ow ready, a new and superior Edition, in a larger Type, fcp. 8vo. 
 price 4s. Gd. cloth, 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 
 
 FEOM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY REED, 
 
 ithor of " English History and Tragic Poetry, as illustrated by Sbakspeare," &c., &c. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN F. SHAW, 27, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, 
 
 AND 86, PATERNOSTER ROW.
 
 LECTUEES 
 
 BRITISH POETS. 
 
 HENRY REED, 
 
 *VTHOR OF " INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE, " AND "LECTURES ON ENGLISH 
 HISTORY AND TRAOIC POETRY, AS ILLUSTRATED BY SUAKSPKARl." 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN FARQUHAR SHAW, 
 
 27, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, AND 36, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1857.
 
 JOHN CHII.DS AND SOX, rUIXTEKS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The great success of the two volumes of my brother's 
 Lectures — the first ou " English Literature," aud the second on 
 "History as illustrated by Shakspeare's Plays," — has induced 
 nie to publish another series, still more complete, on the 
 " British Poets," which was delivered by Mr. Heed in 1841. 
 These lectures are printed from the author's manuscript, with 
 no other alteration than the omission of passages which he had 
 used in his second course. 
 
 An addition has been made to these volumes of two essays 
 ou kindred subjects, — one on "English Sonnets," and another 
 on "Hartley Coleridge." 
 
 The present volumes are probably the last of my brother's 
 works which I shall publish. The lectures already issued have 
 been most kindly received on both sides of the Atlantic ; and 
 it would be ungraceful were I to omit, for myself and his still 
 nearer family, an expression of the deep feeling with which this 
 appreciation has inspired us. 
 
 W. B. R. 
 
 rjiiLADELPHiA, February 13, 1857.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 Object of the course — Poetry tlic eminence of literature — The history of litera- 
 ture illustrated by general history and biography — The lives of Spenser and 
 Milton — A catholic taste in poetry — Variety of Poetry — Intolerance of liter- 
 ary judgment — Eymer and Voltaire on Shukspeare — Johnson on Milton — 
 Jeffrey on AVordswortli — (Qualifications of an enlightened critic — Utilitarian 
 criticism — The true use of Poetry — Its depreciation and abuse — Albums and 
 scrap-books — -Ben Jonson's panegyric on his art — Wordsworth — Object of 
 these lectures not to encourage poetical composition— Sydney's Defence — 
 Connection of Poetry and science — The spirit of our times — Materialism anil 
 infidelity — Influence on imaginative power — Vindication of I'oetry. Vagc 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The nature of Poetry and its ministrations — Imaginative capacity — Lord Ba- 
 con's view— Milton's — Poetry a divine eraanati<m — Its foundati(m is truth — 
 The truth of inner life — Painting and Sculpture — Poetry an imitative art — 
 Tlie Child and tlie Shell — Scientific invcstigatio7i of truth — liumau symii.i- 
 thy cultivated by Poetry — Immortality — S])iritual aspirations — Stoicism 
 irreconcibl)le with Poetry — Loyalty and chivalry — The songs of Israel — 
 Taste, a wrong name — Mental inactivity inconsistent with criticism — Due 
 proportion of intellectual j)owcrs — Walter Scott and Sir Philip Sydney. 
 
 ■ Page 22 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The dawn of English Poesy — DiflSculties of describing it — Obsolete language 
 — Chaucer the father of English Poetry— Latin Poetry — Revival of learning 
 — Englisli language — Its transition — Statutes of Edward the Third — 
 Gower — Ag(! of chivalry — Invasion of France — Crcssy and Poitiers — The 
 Hlack Prince — The Church — Widif— Chaucer's birth, a.i>. 1328 — Friend- 
 ship with (iowcr — Taste for natural scenery —The Flower and the Leaf- — 
 Bunis's iJaisy — Romatmt of the Rose — -Canterbury Tales — Its outline — His 
 respect for the femah; sex— (Chaucer's iuHuence on thi: English language - 
 " The Well of Englisli uudefiled" — His versification — His death, a.d. 1400. 
 
 Page t-i
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 SPEXSEK AND THE MINSTRELSY. 
 
 Relapse in English Poetry after Chaucer from 1400 to 1553 — Its causes — Tjio 
 Wars of tlie Roses — Ecclesiastical disturbance — The Reformation and Queen 
 Elizabeth — Wyatt and Surrey — The .Sonnet — Blank Verse — Sackville — • 
 Elizabeth's reign and character — Classical learning — The British Church — • 
 Spenser's birth, in a.d. 1553 — The Shepherd's Calendar — Its allegory — 
 The friendslrij) of Sydney — Spenser's residence in Ireland — The Fairy 
 Queen, in 1590 — -Sir Walter Raleigh — The great work of Spenser — Mil- 
 ton's praise — Spenser's mighty imagination — Appeal to human sympathies 
 — Chivalric spirit — Religious aim — Mr. Ilallam's criticism — Hymn to 
 Beauty— The Spenserian Stanza — Alliteration — His blemishes — The Epi- 
 thalamium — Death, a.d. 1598 — The British Minstrelsy and Ballads — Kin- 
 mont Willie — -Sir Patrick Spens — Armstrong's Good-night Page 6t> 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Spenser's death and Shakspeare's birth — Influence of the age — Independence 
 of his imaginary creations — vSmall knowledge of the individual — Unselfish- 
 ness of genius — A spiritual voice in aU time — Shakspeare traditions — His 
 birth, A.P. 1564 — Death, a.d. 1616 — Cervantes's death — Epitaph — Educa- 
 tion — Ben Jonson — Power over language — The Dramatic Art congenial to 
 his genius — Kenilworth and Queen Elizabeth — Shakspeare in London — The 
 Armada — ^His patriotism and loyalty — Subjectiveness of the modern Eu- 
 ropean mind — Shakspeare and Bacon^Venus and Adonis — Luerece — The 
 Dramas— The Sonnets — Dramatic Art in England — Sacred Dramas — 
 Mysteries and Moralities — Heywood — j\linor Dramatists — "The gentle 
 Shakspeare" — The acting Drama — Primitive theatres — -Modern adaptations 
 — Lear and Richard III.— The supernatural of the Drama — Macbeth — The 
 Tempest his last poem ....... Page 97 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 Abundance of biographical materials — Dr. Johnson's Life — Milton among the 
 great prose writers — Milton's conception of his calling as a poet — Poetry 
 the highest aim of human intellect — Milton's youthful genius — Study of 
 Hebrew poetry — Latin poem to his father — The rural home — Poetic genius 
 improved by study — Visits to the London theatres — Tlioughtful culture of 
 his powers — Allegro and Penseroso — Lyeidas — Dr. Johnson's judgments on 
 this poem — Masque of Comus — Faith and Hope and Chastity — The Hymn 
 on the Nativity — Power and melody of the Miltcmic versification — Visit to 
 Galileo — Milton in Rome — -Story of Tasso's life — Influence over Milton— 
 The Rebellion — The condition of the English monarchy — The poet's domes- 
 tic troubles — Sonnets — Johnson's criticisms on them — Milton's Latin de- 
 spatches — Sonnet on the Piedmont poi-secution —Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 on the moral sublimity of the poet's life — The Paradise Lost — The character 
 of Satan — Coleridge's criticism — The grandeur of the epic— The Paradise 
 Regained — -The Samson Agonis+es — Poetry a relief to the poet's overcharged 
 heart .......... Page 122
 
 \l CONTEKTS. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 MINOR rOETIiY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKT. 
 
 Character of the transition from Milton to Dryden — The rank of Dryden 
 among the poets — English imagination in his age — Influence of Milton's 
 genius upon his contemporaries and successors — Wordsworth's apostrophe to 
 Milton — Decline of inuiginative energy — Metaphysical Poetry — Daniel and 
 Drayton — Drayton's Polyolbion — Lamb's notice of this poem — Donne and 
 Cowley — The sin of this school of Poetry — Poetry a subject for studious 
 thoughtfulness — Donne's "Lecture" — Character of Cowley's genius — Ilis 
 prose essays — " The Complaint" — The conceits of the Poetry of this period 
 — Herbert's lines on Virtue ; Life ; Peace^ — Herbert's self-criticism — tjacrcd 
 Poetry of the seventeenth centui-y — Robert Herrick — His Litany to the Holy 
 Spirit — The music of his verse — Literary interest of the Ci\'il War — Lord 
 Chatham on the character of this struggle — The Puritan system adverse to 
 poetic culture — Richard Lovelace — "To Althea, from prison" — George 
 Wither — His character — His addi-ess to his Muse — A tribute to Wither's 
 memory .......... Page 144 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE AGE OF THE RESTOUATION : DUVDEN. 
 
 Ambiguities in th(! gcmcral titles adopted to designate particular literary eras — 
 The last quarter of the seventeenth century the age of Dryden — The degraded 
 tastes of his times — The alliance of high Poetry with virtue — The true stand- 
 ard of poetic merit — Dryden's Poetry a reflection of the times of Charles II. 
 ■ — Profligacy of that age — Character of Charles Stuart — The spirit of Poetry is 
 a spirit of enthusiasm — The debasing effects of the CivitWars— Shaftesbury 
 as Lord-Chancellor — Reception of tlie Paradise Lost — Winstanley's Lives 
 of the English Poets — Milton's exposition of kingly duty — The Drama during 
 the age of the Restoration — Dryden's Plays — Defence of rhyming Tragedies 
 — "The Fall of Innocence" — Dryden's alteration of "The Tempest" — 
 "Absalom and Achitophcl" — Buckingham — Literary larceny— Sir Egcrton 
 Brydges's Lines on Milton — "The Hind and the Panther" — "Alexander's 
 Feast" — Ode for St. Cecilia's Day — Dryden's later Poetry Page 167 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE AGE OF QUEEN ANNE: POPE; AND POETS OP THE LATEB PART 
 OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : COWPER. 
 
