parts, he knows all that it has been ; all that it is to be is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over antiquity — scorning 'the present ignorant time.' He is 'laudator temporis acti ' — a l prophesier of things past.' The old world is to 1 This work is not without merit in the details and examples of English con- struction. But its fault even in that part is that he confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray, hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English. 2 At least, with only one change in the genitive case. 223 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE him a crowded map ; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well-authenticated superstitions ; he shudders at the shadow of innovation. His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life and motion ; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thine brought to it by tradition or custom — it does not project itself beyond this into the world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a precipice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like Van Dieman s Land; — barren, miserable, distant, a place of exile, the dreary abode of savages, convicts, and adventurers. Sir Walter would make a bad hand of a description of the Millennium, unless he could lay the scene in Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would want facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style. Our historical novelist firmly thinks that nothing is but what has been — that the moral world stands still, as the material one was supposed to do of old — and that we can never get beyond the point where we actually are without utter destruction, though every thing changes and will change from what it was three hundred ago to what it is now, — from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good old times most dreads and hates ! It is long since we read, and long since we thought of our author's v. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate occasion, even it he himself had not contrived to banish it from our recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in ed action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted -. It was 'poetry of no mark or likelihood.' It slid out of the mind as soon as read, like a river ; and would have been forgotten, but that the public curiosity was fed with ever new supplies from the teeming liquid source. It is not every man that can write six in verse, that are caught up with avidity, even by lious judges. But what a difference between their popularity and that of the Scotch Novels ! It is true, the public read and admired / the List Minstrel, Marmion, and so on, and each individual rated to read and admire because the public did so: but with regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is uest sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to ud on his own ground, would be thought to go before the public °P mi ' ' 'o extol his favourite characters louder, to understand in ever) body else, and has his own scale of corn- em e for each work, supported by nothing but his own --4 SIR WALTER SCOTT enthusiastic and fearless convictions. It must be amusing to the Author of Waverley to hear his readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing? 1 ) quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to character, quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each other in the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice — so various, so equal, so transcendant are their merits ! His volumes of poetry were received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances : we are ready to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was something meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad- rhymes; and like those who keep opera figurantes, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and our taste confirmed by the town : but the Novels are like the betrothed of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly acquainted with their beauties as ourselves. For which of his poetical heroines would the reader break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans ? What Lady of the Lake can compare with the beautiful Rebecca ? We believe the late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful and premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he had penned the most elaborate panegyric on the Scotch Novels that had as yet appeared! — The Epics are not poems, so much as metrical romances. There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are ' skinned and filmed over ' — the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid decorum ; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into a tinkling sound, a tinsel common-place. It must be owned, there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own, melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. But Sir Walter (we contend, under correction) has not this creative impulse, this plastic power, this capacity of reacting on his first impressions. He is a learned, a literal, a matter-of-fact expounder of truth or fable : 2 he does not soar above and lock down upon his subject, imparting his own lofty views and feelings to his descriptions 1 No ! For we met with a young lady who kept a circulating library and a milliner's shop, in a watering-place in the country, who, when we inquired for the Scotch Novels, spoke indifferently about them, said they were 'so dry she could hardly get through them,' and recommended us to read Agnes. We never thought of it before ; but we would venture to lay a wager that there are many other your. g ladies in the same situation, and who think 'Old Mortality' 'dry.' 2 Just as Cobbett is a matter-of-fact reasoner. --5 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE of nature — he relies upon it, is raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing. A poet is essentially a maker ; that is, he must atone for what he loses in individuality and local resemblance by the energies and resources of his own mind. The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject by an effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon a par with the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light, agreeable, effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a Modern Antique. The smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily with the quaint, uncouth, rugged materials of which it is composed ; and takes away any appearance of heaviness or harshness from the body of local traditions and obsolete costume. We see grim knights and iron armour ; but then they are woven in silk with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness of flowers. The poet's figures might be compared to old tapestries copied on the finest velvet: — they are not like Raphael's Cartoons, but they are very like Mr. Westall's drawings, which accompany, and are intended to illustrate them. This facility and grace of execution is the more remarkable, as a story goes that not long before the appearance of the Lay of the Last Minstrel Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, having, in the company of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat, they proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found they had produced only six lines between them. 