 The ag(> of Pope— Change in tbe social relations of Authors — Language of 
 Dedications — Periodical pu])lications— State of Rritish parties Lord Ma- 
 hou's illustrations of the age — Spirit of that age — Alexander Pope — His 
 aspirations — His want of sympathy with his predecessors — Imitation of 
 French I'oetry — Pope's edition of Sliakspean! — Pope's Pastorals — Corrup- 
 tions of the English tongue — Jobn Dennis's Kmcndations of Shakspeare — 
 pope's versification — The "Town" — The Moonlight Scene in the Iliad — 
 I'opf! and Milton contrasted— "Kloisa to Abclavd" — The "Rajjc of the 
 Lock" — I'ope's Satires — The "Essay on Criticism" — The "Essay on Alan" 
 — Lord liolingbrokc— Orthodoxy of the "l']ssay on Man"— His appreciation 
 of female character — William Cowj)cr — His insanity — "The Ta.sk" — 
 "John Gilpin" — "The Dirge" — "Tiu' Castaway" — "Cowper's Grave" 
 
 Paije 187
 
 CONTENTS. Vii 
 
 LECTUEE X. 
 
 BURNS (with notices OF JOHNSON'S LIVES OP THE POETS). 
 
 Monotony of Pope's verse — The revival of a truer spirit of Poetry — Chatterton 
 — Merit of Cowper — Dr. Johnson's literary dictatorship— His " Lives of the 
 Poets" — Sir Egerton Brydges's criticism on them — Cowper' s judj^ment of 
 them — Johnson's incapacity for poetical criticism — Johnson's judgments on 
 Gray — "London" — "Vanity of Human Wishes" — Percy's "Reliqucs of 
 Ancient English Poetry" — The character of this Poetry — Robert Burns — 
 His boyhood^Early trials — Mossgeil Farm — The freshness of his Poetry — ■ 
 Its universality — Wordsworth's lines — "The Mountain-Daisy" — ""The 
 Field-Mouse" — "Cotter's Saturday Night" — "Tarn 0'Shanter"^Mary 
 Campbell— Morality of Burns' s Poetry — 'The Bard's Epitaph — Wordsworth's 
 Lines to the Sons of Bui'ns ...... Page 207 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 
 
 The present age not an unpoetical one — Five names worthy of distinction — 
 Samuel Rogers — The "Pleasures of Memory" — Rogers's "Italy" — Galileo 
 and Milton — -Moore's Songs — Irish patriotism — The true question respect- 
 ing poetical composition — Lamb's lines on the "Old Fanuliar Faces" — 
 Scott's career of authorship — Scott the second in rank of Scottish poets — ■ 
 His childhood at Sandy Knowe — His early reading — His interview with 
 Burns — Influence of the Story of the Rebellion of 1745 on his genius — His 
 love of natural scenery — The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border — Hallam's 
 remark on the Scottish ballads — Story of "Christie's Will" — "The Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel" — Scott's merit as a poet — Influence of the French Revo- 
 lution on his mind — "Marmiou" — "The Lady of the Lake" — Decline of 
 his poetical powers — "Bonny Dundee" — "Battle of Otterburne" — His 
 pilgrimage to Italy Page 233 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 Advantage of connecting critical with historical considerations — Spenser and 
 his age — Spirit of the French Revolution — Contrast between the American 
 and the French Revolutions — Its influence over thought and action — Cole- 
 ridge's "France" — Nature of lyrical Poetry — Early developments of Cole- 
 ridge's genius — His philosophy — His critical papers — His consciousness of 
 his own poetical endowment — His boyhood at Christ Church Hospital — 
 Monody on Chatterton — His love of nature — Ode on Dejection- — Transla- 
 tions of Schiller's tragedies — "The Ancient Mariner" — "Christabel" — Its 
 metrical beauty — His epitaph ...... Page 260 
 
 LECTURE XIIT. 
 
 SOUTHEY (with NOTICE OF CHARLES LAMB). 
 
 Charles Lamb, the friend of Coleridge and Southey — "The Old Familiar Faces" 
 — " Elia" — Robert Southey — Character of his prose — His complete poetical 
 works — His mental derangement — Perstmal interest of his poems — Satiriciil 
 power — " Wat Tyler " — "Joan of Arc" — The product of imagination is often
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 truth — "Madoc" — "Roderic" — "Thalaba" — "The Curse of Kehama" — 
 Scriptural character of "Thalaha" — Kehlc's "Christian Year" — Story of 
 "Thalaba and Oneiza" — Southey's Odes— "The Ketreat from Moscow" — 
 "The Tale of Paraguay"- — His playful Poetry — Ode on the Portrait of 
 Bishop Heber i'age 287 
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 A catholic t^iste in literature — Difficulties of a course of critical lectures — 
 Southey and Byron — The spirit of criticism the spirit of charity — Rogers's 
 plea fur Byron's memory — Popularity of his Poetry — "English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers" — " Childe Harold" — Ilis love of external nature — For- 
 mation of his literary character — Admiration for Pope — Success of " Childe 
 Harold" — His Oriental tales — Literature of the last century — Story of 
 Byron's marriage — Noctes Ambrosiame — Contrast between the "Corsair" 
 and the "Prisoner of Chillon" — "The Dream" — Materialism in his Poetry 
 — Manfred — Venice — The Dying Gladiator — Strains for liberty — Beauty of 
 womanly humanity — "Sardanapalus" — Byron's selfishness — His infidelilv. 
 
 Vage 312 
 
 LECTURE XV. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Difficulties in the way of a proper appreciation of contemporary genius — Car- 
 dour rare in criticism — Controversy in regard to Wordsworth's school of 
 Poetry — Comparative criticism between the Poetry of Wordsworth and Byron 
 — Correspondence of Wordsworth's life with the spirit of true Poetry — Con- 
 tinuity of his moral life — Recollections of his childhood— His love of nature 
 and of man — His sympathy with the French Revolution — His seclusion — 
 (Communion with his hrutlicr-pocts — Aim of liis career of authorship — lanes 
 composed in the neighbourhood of Tintern Abbey — "'J'he Excursion" — 
 "Sonnet on Westminster Bridge" — "l^ines on the Death of Mr. Fox" — 
 "Tribute to a favourite Dog" — "Simon Lee" — "Story of the Deserted 
 Cottage" — His political poems — Conclusion . . . Vage 385 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ON ENGLISH POETBY. 
 
 ESSAY L 
 ENci.ien Sonnets . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-57 
 
 ESSAY IL 
 Poems ok HAUTLEy Coleridge . . . . . . . . 380
 
 LECTUEES 
 
 OS 
 
 ENGLISH POETEY. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 OHJECT OF THE COURSE— POETRY THE EMINENCE OF LITERATURE— THE HISTORY 
 OF LITERATURE ILLUSTRATED BY GENERAL HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY— THE 
 TJVES OF SPENSER AND MILTON— A CATHOLIC TASTE IN POETRY— VARIETY OF 
 POETRY— INTOLER.VNCE OF LITER.VRY JUDGMENT— RYMER AND VOLTAIRE ON 
 SHAKSPEARE— JOHNSON OX MILTON— JEFFREY ON 'WORDSWORTH- aUALIFICA- 
 TIONS OF AN ENLIGHTENED CRITIC— UTILITARL^N CRITICISM— THE TRUE USE 
 OF POETRY— ITS DEPRECIATION AND ABUSE— ALBUMS AND SCRAP-BOOKS— BEN 
 JONSON'S PANEGYTllC ON HIS ART— WORDSWORTH-OBJECT OF THESE LEC- 
 TURES NOT TO ENCOURAGE POETICAL COMPOSITION— SYDNEY'S DEFENCE- 
 CONNECTION OF POETRY A3CD SCIENCE— THE SPIRIT OF OUR TIMES— MATERIAL^ 
 ISM AND INFIDELITY— INFLUENCE ON IMAGINATIVE POWER— VINDICATION OF 
 POETRY. 
 
 THE course of Lectm-es I am about attempting is the first of a 
 contemplated series upon English Poetry, undertaken as well from 
 an uncalculating impulse, as from a conviction that, in our systems of 
 education, it is a department more than any neglected. The treasures 
 of the English tongue are sacrificed to the attainment of those whicli 
 are more recondite in the dead or foreign languages. As, year after 
 year, I have wandered through the forsaken region (if I may he in- 
 dulged in so far speaking of myself) and contemplated the mighty 
 achievements of our English mind, a glowing admiration has kindled, 
 higher and higher, the hope that it might not be beyond my strength to 
 be the humble guide of others to the same unfailing springs of intellect- 
 ual happiness. 
 
 The portion of literature to be treated of is that which may be re- 
 garded as its eminence, — its Poetry. I have ventured to speak of it as 
 the noblest portion of our noble literature ; and, if I shall succeed in 
 awakening a thoughtful admiration of that which has been given to the 
 world by the souls of mighty poets finding utterance in the music of 
 English words, that opinion will not be condonmed for its extravagance. 
 It is a large field to travel over ; and, therefore, among the introduc- 
 
 B
 
 2. LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 tory topics at present to be noticed, it is necessary to advert to the, 
 general plan, which will, however, more satisfactorily appear when 
 practically illustrated in the sncceeding lectures. It will be my aim to 
 convey such information on the history of English poetry as the cir- 
 cumstances under which we meet will allow. To penetrate the obscur- 
 ity of an early age, and thence to trace the progress of poetry from its 
 rude beginnings down to modern years, — to show it in its successive 
 eras, — to discover the connection between the poetry and the spirit of 
 the age acting and reacting on each other, — to see how at one time the 
 muse has soared and at another crept, — are topics which the idea of 
 these lectures comprehends, how far soever the execution may fall 
 short of it. And here let me beg your reflection on the remark that 
 there are few higher functions of criticism than to reveal the connec- 
 tion between illustrious literary production and the contemporaneous 
 state of opinion and feeling, and to show especially the poet's inspira- 
 tions in their relation to dominant thoughts and passions. For it is 
 not to be questioned that, in God's providence over the destinies of the 
 human race, men are called into being with powers to cheer or rebuke 
 the spirit of their times with voices prophetic of weal or woe. This 
 consideration with regard to literary history will, therefore, involve, to 
 a certain extent, allusion to what is usually and eminently entitled his- 
 tory ; I mean the narrative of national events. Furtlier tlum this, com- 
 prehensive criticism embraces considerations of a biographical charac- 
 ter ; for, in studying the works of genius, it is a matter of no slight 
 interest to examine the gradual structure, or rather growth, of the in- 
 dividual powers that have produced them. 1 should, for instance, 
 deem that but an imperfect comment on the Faery Queen which took 
 no heed of the age in which its author lived,— a time animated by a 
 high, adventurous spirit, when the sentiment of chivalry was still for a 
 season outliving its institutions and usages, and which the poet sought 
 imaginatively to perpetuate in his matcldcss allegory. It would also be 
 a faulty negligence to turn away from the personal history which por- 
 trays Spenser embodying his high imaginings while dwelling in a bar- 
 barous island, and, at length, heart-stricken with neglect and domestic 
 sorrow. It comes within the range of an eidarged criticism to tell of 
 the young instincts ard j)resages of Milton's genius, such as break 
 forth in the exquisite inspiration of Comus, and thence to trace his 
 sombre-coloured life till, after having consorted with the stern Repub- 
 licans, d(;f('ndiiig their sternest deed, and eulogizing their mightiest 
 chieftain, he retired, in danger and the darkness of a hopeless blindness, 
 to build up the immortal epic of the Paradise Lost.
 
 J^ CATHOLIC TASTF, TN POETUT. 3 
 
 Eut a course of literary lectures must comprehend more than tlie 
 communication of historical and biographical facts, the details of wliich, 
 orally addi'essed, are apt to be unsatisfactory and often wearisome. The 
 mind may be oppressed by the accumulation of isolated facts, which 
 are never more troublesome than when unprovided Avith some principle 
 by means of which they may be marshalled into order. A ])aramoant 
 object, therefore, wliich I have proposed, is the cultivation of a theory 
 of criticism to be familiarized by application to the most worthy effusions 
 of the English muse, from the first great outbreak in the happy fresh- 
 ness of Chaucer and the early nameless minstrels, down to the majestic 
 and meditative imagination of Wordsworth. When I speak of a theory 
 of criticism, let me not be understood as having in my thoughts any 
 hypothesis fashioned from the study of some particular form of poetic 
 invention and narrowed to it, but an ample groundwork built in the 
 pliilosophy of the human spirit, and fitted, therefore, to sustain a catholic 
 taste in the estimate of literary productions. The mind is too apt to 
 become capricious and contracted, bigoted in its literary creed, and 
 cramped and enfeebled by a species of favouritism ; so that nothing has-, 
 been more common than attempts to strip the laurel from the brow of 
 a poet like Pope, or to refuse it to that great living master of the art 
 who has passed, through the obloquy of a scornful ignorance, to his 
 fame. In all this there is grievous error. And, let me say, this nar- 
 rowness of taste and judgment must carry with it its own penalty ; for 
 greatly does it diminish the occasions of literary enjoyment. The in- 
 tellect, like the heart, has its hundi'ed avenues of happiness, and it is not 
 wise to close or abandon any of them. The true aim of every student 
 should be to acquire a taste, which, while it can discriminate between the 
 different endowments of different minds, can also feed on all that genius 
 sets before it, no matter how various it may be. A squeamish and fastidi- 
 ous taste in reading is a disease which grows more and more inveterate 
 with indulgence, and, like a hypochondriac's appetite, makes its \ictim 
 alike more helpless and more unliealthy. A taste strong in health is not 
 more ready to reject what is unwiiolesome than to di-aw its nourishment 
 from variety. The food of the mind, like that of the body, is various, and 
 the function of health is to assimilate to itself the variety which nature 
 proffers. It is the invalid whose delicate digestion needs to be pamper- 
 ed with dainties. So is it with the weak and uncultivated in intellect. 
 Genius pours out its abundance for them in vain. In this way arises 
 exclusive devotion to some one author, as if wisdom had been his mo- 
 nopoly. V\niile the oracle of poetry is uttering its inspirations in a 
 thousand tones, there are ears which are deaf to all but one of the 
 
 B 2
 
 LF-CTURlL y[K.ST. 
 
 notes which issue from the temple. Genius has its multitude of voices, 
 like nature with its scale of sounds, from the thunder rolling along the 
 heavens and echoed by Alps or Andes, down to the whisper (to borrow 
 one of Shakspeare's sweet sentences) — 
 
 " As gentle 
 As zephyrs, blowing below the violet. 
 Not wagging his sweet head." — Cymbeline. 
 
 Of this dulness consequent on contracted taste it would not be difficult 
 to tiud instances to verity the observation. But it is )nore than indi- 
 vidual malady, for it spreads into an epidemic ; and I shall hereafter 
 have occasion to advert to revolutions in literary opinion, and to show 
 that the feeblest voice had gained the public ear which was almost closed 
 to that of Milton, when he craved " fit audience, though few," while 
 Cowley was earning his speedy popularity ; and, again, the glory of the 
 older poets fading before the admiration of the high-wrought verse of 
 Pope. An illustration within our own meraoi-y was that declamatory, 
 undisciplined, indiscriminate enthusiasm, which, knowing no other in- 
 spiration, was in truth the poorest tribute that coidd be paid to genius 
 such as Lord Byron unquestionably possessed. The domain of Parnas- 
 sus is not so narrow as to be susceptible of any such appropriation. 
 The sovereignty of even Homer or Shaksjiearc could hold no exclusive 
 usurpation. The sacred mount is covered with the homesteads of the 
 poets ; some, in modest humility, where its first declivity rises from the 
 level of the plain ; others, midway up the mount ; and a few seated, 
 where others dui-st not soar, high as the summit in the upper air. The 
 greiit endowment of poetry has been bestowed in almost infinite degrees 
 and forms ; and it is the office of pliilosophic criticism to trace it in its 
 truth where\er it may exist : — in the homely ballad chanted in the 
 nursery ; in tlic traditionary songs of a peasantry ; in strains that have 
 kindled the spirit of a people in the hour of battle ; in the softer melody 
 of love ; in the mournful elegy ; in the bitterness of satire ; in devotional 
 hymns, the measured utterance of thanksgiving, prayer, and praise ; in 
 the lofty aspirations of the meditative ode ; in the lifelike creation of 
 the drama, " gorgeous tragedy in sceptred pall ; " and in the elaborate 
 structures of the rarely-attempted epic. The taste thus cultivated and 
 strengthened will be safe from that narrow-spirited habit which pros- 
 trates the intellect in its solitary idolatry. The voice erf the muse, 
 comc! whence it may, if it come in truth, will not come in vain ; for the 
 open heart will give it entrance. So important do I consider the pos- 
 session of a catholic spirit in literature as tlie nieans of enlarged Intel-
 
 VARIETY OF POETRY. 5 
 
 lectual enjoyment, that I shall sedulously shun the adoption of any con- 
 Iraeted poetical system, directing my eilbrts rather, in the examination 
 of English poetry, so to discuss the subject as to assist not only in dis- 
 criminating, but in appreciating, the varieties of merit. 
 
 The catalogue of EugHsh poets is voluminous. The mere enumera- 
 tion of them and of their writings — if it were in iny power to give — 
 would consume the time wliich will be at my command. In a course, 
 therefore, of lectures limited in number as well as length, some method 
 must be adopted in treating a subject which, of course, transcends the 
 necessary bounds. The annals of English poetry offer a series of names 
 known much more familiarly than their productions, because fame has 
 given them an elevation in the midst of what Milton styles " the 
 laureate fraternity of poets." To such names the student of literature 
 lirst turns his thoughts, seeking to justify their fame. I propose, there- 
 fore, in travelling through this wide and populous region of literatiu'e, 
 to select for especial examination the most illustrious poets who in 
 regular succession have enriched the language from the period of its 
 formation do\Am to the present time. Besides, criticism on the pro- 
 ductions of the masters in an art possesses greater interest and value 
 than on those which bear a fainter impression of the stamp of genius. 
 it is in the school of mighty artists that criticism itseK is taught. 
 The critic acquires skiR by the modest contemplation — the affectionate 
 study — of the works of genius. The great English poets, arrayed as 
 They may be ia an almost unbroken chronological series, stand as the 
 types and emblems of the literary spirit of their times ; and thus the 
 progress of literature may be illustrated by the examination of those 
 who are most prominent in its successive eras. This method will 
 therefore be pursued, wUh. occasional notices of others less celebrated. 
 