'It is plain,' said the unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, 'that you and I need never think of getting our living by writing poetry ! ' In a year or so after this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but ' a metre ballad- monger.' We would rather have written one song of Burns, or a single passage in Lord Byron's Heaven and Earth, or one of W .rdsworth's 'fancies and good-nights,' than all his epics. What s he to Spenser, over whose immortal, ever-amiable verse beauty hovers and trembles, and who has shed the purple light of Fancy, irom his ambrosial wings, over all nature? What is there of the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in the blue serene, and who il witn him there? What is there (in his ambling rhymes) of the deep pathos of Chaucer? Or of the o'er-informing er ol Shakespear, whose eye, watching alike the minutest traces characters and the strongest movements of passion, ' glances from en to earth, from earth to heaven,' and with the lambent flame ol genius, playing round each object, lights up the universe in a robe of its own radiance? Sir Walter has no voluntary power of 2 2h SIR WALTER SCOTT combination : all his associations (as we said before) are those or habit or of tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet, garrulous of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing superficiality. Not so of his Novels and Romances. There we turn over a new leaf — another and the same — the same in matter, but in form, in power how different ! The author of Waverley has got rid of the tagging of rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of epithets, the colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the regular march of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes at the heart of his subject, without dismay and without disguise. His poetry was a lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery : his prose is a beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in Don Quixote, when she is surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her naked feet in the brook, looks round her, abashed at the admiration her charms have excited ! The grand secret of the author's success in these latter productions is that he has completely got rid of the trammels of authorship; and torn off at one rent (as Lord Peter got rid of so many yards of lace in the Tale of a Tub) all the ornaments of fine writing and worn-out sentimentality. All is fresh, as from the hand of nature : by going a century or two back and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated district, all becomes new and startling in the present advanced period. — Highland manners, characters, scenery, superstitions, Northern dialect and costume, the wars, the religion, and politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, give a charming and wholesome relief to the fastidious refinement and ' over- laboured lassitude ' of modern readers, like the effect of plunging a nervous valetudinarian into a cold-bath. The Scotch Novels, for this reason, are not so much admired in Scotland as in England. The contrast, the transition is less striking. From the top of the Calton Hill, the inhabitants of « Auld Reekie ' can descry, or fancy they descry the peaks of Ben Lomond and the waving outline of Rob Roy's country : we who live at the southern extremity of the island can only catch a glimpse of the billowy scene in the descriptions of the Author of Waverley. The mountain air is most bracing to our languid nerves, and it is brought us in ship-loads from the neighbour- hood of Abbot' s-Ford. There is another circumstance to be taken into the account. In Edinburgh there is a little opposition and something of the spirit of cabal between the partisans of works pro- ceeding from Mr. Constable's and Mr. Blackwood's shops. Mr. Constable gives the highest prices ; but being the Whig bookseller, it is grudged that he should do so. An attempt is therefore made to transfer a certain share of popularity to the second-rate Scotch novels, 227 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ♦the embryo fry, the little airy of ricketty children,' issuing through Mr. Blackwood's shop-door. This operates a diversion, which does not affect us here. The Author of Waverley wears the palm of legendary lore alone. Sir Walter may, indeed, surfeit us: his imitators make us sick ! It may be asked, it has been asked, ' Have we no materials for romance in England ? Must we look to Scotland for a supply of whatever is original and striking in this kind ? ' And we answer — ' Yes ! ' Every foot of soil is with us worked up : nearly every movement of the social machine is calculable. We have no room left for violent catastrophes; for grotesque quaintnesses ; for wizard spells. The last skirts of ignorance and barbarism are seen hovering (in Sir Walter's pages) over the Border. We have, it is true, tea in this country as well as at the Cairn of Derncleugh : but they live under clipped hedges, and repose in camp-beds, and do not perch on crags, like eagels, or take shelter, like sea-mews, in basaltic subterranean caverns. We have heaths with rude heaps of stones upon them : but no existing superstition converts them into the Geese ot Micklestane-Moor, or sees a Black Dwarf groping among them. W <• have sects in religion : but the only thing sublime or ridiculous in that way is Mr. Irving, the Caledonian preacher, who ' comes like a i staring from the woods, and yet speaks like an orator ! ' We had a Parson Adams not quite a hundred years ago — a Sir Roger de Coverley rather more than a hundred ! Even Sir Walter is ordinarily obliged to pitch his angle (strong as the hook is) a hundred miles '.o the North of the 'Modern Athens' or a century back. His last work, 1 indeed, is mystical, is romantic in nothing but the title-page. ad of « a holy-water sprinkle dipped in dew,' he has given us a fashionable watering-place — and we see what he has made of it. He must not come down from his fastnesses in traditional barbarism and native rusticity; the level, the littleness, the frippery of modern civilization will undo him as it has undone us ! ■Sir Walter has found out (oh, rare discovery) that facts are better than fiction ; that there is no romance like the romance of real life ; that it we can but arrive at what men feel, do, and say in striking liar situations, the result will be 'more lively, audible, and lull ot vent,' than the line-spun cobwebs of the brain. With reverence e it spoken, he is like the man who having to imitate the squeaking upon the stage, brought the animal under his com with him. lUthor lias conjured up the actual people he has to deal with, or is much as he i ould get of them, in 'their habits as they lived.' He nicies, and poured the contents upon his page; 'St. Ronan's Well. SIR WALTER SCOTT he has squeezed out musty records; he has consulted wayfaring pilgrims, bed-rid sibyls ; he has invoked the spirits of the air ; he has conversed with the living and the dead, and let them tell their story their own way ; and by borrowing of others, has enriched his own genius with everlasting variety, truth, and freedom. He has taken his materials from the original, authentic sources, in large concrete masses, and not tampered with or too much frittered them away. He is only the amanuensis of truth and history. It is impossible to say how fine his writings in consequence are, unless we could describe how fine nature is. All that portion of the history of his country that he has touched upon (wide as the scope is) the manners, the personages, the events, the scenery, lives over again in his volumes. Nothing is wanting — the illusion is complete. There is a hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon the ground, as these perfect repre- sentations of human character or fanciful belief come thronging back upon our imaginations. We will merely recall a few of the subjects of his pencil to the reader's recollection ; for nothing we could add, by way of note or commendation, could make the impression more vivid. There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquain- tance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic ; and Flora Maclvor (whom even - horrors of the perion. 