 This method avUI, I trust, unless grievously deficient in the execu- 
 tion, conduce to the attainment of the best purposes of criticism, on 
 which I desire to say a few words before passing to other introductoiy 
 topics. The main design of poetry being to communicate, through the 
 medium of the imagination, pleasures of a highly intellectual and moral 
 nature, the criticism which best subserves the cause is that which 
 illustrates and developes qualities in poetical composition adapted to 
 effect such results. Eault-fniding — so far from constituting, as is some- 
 times supposed, criticism — is but a subordinate function, necessary, 
 indeed, occasionally to the formation of a discriminating judgment. 
 liut, whenever the detection of poetical irregularities and error is made 
 the c/iief purpose, we suffer ourselves to be cheated of the enjoyment 
 which attends that better habit of seeking for what gives pleasure in
 
 G LECTUKE FIRST. 
 
 prefereucc to tliiit wliich gives pain. The best eriiieisin ever produced 
 has been that wliich had its birth iu a geuial admiration — a love — of 
 that on wliieh it passes judgment. The worst criticism is that wliich is 
 engendered in apathy, spleen, or malice. There is no more healthy 
 mental exercise than the study of a great work of art, if dbected t») 
 the discovery of the elements of its glory, to cause its sublimity or its 
 beauty to ])e felt more and more deeply, and not only felt, but understood, 
 that the understanding may have cognizance of that which the heart has 
 loved. It is to criticism thus conducted in the spirit of faith and hope 
 that genius vouchsafes to make the most ample revelation of its glories. 
 It is important, too, to shun the habit of dogmatic criticism. It is 
 a singular but familiar fact, that men are never more apt to be intolerant 
 of ditiereuce of opinion than in what concerns the mingled powers of 
 judgment and feeling denominated taste. I need suggest no other 
 illustration than the striking contrariety of judgment on the merits of 
 the most distingiushed poets who have iloiu'ished in our own times, the 
 discussion of whieli I shall not now anticipate by the expression of any 
 opinion. To what is this owing? Partly, no doubt, to variety of 
 character, intellectual and moral; to diversity of temperament aild 
 etlueation; and whatsoever else makes one man in some respects a 
 diiicrcnt being from his neighbom-. Each reader, as well as each writer, 
 lias his peculiar bent of mind, his own way of thinking and feeling ; so 
 that the passionate strains of poetry will find an adaptation in the heart 
 of one, while its thoughtful, meditative inspirations will come home to 
 the heart of another. This consideration must not be lost sight of, 
 liecause it goes far toward allaying this literary intolerance, whicli, 
 like political or tiieologieal intolerance, is doubly disastrous, for it at tin; 
 same time narrows a man's sympathies and heightens his pride. But 
 the variety of mind or of general disposition will not wholly explain 
 the variety of literary opinions. After making all due allowance in this 
 respect, it is not to be questioned that there is right judgment and 
 wrong judgment,— a sound taste and a sickly taste. There are opinions 
 which we may hold with a most entire conviction of their truth, an 
 absolute and imperious self-confidence, and a judicial assurance that tin; 
 contradictory tenets are errors. There is a poetry, for in.stance, of 
 wliich a man may both know and feci not only that it gives poetic 
 gratification to himself, but that it cannot fail to product; a like ctrcct 
 on every well-constituted and weli-edueatcd mind. When an English 
 critic, llymer, some hundred and fifty years ago, disloyal in his folly, 
 pronounced the tragical part of Othello to be ])]ainly none other than a 
 bloody farce, without salt or savour, — wh(;n Voltaire scotfed at the
 
 QTJALIFfCA-TIONS OF A CEITIC. 7 
 
 tragedy of Hamlet as a gross and barbarous piece, whicb would not be 
 tolerated by the vilest rabble of France or Italy, likening it (I give you 
 his own words) to the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage, — - 
 when Steevens, an editor of Shakspeare, said that an Act of Parliament 
 would not be strong enough to compel the perusal of the somiets and 
 other minor poems of the bard, — when Dr. Johnson remarked that 
 Paradise Lost might be read as a duty, but could not be as a pleasure, 
 and pronounced a sweeping condemnation on MUton's incomparable 
 Lycidas, — when, in our own day, a Scotch critic, Lord Jeffrey, declared 
 of Wordsworth's majestic poem, The Excui'sion, that " it would never 
 do," — in each of these opinions I know, as anybody may, with a con- 
 tidence not short of demonstration, I know that there was gross and 
 grievous falsehood. Now, if these opinions are defenceless on the 
 score of variety of mind, and safely to be stigmatized as rash and 
 irrational judgments, it follows that there must exist principles to guide 
 to wise conclusions. And how is a theoiy of criticism to be formed ? 
 How, in a matter in which men are apt to think and feel so differently, 
 to have such various fancies, prejiidices, and prepossessions, — how are 
 we to get at the truth ? The process of criticism is a process of in- 
 duction ; and, happily, we have the pages of Spenser and Sliakspeare 
 and Milton to gather instruction from ; — happily, I say, for no one is so 
 bold or so stupid in paradox as to question the sufficiency of such 
 authorities. But induction is something more than the gathering of 
 examples, more than what is often thought to be aU-sufficicnt, — mere 
 obsen-ation and experiment. The pages of the niighty poets cannot of 
 themselves bestow the power to recognise and to feel what they contain. 
 All their utterance may be unheeded ; and it is only when the human 
 spirit has studied its own nature that the sounds wluch before ])assed 
 over it as idly and as noiselessly as a floating cloud make the spiritiiai 
 music which is poetry. It is not enough to know the voice and the 
 tones of poetry, but to discover the avenues of the human heart which 
 lie open to them, and which send back the music echoed from its depths. 
 These are the sources of tliat wisdom which enables us to distinguish 
 the truth of poetic inspiration from that which is counterfeit and 
 delusive. I know not where else to search for the elements of criticism 
 than in the minstrelsy of the mighty dead, and tlie life which is the 
 pulse of every living heart. 
 
 It woidd not be inappropriate for me here to examine what is the union 
 of qualifications essential to the character of an eidightencd critic of 
 poetry. There is needed a mind at once poetical and philosophical, 
 with powers imaginative and analytical, and not merely the passivo
 
 b LECTURE riBST. 
 
 recipiency of a correct t;wte, but the quick sympathy of an active iniJigm- 
 ation, untrammelled by conventional or technical precepts ; a natural 
 sensibility ; force and kindly afi'ections ; a vigorous and wcU-disciplined 
 undorstaudiug ; and a judicial composui-e dwelliug above the clouded 
 and titful region of prejudice. Let me assiu'C you that when I look 
 forth to the magnificent theme which is before me, — the vast compass 
 of English poetry and its lofty soarings, — no one is more painfully im- 
 pressed than he who is addressing you with the thought of how much 
 is demanded for the faithful execution of that wliich he has undertaken. 
 I have already intimated an opinion that the noblest porti(ni of a na- 
 tion's literature is its poetry. I am well aware that this is a sentiment 
 in which many minds wUl be reluctant to concur, and that not a few 
 win utterly revolt at it. We live in an age whose favourite question 
 is. What is the use ? The inquiry is a rational one ; and equally ra- 
 tional is the conclusion, — that what is useless is contemptible. But 
 the notion of utility is very various, and we must be cautious that we 
 are not condemning by a false standard. In the common business 
 transactions of the world, men are very careful as to the weiglits and 
 , measures they are dealing with. The buyer of a yard of clotli, or a 
 chest of tea, or a prescription of medicine, trusts to an accurate mea- 
 surement as the means of giving him all that he is entitled to, and, in 
 the last case, saving liim from being drugged with more than his malady 
 makes inevitable. Now, when you turn from the world of trade to the 
 inner woi'ld of moral and inteUeetual operations, you will see men 
 weighing and measuring out their judgments and their sentiments with 
 all the confidence of logical deduction from their premises, not dream- 
 ing that often in those premises lies tlie fallacy of a false balance and a 
 crooked rule. The mind, instead of being truly poised, is often per- 
 versely planted ; and it has its makeweights in the shape of covert pre- 
 judices or prepossessions, and thence come distorted judgments and 
 misdirected affections. Eminently is this the case in our estimate of 
 utility, for the obvious reason that, men proposing to themselves differ- 
 ent objects to be attained, a pursuit is applauded as useful, or despised 
 as the reverse, just as it may hajipen to conduce to those ends respect- 
 ively. Thus, things are judged by standards never meant for them, — a 
 process as senseless as if one sought to measure by a balance or to 
 weigh by a foot-rule. The aim of one man may be wealth ; of another, 
 ])Ower, political or inilitary ; of another, notoriety or fanu; ; of another, 
 eiise, eating and drinking and sleeping ; of another, knowledge or 
 literary eultivati(m; of another, I lie social amelioration of mankind; 
 or, of another, the enlargement of liis whole being by the improve-
 
 UTILFTARIAN CRITICISM. 9 
 
 ment of every talent which God has given him, and the further-look- 
 ing hope of the promised happiness of an hereafter. Eaeh one, by a 
 process of reasoning, equal, too, in logical accuracy, reaches a conclu- 
 sion of his own. And thus the art of book-keeping and the tables of 
 interest are useful ; and so is the art of cookery ; and so is history, 
 or politics, or the art of war ; and so is poetry, and so is the 
 Bible ; all useful, each in its own — I need not add how different — 
 way. But the moment you begin to apply to any one the standard 
 proper to another, then comes error, with confusion on confusion. 
 Especially is this the case with regard to literature, and, most of all, 
 to the higher department of imaginative composition. The question to 
 be discussed in its most striking form comes directly to this : — What 
 is the use of poetry ? Now, when a question of this sort is made, the 
 answer must depend very much on the temper and the tone in which it 
 is propounded. If it come with a self-sufficient defiance of reply, with 
 that scornful materialism which recognises no standard of value but 
 what affects the outward man, — -if it come from that quenchless spirit 
 of traffic whose element is the market, and which concentrates the in- 
 tensity of man's being — to describe it in a familiar way — within that 
 busy but small portion of the day comprehended between the hours of 
 nine and three, making life a kind of bank -hour existence, — then, I say, 
 the question may, like Pilate's, better remain unanswered ; for the very 
 faculties to be addressed are torpid or dead, no more able to take cog- 
 nizance of the loftier aims of literature than the deaf to delight in mu- 
 sic or the blind in colours. There is a wide gulf separating the cold, 
 dark, and indurated heart of the sensual and the mercenary from the 
 imaginative and the spiritual; and it is a vain and almost hopeless 
 thing to try to send the voice across it. If ever the blindness of the 
 clouded heart, purged away in any chance moment, catches a glimpse 
 of the glory enveloping the mighty poets, it sees them only " as trees 
 walking." 
 