'The description given by the author of the Saxon Chronicle of the cruelties ised in the reign of King Stephen by the great barons and lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed. " They grievously oppressed the poor le by building castles; and when they were built, they filled them with Wicked men or rntW devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures the martyrs ever endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended then by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They ads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while threw '.thers into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads." in a striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion with his kind ; but stands alone, without mate or fellow — ' As if a man were author of himself, And owned no other kin.' He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, ' cloud- capt,' or reflecting the last rays of setting suns ; and in his poetical moods, reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples on it ; he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature must come to him to sit for her picture — he does not go to her. She must consult his time, his convenience, and his humour ; and wear a sombre or a fantastic garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her. There is no ease, no unaffected simplicity of manner, no 'golden mean.' All is strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are sphered and crystalline ; his style 'prouder than when blue Iris bends'; his spirit fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigable. Instead of taking his impressions from with- out, in entire and almost unimpaired masses, he moulds them accord- ing to his own temperament, and heats the materials of his imagination in the furnace of his passions. — Lord Byron's verse glows like a flame, consuming every thing in its way ; Sir Walter Scott's glides 1 This Essay was written just before Lord Byron's death. 235 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE like a river, clear, gentle, harmless. The poetry of the first scorches, that of the last scarcely warms. The light of the one proceeds from an internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed ; the others reflects the hues of Heaven, or the face of nature, glancing vivid and various. The productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the freshness of antiquity about them ; those of the Noble Poet cease to startle from their extreme ambition of novelty, both in style and matter. Sir Walter's rhymes are ' silly sooth ' — * And dally with the innocence of thought, Like the old age ' — his Lordship's Muse spurns the olden time, and affects all the super- cilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object oi the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature : the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, or by expressing old ones in a more striking and emphatic manner than they have been expressed before. He cares little what it is he says, so that he can say it differently from others. This mav account for the charges of plagiarism which have been repeatedly brought against the Noble Poet — if he can borrow an image or senti- ment from another, and heighten it by an epithet or an allusion of greater force and beauty than is to be found in the original passage, he thinks he shows his superiority of execution in this in a more marked manner than if the first suggestion had been his own. It is not the value of the observation itself he is solicitous about ; but he wi lies to shine by contrast — even nature only serves as a foil to set off his style. He therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not) out of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity well as in terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he iefies competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. W hatever lie does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else —he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will, passion, the love of singularity, a dis- dain of himself and of others (with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of procuring admiration) are the proper his mind : he is a lordly writer, is above his own , and condescends to the Muses with a scornful grace ! I ron, who in his politics is a liberal, in his genius is haughty 236 LORD BYRON and aristocratic : Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally servile to nature and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or ' denotes a foregone conclusion ' : that of Lord Byron is self- dependent ; or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the impulses of its own will. We confess, however much we may admire independence of feeling and erectness of spirit in general or practical questions, yet in works of genius we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature, who appeals to actual objects, to moulder- ing superstitions, to history, observation, and tradition, before him who only consults the pragmatical and restless workings of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles to the world. We like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes in (or is willing to take in) the range oi half the universe in feeling, character, description, much better than we do one who obstinately and invariably shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions. In short, we had rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author of Waverlcy) than Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And for the reason just given, namely, that he casts his descriptions in the mould of nature, ever-varying, never tiresome, always interesting and always instructive, instead of casting them constantly in the mould of his own individual impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in almost every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart ; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave ; he gives us the misan- thrope and the voluptuary by turns ; and with these two characters, burning or melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos of himself. He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all outward things — sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys dark night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom ' in cell monastic ' — we see the mournful pall, the crucifix, the death's heads, the faded chaplet of flowers, the gleaming tapers, the agonized brow of genius, the wasted form of beauty — but we are still imprisoned in a dungeon,^ a curtain intercepts our view, we do not breathe freely the air of nature or of our own thoughts — the other admired author draws aside the curtain, and the veil of egotism is rent, and he shows us the crowd of living men and women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our imagina- tions Itnd relieves one passion by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!