 But the inquiry as to the use of poetry may come in a better shape, 
 — the meek questioning of a docile doubt. It may be the craving 
 of a heart yet pure from the pride of materialism in all its forms, and 
 of a young imagination feeble in its apprehensions of imaginative 
 truth ; and then no pains should be spared to convince that poetry has, 
 in the highest and truest sense, its use. Criticism has no more precious 
 office than to give its aid " that men may learn more worthily to under- 
 stand and appreciate what a glorious gift God bestows on a nation when 
 he gives them a poet." A sense of the dignity of the su})iect we are 
 approaching makes me solicitous to contribute something to the forma-
 
 10 LECTURE i-lKST. 
 
 tion of correct opinion. It is necessary to go to the root of what ia 
 erroneous, and to lay the foundation broadly and deeply for sound 
 priucii)les. Let us, in the first place, observe what is the mode of 
 thinkiiip: prevdent in the estimate of poetical composition. I do not 
 mean opinions expressed in the shape of deliberately-framed proposi- 
 tions, but a state of opinion wliich, while rarely venturing on such 
 expressions, wiU yet betray itself in numberless indirect forms equally 
 significant. If any one ■niU be at the trouble of obseiTiug these, he 
 can scarce fail to perceive signs of a low appreciation of the imaginative 
 department of Hteratm-e, wliether considered in comparison or posi- 
 tively. It is betrayed either by absolute neglect, or by what is far 
 more injurious, because more plausible and offensive, — the habit of 
 alluding to poetry as a mere matter of sentimental recreation, or, at 
 best, a species of elegant trifling, congenial to efteminacy or immaturity 
 of mind rather thau to the robust and manly energy of a ripened intel- 
 lect. I have little doubt that, in many minds, the first association 
 called up by the word " poetry " is the efi'usion of that generous vanity 
 which gratifies itself in a small way on the pages of albums and scrap- 
 books, and sometimes by a more adventurous fligiit, as high as the 
 comer of a newspaper. Observe, too, how the title of poet is con- 
 ferred — in apparent uneonsciousnc^ss of any absurdity in such use of 
 language — on any stripling, male or female, who accomplishes the feat 
 of stringing together a few sentunental rhymes ; and what is more sick- 
 ening to see is the self-complacency with which the title is received 
 and worn. But the false opinions of poetry stop not at a low estimate, 
 for it is often seen to put ou tlie form of contemptuous repugnance. It 
 is shunned as fostering a dangerous, dreamy, visionary habit of mind, 
 incompatible with the demands of active life. Now, against the folly 
 involved in this egregious misappreciation of the worth of genuine 
 poetry it is hard to argue, for it seldom occurs in the tangible form of 
 distinct avowals. But that it exists, and is influencing the direction of 
 mental pursuits, and allecting the habitual tone of thought and feeling, 
 cannot be doubted by any one who will observe the neglect of poetical 
 literature, or the supercilious spirit with which a poet's endowments 
 are regarded in comparison with qualifications for other departments 
 of intellectual occupation. 
 
 For this there must be some cause; — something, too, wliicli siistahis 
 so wide-spread an error. Half the refutation of fallacy will often be 
 the mere discovery of its origin. There is confusion of mind on one 
 point, which greatly contributes to the mistaken opinions under discus- 
 sion. 1 allude to the very common and superficial error of identifymg
 
 jonson's panegyric on poetky. 11 
 
 poetry with verse. That verse — the melody of metre and rhyme — is 
 the appropriate diction of true poetry, its outward garb (for a reason 1 
 shall hereafter advert to), is perfectly true ; but then it is nothing more 
 than the outward form ; it is the dress and not the body or the soul of 
 poetry. Very far am I from entertaining those principles of criticism 
 which recognise as poetry imaginative composition divested of metrical 
 expression, which I deem its natural and essential form. But then 
 there may be the form without the appropriate substance. The idea of 
 poetry comprehends verse : but there may be verse without a ray <jf 
 poetry ; and to suppose that dexterity in versifying implies the endow- 
 ment of a poet's powers is much the same confusion of thought as to 
 think that a military cloak makes a soldier, or an ecclesiastical vestment 
 makes a priest. Thought, whether uttered in prose or verse, may un- 
 dergo no change with the change of the outward fashion. "When verse is 
 mistaken for poetiy, discredit is brought on the latter, because it is well 
 known that the making of verses looking indeed very like poetry is within 
 the power of the shallowest intellect. It may be the merest mechanism 
 conceivable. There is a multitude of verses with no more of the life- 
 blood of poetiT than there is life in the tattered garments dangling and 
 fluttering on a stick to frighten the fowls of the aii- from a grooving 
 crop. To place the mere vcrsilicr in the same categoi-y with the genuine 
 poet is the gross fallacy of giving to the butterfly, the bat, and the 
 winged insect brotherhood with the dove and the eagle. It is a false 
 atfinity, from which true imagination has always revolted. The classical 
 student will, on a moment's reflection, recall the feelings in this par- 
 ticular of more than one of the Roman satirists ; but I know no passage 
 of the kind finer than one in which that vigorous dramatist, Ben Jonsoii, 
 at once spiums his false brethren and viudicat(;s his own high calling in 
 u strain that rises on the blast of a magnanimous indignation :— 
 
 " I can approve 
 The state of Poesy, such as it is, 
 Blessed, eternal, and most true diviiii-. 
 Indeed, if you will look on Poesy 
 As she appears in many, poor and lame, 
 Patch'd \ip in remnants and old worn-out niajs. 
 Half starved for want of her peculiar fooil, 
 Sacred invention, then I must contirm 
 Both your conceit and censure of her merit ; — - 
 But view her in her glorious ornaments, 
 Attired in the majesty of Art, 
 Set high in spirit with the precious taste 
 Of sweet Philosophy ; and, which is mo.it,
 
 12 LECTURE FIUST. 
 
 Crown'd with the rich traditions of a soul 
 
 That hates to have her dignity profaned 
 
 With any rehsh of an earthly thought : 
 
 Oh, then how proud a presence doth she bear ! 
 
 Then she is like herself,— fit to be seen 
 
 Of none but grave and consecrated eyes. 
 
 Nor is it any blemish to her fame 
 
 That such lean, ignorant, and blasted wits, 
 
 Such brainless gulls, should utter their stolen wares 
 
 With such applauses in our vulgar ears ; 
 
 Or that their slubber'd lines have current pass 
 
 From the fat judgments of the multitude ; 
 
 But that this barren and infected age 
 
 Should set no difference 'twixt these empty spirit.-; 
 
 And a true poet, than which reverend name 
 
 Nothing can more adorn humanity." 
 
 The reproach of the dehascment of poetic inspiration to unwortliy or 
 corrupt uses is thus repelled by a later poet, \vhen he proclaims that 
 
 " Deathless powers to verse belong ; 
 And they like demigods are strong 
 
 On whom the Muses smile ; 
 But some their function have disclaim'd. 
 Best i)lcased with what is aptliest framed 
 
 To enervate and defile. 
 
 " Nor such the spirit-stirring note 
 When the live chords Aleasus smote. 
 
 Inflamed by sense of wrong. 
 ' Woe ! wo(' to tyrants ! ' from the lyre 
 Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire 
 
 Of fiei'cc, vindictive song. 
 
 " And not unhallow'd was the page, 
 By winged love inscribed to assuage 
 
 The ])angs of vain pursuit ; 
 Love listening while the Lesbian maid 
 With finest tovuth of ))assion sway'd 
 Her own ..Tjolian lute."* 
 
 Lot mo lioro remark that tlio purpose of I his course is not to cn- 
 fourago poetical composition. I have no sneli tliouglil ; but I ain 
 not witlioul a liope that it may so far contribute 1o tlie appreciation 
 <if the poelio function as <o ])rovont the puny aml)ition of weaving 
 verses tuider the delusion that the production is poetry. It is a, weai< 
 
 • Wordsworth's " September."
 
 Sydney's "defence of poetry." 13 
 
 waste of time, vequii-ing very little intellect, no feeling, and no imagin- 
 ation, and yet very apt to foster a habit of self-beguiling vanity. This 
 course on the English Poets is to persuade not to the writing, but to 
 the reading, of poetry. Where the rare inspiration does exist, it is a 
 fire self-sustaining in the spirit to which it is given, and the stranger's 
 hand can neither fan nor quench it. It has been finely remarked that 
 there can be poetry in the writings of few men, but it ought to be in 
 the hearts and lives of all. 
 
 This cause just noticed is not adequate fuUy to explain the pheno- 
 mena of opinions under discussion. There must be some deeper and 
 more abiding motive for the tendency to disparage the productions of im- 
 agination. The defence of poetry is no new topic. In entering on 
 the illustration of tliis department of English Literatiu'c, I feel as if I 
 could scarce venture to advance without vindicating the worth and 
 dignity of the subject ; and when I reflect that, very nearly three hun- 
 dred years ago, there was given to the world a celebrated treatise on 
 this very subject, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there 
 must be some cause, deep seated in the nature of mankind, and stronger 
 tlian any temporary or local influence, which engenders mistaken no- 
 tions respecting this department of imaginative literature. I camiot 
 omit commending to the student of English literatm-e the treatise 
 alluded to, — " The Defence of Poetry, by Sir Philip Sydney," — as well 
 for its intrinsic merit, and as the production of the earliest good prose- 
 writer in the language, as for the distinguished interest attaching to the 
 personal character and history of the author, — the matchless model of 
 a modern knight, — a soldier, a statesman, and a scholai", over whose 
 early death on the field of battle a whole kingdom mourned, and of 
 ' whom a literary antiquary has asserted that two hundred authors could 
 be counted who have spoken his praises. "I have," are Sycbiey's 
 words, "just cause to make a pitiful defence of poor Poetry, which, 
 from almost the highest estimation of learning, has fallen to be 
 the laughing-stock of children." He figuratively addressed his con- 
 temporaries " as born so near the duU-makiug cataract of Nilus that 
 they could not hear the planet-Uke music of Poetry ; as having so 
 earth-creeping minds that they could not lift themselves to the sky 
 of Poetry." Some verses written by an obscure poet shortly after t!ie 
 " Defence " thus acknowledged the benefit it conferred : 
 
 " Good poets were in hipfh esteem 
 When learning grow in price ; 
 Their virtue and their verso did seem 
 A great rebuke to vice.
 
 X4 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 " With bhmt, base people of small sense 
 They fall now in disdain ; 
 But Sydney's book iu tiieir defence 
 Did raise them up again ; 
 
 " And sets them next divines in rank, 
 As members meet and fit 
 To strike tlie world's blind boldness blank, 
 And whet the bluntest wit." 
 
 But, after all, poetry must be its owu vindication ; and it is an in- 
 teresting fact that, at the very time Sydney was composing his defence, 
 Spenser and Shakspeare were revolving the elements of their great 
 imaginings. The dulness Sydney complained of was the dark hour be- 
 fore the commg dawn. His plea touched the slumbering spirit of liis 
 nation, like the breath of morning, waking them to a day more glorious 
 than ever shone on the human intellect. 
 
 I have alluded to Sir Philip Sydney's work, not only because its rank 
 in English literature entitles it to passing notice, but because it shows 
 a depreciation of the poetic art in various ages. I doubt not it is a 
 prejudice as ancient as poetry itself, and that it will last while tlie . 
 world lasts, modified, indeed, as I shall endeavour presently to show, 
 by the disthictive spirit of the times. The conditidionul infirmity of 
 man is his proneness to materialism. I use the word in its largest 
 sense, to express the tendency to limit our aims and desires to results 
 which are called practical because they are palpable and measurable ; 
 the overvaluing the world of sense, and the consequent undervaluing 
 tl'.e world of spirit ; the forgetfulness of the nobler part, of our com- 
 pl(!x nature — the iimer life, because the calls for outward life are 
 louder and unceasing. It brings, too, the inability to rise under 
 the pressure of that narrow period enveloping each passing point 
 of time which we call the present ; and thus, just in proportion as the 
 heart becomes materialized, does it go stuml)ling on in its blindness, 
 borrowing no ray from past or future, each stej) with no more than its 
 own light, and that not from tlie s])iritiial within, but the dim glimmer- 
 ing of the senses. One generation may be more imliruted in its sen- 
 suality than another, — one race more than another ; as the same clime 
 where breathed the Athenian fed the Spartan and the Boeotian. But 
 the common curse upon humanity is that it is of the earth, earthy. 
 Whatever confiicts with this corruption is doomed to encounter neg- 
 lect and obloquy. The functions of all true poetry arc spiritual. What- 
 ever form the prejudice may assume, — whether ignorant or contemptu- 
 ous neglect or direct reprobation, — the solution of it. is to be found in 
 the contrariety between the works of j)ure inuiginatiuu and a corrupt
 
 SPIRIT OF OUR TIMES. 15 
 
 tendency of human nature ; that which is material perpetually strivin|^ 
 for ascendency over that which is spiritual. In the palmy days of 
 Grecian mythology there were, I doubt not, tliose who deemed the 
 acorns that fell from the mysterious oaks at Dodoua more precious 
 than the inspirations uttered from those sacred groves. 
 
 This influence, common to all ages of the world, because constitutional 
 to humanity, may be aggravated by other agencies in different ages of 
 civilization. Our own has its marked characteristics, — its good and its 
 evil tendencies. I should very inadequately discuss the subject under 
 consideration, were I to omit to inquire in what the spirit of our times 
 affects the appreciation of the works of imagination ; whether the 
 faculty embodies the creations on the canvas, or in marble, or in the 
 noblest mould of inventive genius,- — in language. The principles of 
 this discussion have, it may be readily seen, an application to tlie 
 province of the painter and the sculptor as well as to the most intellectual 
 of the Fine Arts, which forms our subject. The age we live in claims 
 to be in an uncommon degree enlightened. And what are the grounds 
 of its pride ? During the past thirty or forty years, advances have 
 been made in the physical sciences transcending, as far as we have 
 the means of comparison, anytliing achieved in the same department in 
 any former period of the world. The results of this development are 
 manifest in all the avenues of civilization ; and so multitudinous are 
 the combinations of material agencies, such the intellectual masteiT 
 over the blind elements, that no limit seems to be set in this respect to 
 luunan expectation. The mind has scarce time to recover from its 
 admiration of some invention or achievement by powers disclosed by 
 mechanical science, before it is called away to some new exploit. It is 
 but lately, for instance, that the continents of Europe and America 
 have suddenly been, to all practical purposes, brought twdce as near to 
 each other as they ever were before. Again, within a year or so, we 
 were told that a French chemist had gained the power of giving per- 
 manency to the fleeting reflections of a mirror : that was listened to 
 with astonishment, and something of iucredulity, which have now 
 passed wholly away. And thus we seem to be living amid a succession 
 of nine-days' wonders. To regard this state of things with regret or 
 complaint would obviously be in a high degree irrational as well as 
 unmanly. On the contrary, the prodigious progress of physical science 
 and the attendant arts is a fit subject of congratulation, bringing, as 
 it does, manifold amelioration in all that concerns our physical existence. 
 Besides, I could not bring myself to indulge for one moment a sentiment 
 of jealousy or disparagement of physical science ; for often have I wit-
 
 16 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 nessed with admiratiou the single-hearted devotion of the man of science 
 to the A'ast department of his investigations, — single-hearted in his seek- 
 ing after truth, and indignant at the utilitarian question which would 
 limit the range of iuquiry to obvious and immediate results. The genius 
 of true poetry is not daunted by the speed of science. But there is an 
 inquii-y of grave import, which, in our exidtation, we arc apt to over- 
 look. The peril incident to I'allen humanity is forgotten, — tliat bless- 
 ings come not unalloyed, and that, abused, they may be perverted into 
 evils. It is ht, therefore, to ask whether the kuprovements upon which 
 our age prides itself are so absolutely unquaHfied as to justify the 
 rather contemptuous compassion for the uuilluiQinated condition of our 
 forefathers. Is it all proiit and no loss ? Are we quite safe in reposing 
 upon our gains with a coufidejiee that nothing of our treasures has im- 
 pei'ceptibly been allowed to pass away 'i In noticing what I bcHcve to 
 be some of the characteristic errors and frailties of our times, I am 
 anxious to speak with modesty ; and therefore I quote the language of 
 an author by whom it has been well remarked that, " in regard to the 
 supposed superiority of the present age, the mistake arises in various 
 ways. A part of knowledge, perhaps the least important, is put for the 
 whole ; no balance is struck between what is gained in one department 
 and what is lost in another ; the worthiness of the ends pui'sued is not 
 considered in determining the value of the means; the economy of 
 wealth is taken as the measure of national welfare ; legislation passes 
 for jurisprudence. So, again, the study of nature may have flourished, 
 the study of mind may have drooped ; the arts of life may have advanced, 
 domestic wisdom may have lost ground ; education may have been dif- 
 fused, learning may have declined. All our gains arc counted ; but our 
 losses are not set against them. And, again, personal eond'ort, conve- 
 nience, or luxury, mental or bodily, is opeidy proposed, not only as the 
 best, but as the oidy, object of inlellectual pursiut ; whereas, fonnerly, 
 the search of truth was supposed to bring its own recompense. Thus, 
 a lower end is substituted for a higher ; and by overstating the claims 
 of our fellow-creatures, once too much neglected in these studies, we 
 forget the more sublime relation between the human spirit and the God 
 who gave it." 
 
 These traits in the spirit of our times are characterized by another 
 writer, in an eloqiient and philosojjhical passage bearing more immedi- 
 ately on the subje(!t I am discussing. " Men have been pressing for- 
 ward for some time in a path which has ])etraycd by its fruitfulness, 
 furnishing them constant employment for picking up things about their 
 feet when thoughts were perishing in then- minds. "While mechanic
 
 INFLUENCE OF MATERIALtSM ON POETRY. 17 
 
 arts, manufactures, agricvdturc, commerce, and all those products ot" 
 knowledge which are coniined to gross, definite, and tangible objects, 
 have, with the aid of experimental philosophy, been every day putting 
 on more brilliant coloui's, the splendour- of imagination has been fading. 
 Sensibility, which was formerly a generous nursling of rude nature, has 
 been chased from its ancient range in the wide domain of patriotism 
 and religion, with the weapons of derision, by a shadow calling itself 
 Good Sense ; calcidations of presumptuous expediency, groping its way 
 among partial and temporary consequences, have been substituted for 
 the dictates of paramount and infalliljle conscience, the supreme em- 
 bracer of consequences ; lifeless and circumspect decencies have ban- 
 ished the graceful negligence and unsuspicious dignity of virtue." It 
 is scarcely necessary to remark that an age thus characterized must be 
 in a great degree unimaginative, and its tendencies adverse to poetic 
 culture. Look round upon society, and you behold on every side 
 svmptoms of restless curiosity, and the love of outward excitement 
 stimulated to so high a pitch that tlie strenuous exercises of imagina- 
 tion and all spiritual thought are neglected as uncongenial, or despised 
 as visionary. We live in turmoil ; and the man who dares to pause 
 but for brief meditation is in danger of being trodden down by tlie 
 throng that is pressing forward. Philosophy must deal with handicrafts, 
 with steam, with the crucible, with magnetism, with storms, with manu- 
 factures, with exports and imports and the currency ; but, if it seek its an- 
 cient track, — the human spii'it and all the immaterial life that it sustains, 
 — the world turns away from it as from useless scholastic speculation. 
 It may be tolerated as a piece of monastic harmlessuess, but no more, in 
 the necessities of over-active existence. In a state of opinion where 
 such principles are dominant, poetry of a high order w'ill in vain claim 
 from the many the affectionate homage w"hich its votaries render. In 
 the strife between the antagonist elements of our complex being, the 
 mastery is too often won by the sensual over the spiritual ; and hence it 
 is that man is said to live by sight rather than by faith, — a Ufe adverse 
 alike to all that is religious and all that is imaginative. A great poet, 
 standing by the seaside, conscious of the influence of natural objects, 
 and conscious, too, of the apathy of a worldly-minded generation, boldly 
 recoils from the materialism and infidelity of a Christian age as more 
 \mcongeuial than the fond aspirations even of Paganism. 
 