— In this point of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived, by 237 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE emancipating the mind from petty, narrow, and bigottea prejudices : Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-conceit. In reading the Scotch Novels, we never think, about the author, except from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown benefactor: in reading Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent from our minds. The colouring of Lord Byron's style, however rich and dipped in Tyrian , is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object of delight and wonder : Sir Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In studying the one, you seem to gaze at the figures cut in stained glass, which exclude the view beyond, and where the pure light of Heaven is only a means of setting off the gorgeousness of art : in reading the other, you look through a noble window at the clear and varied landscape without. Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott is the most dramatic writer now living ; and Lord Byron is least so. It would be difficult to imagine that the Author of Waverley is in the smallest degree a pedant ; as it would be hard to persuade ourselves that the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not a coxcomb, though a provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the prose-works of the former ; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles him to that precedence. Sir W alter in his poetry, though pleasing and natural, is a comparative . : it is in his anonymous productions that he has shown himself for what he is ! — Intensity is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced v regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan and, nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers lor the moment — to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, to a feverish and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or even calm enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at random without much thought or delicacy — he is only impatient to begin — and takes care to adorn and enrich it as he pro- ceeds with •thoughts that breathe and words that burn.' He comp he himself has said) whether he is in the bath, in his . , or on horseback — he writes as habitually as others talk or think — and whether we have the inspiration of the Muse or not, we always find the spirit of the man of genius breathing from his verse. 1 le gi tpples with his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it trie force of his own feelings. He is often monotonous, *3* LORD BYRON extravagant, offensive ; but he is never dull, or tedious, but when he •writes prose. Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into importance by the romantic associations with which he surrounds them ; but generally (at least) takes common- place thoughts and events, and endeavours to express them in stronger and statelier language than others. His poetry stands like a Martello tower by the side of his subject. He does not, like Mr. Words- worth, lift poetry from the ground, or create a sentiment out of nothing. He does not describe a daisy or a periwinkle, but the cedar or the cypress : not ' poor men's cottages, but princes' palaces.' His Ch'ilde Harold contains a lofty and impassioned review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as wrecks of time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of every school- boy ; has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought ; and has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery. Lord Byron's earlier productions, Lara, the Corsair, &c. were wild and gloomy romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They discover the madness of poetry, together with the inspiration : sullen, moody, capricious, fierce, inexorable, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge, hurrying from the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing permanent, nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decora- tions and the morbid sentiments remind one of flowers strewed over the face of death ! In his Ch'ilde Harold (as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and philosophic tone, and ' reasons high of provi- dence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate.' He takes the highest points in the history of the world, and comments on them from a more commanding eminence : he shows us the crumbling monuments of time, he invokes the great names, the mighty spirit of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately mausoleum : — in solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron has strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of our classical and time- hallowed recollections, and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after greatness and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of Tasso, of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Cassar, of Scipio, lose nothing of their pomp or their lustre in his hands, and when he begins and continues a strain of panegyric on such subjects, we indeed sit down with him to a banquet of rich praise, brooding over imperishable glories, 'Till Contemplation has her fill.' Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from « this bank and shoal of time,' or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputa- 239 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE tion, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen — his contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back, to the lustrous past, or project himself forward to the dim future! — Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero, 1 Sardanapalus, &c. are not equal to his other works. They want the essence of the drama. They abound in speeches and descriptions, such as he himself might make either to himself or others, lolling on his couch of a morning, but do not carry the reader out of the poet's mind to the scenes and events recorded. They have neither action, character, nor interest, but are a sort of gossamer tragedies, spun out, and glittering, and spreading a flimsy veil over the face of nature. Yet he spins them on. Of all that he has done in this way the Heaven and Earth (the same subject as Mr. Moore's Loves of the Angels) is the best. We prefer it even to Manfred. Manfred is merely himself, with a fancy-drapery on : but in the dramatic fragment published in the Liberal, the space between Heaven and Earth, the stage on which his characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's imagination ; and the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be said to have drowned all his own idle humours. We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' is dogmatical and insolent, but without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite ; or he endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that 'it is his aversion.' That may be: but whose fault is it? This is the satire of a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes taken for gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more than signify his contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets with a rebuff which he does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes for a repartee. The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and critic, that he was 'born in a garret sixteen stories high.' The insinuation is not true ; or if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades the person who makes, not him to whom it is applied. This is also the satire of a person of birth and quality, who measures all merit by rial rank, that is, by his own standard. So his Lordship, in a tter to the Editor of My Grandmother's Review,' addresses him fifty times as 'my dear Robarts' ; nor is there any other wit in the 1 ' Don Juan was my Moscow, arH Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain.* Don yuan, Canto xi. 240 LORD BYRON ar.icle. This is surely a mere assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of quizzing he might use to a person who came to hire himself as a valet to him at Long's — the waiters might laugh, the public will not. In like manner, in the controversy abcut Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the back with a coarse facetious familiarity, as it he were his chaplain whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a benefice. The reverend divine might submit to the obligation, but he has no occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles should be a parson, and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this before; there was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it. The Don Juan indeed has great power ; but its power is owing to the force of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are surprised that any one should turn round and travestie him- self: the drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes virtue serve as a foil to vice ; dandyism is (for want of any other) a variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by the splashing of soda-water, by frothy effusions of ordinary bile. After the lightning and the hurricane, we are introduced to the interior of the cabin and the contents of wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays Scrub in the farce. This is ' very tolerable and not to be endured.' The Noble Lord is almost the only wiiter who has prostituted his talents in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate ; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought ; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus turned into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus fatally quenches the sparks of both. It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and sometimes moral — but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only pre- paring to mortify the unsuspecting reader by nutting a pitiful hoax upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not wish or expect it to occur more than once. 1 In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune. 1 This censure applies to the first Cantos of Don Juan much more than to the last. It has been called a Tristram Shandy in rhyme : it is rather a poem written about itself. 241 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight, unless he can shock the public. He v/ould force them to admire in spite of decency and common sense — he would have them read what they would read in no one but himself, or he would not give a ;ush for their applause. He is to be 'a chartered libertine,' from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when they show signs of weariness or disgust, threatens to discard them. He says he will write on, whether he is read or not. He would never write another page, if it were not to court popular applause, or to affect a superiority over it. In this respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter Scott. The latter takes what part of the public favour falls to his share, without grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) ; the former is always quarrelling with the world about his modicum of applause, the spolia opima of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of Waverley, all is fair and natural and above-board: he never outrages the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character : broaches no staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling paradoxes — 'Like proud seas under him ' j if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and levity are the playthings of his pen. It \a a ludicrous circumstance that he should have dedicated his Cain to the worthy Baronet ! Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation ? We are not nice, not very nice ; but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly from their rottenness : nor do we wish to see the Muses drest out in the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like Portia and Nerissa in the garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as Lord Byron ; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a measure in the fetters of verse. We have as good as hinted, that his Lordship's poetry consists mostly of a tissue of superb common-places; even his paradoxes are common-place. They are familiar in the schools : they are only new and striking in his dramas and stan^as, by being out of place. In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle of nature and received opinion : specula- 242 LORD BYRON tive theory and subtle casuistry are forbidden ground to it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this ground wantonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we can conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit of some of those opposed to him. They would provoke a man to write anything. ' Farthest from them is best.' The extravagance and license of the one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness of the other. The first Vision of Judgment was a set-off to the second, though 1 None but itself could be its parallel. 1 Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that he is that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a double privilege, almost too much for humanity. He has all the pride of birth and genius. The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in fantastic opinions ; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance. He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not good enough for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, but ' the tenth transmitter of a foolish face ' : a mere man of genius is no better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality. The people are not polite enough for him : the Court not sufficiently intellectual. He hates the one and despises the other. By hating and despising others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A fastidious man soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody but ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily get tired of our idol. When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends to be a metaphysician : if he is a patrician in rank and feeling, he would fain be one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of the people, but of distinction ; not of truth, but of singularity. He patronizes men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice, or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal. We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility : we like Lord Byron's preposterous liberalism little better. He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks— money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the event ! ****** We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish 243 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE invective, which was intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we were writing his epitaph, we oust have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them into ' tears of sensibility,' or mould them into dull praise, and an affected show of candour. We were not silent during the author's life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such as we could give, and he did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn undertakers' men to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall into the procession of popular woe. — Death cancels every thing but truth ; and strips a man of every thing but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred — -it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. D*ath is the great assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust — the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness. Nothing could show the real superiority of genius in a more striking point of view than the idle contests and the public indifference about the place of Lord Byron's interment, whether in Westminster Abbey or his own family-vault. A. king must have a coronation — a nobleman a funeral-procession. — The man is nothing without the pageant. The poet's cemetery is the human mind, in which he sows the seeds of never-ending thought — his monument is to be found in his works : ' Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven ; No pyramids set off his memory, But the eternal substance of his greatness.' 1 Lord Byron is dead : he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause •cdom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse is epitaph ! MR. SOUTHEY SoUTHEY, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look at once aspiring and dejected — it was the look that had been impressed upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile hope and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip. 244 MR. SOUTHEY Mr. Southey's mind is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness. It is prophetic of good ; it cordially embraces it ; it casts a longing, lingering look after it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear to give up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his fellow- man, when all else despair. It is the very element, < where he must live or have no life at all.' While he supposed it possible that a better form of society could be introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while the light of the French Revolution beamed into his soul (and long after, it was seen reflected on his brow, like the light of setting suns on the peak of some high mountain, or lonely range of clouds, floating in purer ether ! ) while he had this hope, this faith in man left, he cherished it with child-like simplicity, he clung to it with the fondness of a lover, he was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveller ; he stuck at nothing that he thought would banish all pain and misery from the world — in his impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned suddenly round, and maintained that ' whatever is, is right.' Mr. Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He missed his way i& Utopia, he has found it at Old Sarum — ' His generous ardour no cold medium knows : * his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and ever in the wrong ! The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique, resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty : his conclusions raw and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous when new ; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride ; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very reputable ladv, called Legitimacy. A 245 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE wilful man, according to the Scotch proverb, must have his way. If it were the cause to which he was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and evil report ; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have others do so ; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong ; the indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse, than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the false with the glosses of fancv, but pays little attention to ' the words of truth and soberness.' His impressions are accidental, immediate, personal, instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals he is surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely d the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason ? Is he not tenacious of his opinions, in proportion as they are brittle and hastily formed ? Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief, because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is con- is he has shifted them ? Does he not confine others to the strict line of orthodoxy, because he has himself taken every liberty ? Is he not afraid to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his former extravagances staring him in the face: Does he nor refuse to tolerate the smallest shade of difference in others, because he feels that he wants the utmost latitude of construction for ring so widely from himself? Is he not captious, dogmatical, petulant in delivering his sentiments, according as he has been incon- .t, rash, and fanciful in adopting them ? He maintains that there can be no possible ground for differing from him, because he looks only at his own side of the question ! He sets up his own favourite notions as the standard of reason and honesty, because he has changed one extreme to another ! He treats his opponents with contempt, because he is himself afraid of meeting with disrespect! He says that * a Reformer is a worse character than a house-breaker,' der to stifle the recollection that he himself once was one ! We must say that ' we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer ' than in his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a ud of wild flowers suits him better than the laureat-wreath : :1 odes and popular inscriptions were far more adapted than his presentation-poems. He is nothing akin to and drawing-room fopperies. « He is nothing, if not In his figure, in his movements, in his senciments, he 2 ('. MR. SOUTHEY is sharp and angular, quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every thing of him and about him is from the people. He is not classical, he is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's opinions : he is not shaped on any model : he bows to no authority : he yields only to his own wayward peculiarities. He is wild, irregular, singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he ! All is crude and chaotic, self-opinionated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard rules. He is not teres et rotundas. Mr. Southey walks with his chin erect throuoh the streets of London, and with an umbrella sticking out under his arm, in the finest weather. He has not sacrificed to the Graces, nor studied decorum. With him every thing is projecting, starting from its place, an episode, a digression, a poetic license. He does not move in any given orbit, but like a falling star, shoots from his sphere. He is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments, beginning every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly revolutionary. He may have given up the reform of the State : but depend upon it, he has some other hobby of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called The Vision of Judgment, as a specimen of what might be done in English hexameters ? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved model. He might as well have presented himself at the levee in a fancy or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey was not to try conclusions with Majesty — still less on such an occasion. The extreme freedoms with departed greatness, the party-petulance carried to the Throne of Grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humour, the assumption of infallibility and even of the voice ot Heaven in this poem, are pointed instances of what we have said. They show the singular state of over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even in addressing his Sovereign ! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his Kehama, his Thalaba, his Madoc, his Roderic. Who will deny the spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling interest that pervades them ? Who will say that they are not sustained on fictions wilder than his own Glendoveer, that they are not the daring creations of a mind curbed by no law, tamed by no fear, that they are not rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius, that they are not the very paradoxes of poetry ? All this is very well, very intelligible, and very harmless, if we regard the rank excrescences of Mr. Southey's poetry, like the red and blue flowers in corn, as the unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy; or if we allow the yeasty 247 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE uorkingB of an ardent spirit to ferment and boil over — the variety, the boldness, the lively stimulus given to the mind may then atone for the violation of rules and the offences to bed-rid authority ; but not if our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music, were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull, incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even regretted. But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-ofF. It is indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that the author of Joan of Arc — that work in which the love of Liberty is exha'ed like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven- born, that is full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart — should ever after turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause. After giving up his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever to have set his foot within the threshold of a court. He might be sure that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single cordial smile from ness. All that Mr. Southey is or that he does best, is inde- pendent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws — when he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius, and offers a violence to his nature. His characteristic faults are the excess of a lively, unguarded temperament: — oh! let them not degenerate into cold-blooded, heartless vices! If we speak or have ever spoken [r. Southey with severity, it is with 'the malice of old friends,' . e count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers. I',ur while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to age (the Wat Tyler and the Vision of Judgment are the Alpha and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of ebullitions of spleen, making jets-a'eaux, cascades, fountains, and r-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of rs in leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them ground — ' I- ar from the sun and summer gale ! ' 11- woul 1 suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the example, and claim a privilege for playing antics. He would 248 MR. SOUTHEY introduce an uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres ard settled opinions, and enforce it with a high, hand. This has been judged hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps disproportioned to the injury done. 'Because he is virtuous,' (it has been asked,) 'are there to be no more cakes and ale ? ' Because he is loyal, are we to take all our notions from the Quarterly Review : Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the Bool- of the Church ? We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry. We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in the Quarterly Review, notwithstanding their virulence and the talent they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects. They have redeeming traits in them. 'A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump' ; and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite expelled from the Quarterly Review. At the corner of his pen, 'there hangs a vapourous drop profound ' of independence and liberality, which falls upon its pages, and oozes out through the pores of the public mind. There is a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are naturally callous to truth, and whose under- standings are hermetically sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man like Mr. Southey. Once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist. No man can entirely baulk his nature : it breaks out in spite of him. In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch, our ' laureate ' is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken : the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not regularly articled as a Government-tool ! — Perhaps tin- most pleasing and striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but affecting aspiration expressed in 249 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE one of these be fulfilled, that as he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he himself become • Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree ! ' Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with a I'rave and sparkling admixture of archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose- writer of any poet of the day ; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron, Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is rather a want of originality and even of impetus : but there is no want of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of learning and of information. He is ' full of wise saws and modern ' (as well as ancient) ' instances.' Mr. Southey may not always convince his opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of old authors thrown into it! — He also excels as an historian and prose-translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the extreme levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed con amore, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That of the Cid, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be altered for the better, in the old scriptural style which it adopts in conformity to the original. It is no !i-