 " The world is too much with us. Late and soon, 
 Getting and spcndins;, we lay waste our powers : 
 Little we see in nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, — a sordid boon ! 
 C
 
 18 LECTUEE riEST. 
 
 This sea, that bares her bosom to the moon, — 
 The wiucls, that will be howling at all hour>, 
 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, — 
 
 I'or this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
 
 It moves us not. Great God ! I 'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn — 
 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 
 There is another iiiiiueuce adverse to imaginative culture. It is uot 
 only that one part of knowledge, and that uot aft'ecting the highest and 
 most permanent interests of mankind, has usurped too large a space in 
 the public thought, but there has been a tendency to unequal cultivation 
 of some of the chief faculties of the mind. This is not the occasion to 
 examine that modern mental philosophy which, rife especially on thvi 
 rank soil of France and in the years of its revolution, was disseuiinated 
 in the latter part of the last century. Enough for my present purpose 
 is it to say that it gave to one power of the mind a supremacy which 
 has proved injurious to the just distribution of all. The calculating 
 faculty of the understanding has been made the sole arbiter to whicl: 
 the other reflective facidties and imagination and the moral powers are 
 to bow as vassals. This has led to a false confidence in a dangerous 
 guide ; for never is man more apt to go astray than when, casting away 
 all other light, he follows implicitly the leading of mere reasoning. 
 Reason (I use the term in tlie sense of the logical facidty), alienating 
 itself in its usurpations from the otlier powers, becomes wilful, rash, and 
 tyrannous. Thence comes a sclf-confidencc in the age which casts off 
 time-honoured associations with the past, and thus, to borrow a fine ex- 
 ])ression, "covenant is liroken witli the mighty dead." Thence come 
 the thousand theories wliich unceasingly are ilitting across the public 
 mind : — theories of education, mental and bodily, theories of social and 
 political regeneratioiT, and theories of religion. Thence has come the 
 revolution we have witnessed in the fashion of children's books ; the 
 healtliy, imaginative, old-fashioned story-books displaced by prepos- 
 terous devices to fdl the young heart with pedantry. Wfe are cramped 
 by false and narrow systems of metaphysics, teaching that wisdom is to 
 be drawn from one reservoir, when, the truth is, it is flowing from a 
 hundred springs, — imagination, tiic aiTeclions, faith, prayer, and what- 
 ever else helps to guide and cliastcn intellectual action. Tliere is a 
 danger, it has been well said, "that the perfections and achievements 
 of intellect will be too much prized, too nnieh desired, too much sought
 
 IMAGINATIA'E POWEK. 19 
 
 for. ALready there are many who expect from human knowledge the 
 work of divine grace. Science has made man master of matter ; it has 
 enabled him to calculate the revolutions of nature, to multiply his own 
 powers beyond all that was dreamed of spell or talisman : and now it 
 is confidently prophesied that another science is to remove all the moral 
 aud political evils of the planet ; that by analyzing the passions we shall 
 learn to govern them ; and that, when the science of education is grown 
 of age, vii'tue wiR be taught as easily as arithmetic and comprehended 
 as readily as geometry with the aid of wooden diagrams. Let us not 
 be deceived. ' Leviathan is not so tamed.' The tree of knowledge is 
 not the tree of life." 
 
 I am speaking of the propensity of the age, — a propensity happily 
 controlled by salutary cheeks. But, if any one desire to know what is 
 the utmost peiil when such restraints are removed, he may turn to the 
 spectacle of revolutionary Prance, when, in the highest paroxysm of 
 rational regeneration, there was paraded a living representation of the 
 goddess of Reason, which the philosophers bade the people worship ; 
 and what the idol was I dare not venture even to name to you. 
 
 But, bringing these general observations to bear upon om- subject, — 
 when such a condition of thought becomes predominant, in wliat estim- 
 ation may we expect to find the power of imagination? Very much 
 what in point of fact may be observed to exist. It moU be regarded as 
 that faculty which gives birth to novels and romances and other idle 
 fictions ; which leads men into wild and extravagant speculations, and 
 tempts some to add superfluous ornaments to their statements of mat- 
 ters of fact. "What is the nature and the true functions of gemune 
 imagination I shall endeavour to show hereafter, my present purpose 
 being only to suggest how a j^articular habit of opinion may bring dis- 
 paragement upon one of the chief endowments of the human spirit. 
 Vibrating as the judgment is apt to do from one extreme to another, 
 the question may be asked, whether the censure of undue exaltation of 
 the reasoning faculties is meant to be dissuasive from its cultivation, or 
 to suggest the propriety of suspending them by processes of the imagin- 
 ation. I have intimated nothing of the kind. The error would then 
 be great, though in another direction. The disproportionate exercise of 
 our faculties is an evU, no matter what the disproportion may chance to 
 be. Wlien I complain that one of these faculties is neglected and often 
 sacrificed, it would be strange indeed were I to fall into the snare of 
 encouraging a like neglect of others. On this point let me sustain 
 myself by what seems to me the wise authority of an eloquent writer : — • 
 
 " The imagination, if left without restraint to follow its own conceits, 
 c 2
 
 20 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 is vain and wild, and teems with fantastic snperstitions ; the under- 
 standing, unless other powci's elevate and ennoble it, is narrow and 
 partial, and empirical and superficial. While the reason is cultivated 
 let not the other faculties be neglected ; let it substantiate its forms 
 and give them a body of sound experiential and historical knowledge; 
 and let not this body be withoiit the beautil\d, ever-varying hues, the 
 glowing flushes and ardent glances of the imagination. So may it be- 
 come an edifice wherein wisdom may not be ashamed to take up her 
 dwelling. No one of the powers with which God has endowed us is 
 useless ; no one is meant to lie waste, no one to i"un waste. Only when 
 they are knit together and working in unison and hannony, may Ave 
 hope that the vision of truth will descend upon them." 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to trace to its sources the tendency to dis- 
 parage the study of poetry as an intellectual occupation. If we can 
 satisfy our nunds that such a state of opinion has its origin in tlie 
 causes suggested, — the indiscriminate confusion of all verse, no matter 
 how vapid and unimaginative, with true poetry ; the perpetual, because 
 constitutional, proneness to suffer materialism and materialized notions 
 to encroach on the spiritual endowments of humanity; the almost 
 exclusive appropriation of the title of philosophy to mechanical science, 
 looking oidy to the world of sense ; and the undue exaltation of the 
 reasoning faculty over all other mental powers, — it is enough to bring 
 somewhat of conviction that the opinion itself is error. But the 
 refutation of objections is not enough : a subject must be set on the 
 independent foundation of its own principles. I have felt that I 
 could not safely advance without an attempt to dispose of the pre- 
 liminary considerations which have been noticed. This makes it 
 necessary to defer to the next lecture the main introductory subject, — 
 the nature of Poetry, with an examination of its inspiration, its relation 
 to the I'ine Arts, and the moral uses of a cultivated imagination, — 
 and, after that, to proceed to the glorious registry of our English poets. 
 
 In conclusion, one word of a personal nature. This course of 
 lectures has been prompted by the belief that it was due from me to 
 tiiis community, considering my position in tliis ancient Pliiladelpliia 
 institution. It is the result of mature reflection, with a full sense 
 of the obstacles and discouragements wliieli it may encounter. Be, 
 tliose discouragements what they may, standing on the ground of 
 duty, this ])o.st of mine shall not be deserted. I have sought to place 
 before the j)u])lic a plan the subject of which I know to be worthy 
 their consideration. But how far the lecturer may be esteemed 
 competent to the task he has ventured on, it would be indecorous for
 
 CONCLUSION. 21 
 
 me to indulge the most distant fancy. It will not, however, be too 
 much for me to say that I stand here not a suppliant for favours, but 
 with the consciousness of a single and an honourable purpose in the 
 cause of literature ; and to add that, while I form no conjecture how 
 many of my friends I may have the pleasure of seeing here again, no 
 contingency of that sort shall prevent the prosecution of this enter- 
 prise to its completion. 
 
 
 i6S»fie»-iiSie-a£*
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 THE NATURE OF POETRY AND ITS MINISTRATIONS— IMAdNATn'E CVPACITT— LORD 
 BACON'S VIEW— MILTON'S— POETRY A DIVINE EMANATION— ITS FOUNDATION IS 
 TRUTH— THE TRUTH OF INNER LIFE— PAINTING AND SCULPTURE— POETRY AN 
 IMITATIVE ART— THE CHILD AND THE SHELL— SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF 
 TRUTH— HUMAN SYMPATHY CULTIVATED BY POETRY— IMMORTALITY— SPIRIT- 
 UAL ASPIRATIONS— STOICISM IRRECONCILABLE WITH POETRY— LOYALTY AND 
 CHIVALRY— THE SONGS OF ISRAEI^TASTE, A WRONG NAME— MENTAL INACTIA'ITY 
 INCONSISTENT WITH CRITICISM— DUE PROPORTION OF INTELLECTUAL POWERS 
 —WALTER SCOTT AND SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 HAVING in my last lectm-e endeavoured to remove some prelim- 
 inary obstacles to an entrance on our subject, I wish now to 
 ])roceed to the consideration of the nature of poetry and its ministra- 
 tions, the poet's mission to his fellow-beings, and his powers. This is 
 equivalent to an examination of the faculty of imagination ; for poetry 
 is the voice of imagination. The two arc inseparable ; and it is one 
 and the same thing to study the nature of that endowment, the moral 
 uses of a cultivated imagination, and the piu'poses of gouuine poetry. 
 
 The duty of cultivation, let me observe in the first place, rests on the 
 possession of each power of the human mind. One of the universal 
 endo'WTnents, infinitely different indeed in its degrees, is the faculty of 
 imagination ; and it would be strangely interpreting God's scheme ia 
 the government of the world to suppose that this mighty power was 
 l)estowcd for no other than the pitiful offices often deemed its distinct- 
 ive functions. It has more precious trusts than the production of 
 1 awdry romances or sentimental novels. The very existence of imagin- 
 ation is a proof that it is an agency which may be improved to our 
 good, or neglected and abused to our harm. Even if it were beyond 
 our comprehension to conceive how it may be auxiliary to humanity, it 
 would be no more than a simple impulse of faith to feel that, so surely 
 as it is an element implanted in our nature, it is there to be nurtured 
 and strcngtlicned by thoughtful exercise. But we are not left to the 
 strenuous elfort of implicit faith ; for the purposes of the endowment 
 arc manifest and multifarious. It has been well demanded, " To what 
 end have we been endowed with tlie creative faculty of the imagination, 
 which glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, vivifies
 
 LORD bacon's view OF POETRY. 23 
 
 what to the eye seems lifeless, and actuates what to the eye seenis tor- 
 pid, combines and harmonizes wliat to the eye seems broken and dis- 
 jointed, and infuses a soul with thought and feeling into the multitu- 
 dinous fleeting phantasmagoria of the senses ? To what end have we 
 been so richly endowed, iinless — as the prime object and appointed 
 task of the reason is to detect and apprehend the laws by which the 
 almighty Lawgiver upholds and ordains the world he has created — it 
 be in like manner the province and the duty of the imagination to em- 
 ploy itself diligently in perusing and studying the syinbolical characters 
 wherewith God has engraven the revelations of his goodness on the 
 interminable scroll of the visible universe ? " 
 
 But it is important to cite the highest possible authority ; and I 
 know not where I can better look for it than in that almost superhu- 
 man sur\"ey of human knowledge contained in the philosophy of Lord 
 Bacon. Words of wisdom are there which cast their Light ou abnost 
 aU the paths of mental inquiry ; and on the present occasion I seek 
 them w^ith special earnestness, because of the superficial notion that 
 the Baconian philosophy took thought of the domains of only physical 
 investigation. It can, however, be shown that among the objects of 
 inquiry to which he pointed attention was, how the imagination may 
 be fortified and exalted ; and his brief but celebrated passage on Poetry 
 may be aptly repeated : — "The use of this feigned history hath been to 
 give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points 
 wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being, in propor- 
 tion, inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the 
 spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a 
 more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. There- 
 fore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magni- 
 tude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events 
 greater and more heroical ; because true history propoundetli the suc- 
 cesses and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merit of virtue and 
 vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more ac- 
 cording to revealed providence ; because history irpresentetli actions 
 and events more ordinary and less interchanged, tlierefore poesy en- 
 dueth them with more rareness and more unexpected variations : so, 
 as it appeareth, that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity and 
 delectation ; and, therefore, it was ever thought to have some partici- 
 pation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by sub- 
 mitting the shows of things to the disires of the mind ; whereas rea- 
 son doth buckle and bow the mind unto tlic nature of things." 
 
 In these pregnant sentences, worthy of deep reflection, may be dis-
 
 24 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 covered tlie {rornis of the whole philosopliy of poetry ; and he wlio will 
 follow as far as they lis>ht him iu the paths of truth will leave far behind the 
 questions and the cavils respecting the endowments of imagination. I. 
 have no desire to lead you into the tangles of metaphysics ; but I beg 
 your reflection on the passage cited, becaiise it is tlie highest authority 
 to be found in philosophy. The leading thought in tkiis profound medi- 
 tation of Bacon's, as I understand it, is that there dwells in the human 
 soul a sense — a faculty — a power of some kind, call it by what name you 
 may — which craves more than this world affords, and which gives birth 
 to aspirations after something better than the events of our common- 
 life ; and that the poet's function is to minister to this want. From the 
 (;arliest records of literature, the creations of poetry in all ages have 
 found a congeniality in the breast of man, tliough the world might be 
 searched in vain for the archet}'];)es of those creations. A great modern 
 poet boldly tells us of 
 
 " The gleam, 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration, and the poet's dream ;" 
 
 and yet the heart takes those dreams home to itself for realities. Hu- 
 manly speaking, this is mysterious in our nature. When a mind like 
 Bacon's is brought to ihe contemplation, it penetrates to the centre of 
 the mystery, and intimates that the solution is to be found only iu the 
 inspired record of the hist 017 of the human soul ; that its mingled majesty 
 and poverty, its aspiration and its destitution, are to be traced to the 
 fall from primeval purity. There was a time when the human soul and 
 the world in which it was dwelling were better mated ; when the dis- 
 cord and incongruity described by Bacon had not begun : — 
 
 "Upon the breast of new-created earth 
 Man walk'd ; and wheresoe'cr he moved, 
 Alone or mated, solitude was not. 
 He heard upon the wind the articulate voice 
 Of God ; and angels to his sight appear'd, 
 Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise, 
 Or through the groves gliding, like morning mist 
 Enkindled by the sun. He sat and tallc'd 
 AV'ith winged messengers, who daily brought 
 To his small island in the ethereal deep 
 Tidings of joy and love." 
 
 The loss of innocence was the beginning of a new era in ihe history 
 of our race. I have no desire to indulge in speculation on a sul>ject
 
 MILTON S VIKW OF POETRY. 25 
 
 which has perplexed theolo2;y ; euougli is it to believe what we are 
 taught by God's own word : — that the fall was a moral and physical re- 
 volution. But we are not taught, cither by that oracle or by the study 
 of the mind, that the primal gloij was wholly quenched. The faculties 
 of man, fearfully disordered and corrupted, had still some remnant of 
 their original endowments ; aud, to the miud of the great English sage, 
 the aspirations of poetry appeared as the struggles of a once pure but 
 fallen humanity, — the strife of the mingled elements of our nature, — 
 the image of the Deity in which man was created, and the dust into 
 which his soul was breathed. 
 
 From Lord Bacon's magnificent exposition I nnist pass on to another 
 great tribute paid to poetry. His was the thought of the philosopher 
 cabnly looking (as Cowley said of him) " from the mountain-top of his 
 exalted wit." Let me, in the next place, offer to your consideration 
 some of the expressions of the lofty ideas of a poet upon his own art. 
 I do not wish to anticipate what I shall have to say hereafter in the 
 course respecting the great English epic poet ; but I need his authority 
 for the worth of poetic wisdom, coming as it does with such weight fron» 
 one who realized so gloriously his own high conceptions of his calling. 
 
 In the spuit of Milton, imagination brought an instinctive sense of 
 its majesty, which bvirsts forth in its own sublime vindication, — probably 
 the most eloquent annunciation of the functioiis of the imagination ever 
 uttered. 
 
 "These abilities (by which the grandest poetry is produced), M'here- 
 soever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, and are of power, 
 beside the office of a pulpit to unbind and cherish in a great people the 
 seeds of virtue and ])ublic civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind 
 and set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty 
 hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and Avhat he 
 works and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his 
 church ; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and 
 triumphs of pious nations doing valiantly through faith against the ene- 
 mies of Christ ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states 
 from justice aud God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy 
 and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, — whatsoever hath passion or ad- 
 miration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, 
 or thcMily subtilties and refluxes of man's thought from within, — all these 
 things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to point out and describe." 
 
 With such thoughts of the poet's office, Milton went on in a pro- 
 phetic mood to covenant for the production, after some years, of a work 
 "not t*j be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like
 
 2G LECTCRB SECOXD. 
 
 that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist or the 
 trencher-fury of a rhyming parasite, — not to be obtained by invocation 
 of Dame Memory and her siren daughter, — ^but hy devout prayer to that 
 eternal Spirit who can enrich with all tdterance and knowledge, and sends 
 out his seraphim, with the hallowed Jire of his altar, to touch and purify 
 the lips of whom he pleases." 
 
 After this, need I seek to accumidate authorities ? "What more 
 could be added to knguage radiant vriih. the yet-distant splendour of 
 the Paradise Lost ? Leaving far beneath all the low and little estimates 
 of poetry, it is worthy of meditation that both by Bacon and Milton 
 the poet's function has a participation of divineness. This is in accord- 
 ance with the testimony of time, as it may be discovered in language 
 employed by various nations and in various ages. The classical student 
 need not be reminded of the derivative sense of the title of poet, — a 
 meaning more obvious in former days, when the old English word 
 "maker" had not fallen into disuse. Alluding to another ancient 
 tongue than that from which our word "poet " has been derived, a 
 \vriter of the seventeenth century remarks, — 
 
 " 'T was surely prophetic that the name 
 Of prophet and of poet was the same ; " 
 
 and Cowper has the lines, • 
 
 " In a Roman mouth the graceful name 
 Of prophet and of poet was the same." 
 
 A later poet, speaking of the greatest endowment of imagination, does 
 )iot fear to style it 
 
 " The vision and the faculty divine ;" 
 
 and the common voice of mankind recognises how sacred a thing is a 
 true poet's power, when, without any sense of profanity, it calls it by 
 the hallowed name of inspira-tion. 
 
 In this use of words there is a meaning ; for never ran words live for 
 ages on the lips of men unless they have in ihem the life-sustaining 
 prineii)lcs of truth. It becomes therefore a grave inquiry in what sense 
 the ])oet's employment is said to be in a region of divinity. It partakes 
 of a divineness, to borrow Lord Bacon's phrase, both in its modes of 
 action and in the ends it aims at. The poet's chief province is inven- 
 tion and imagination, — the creative power of the human spirit, as de- 
 scriV)ed in an admirable passage of Shakspeare but too familiar to quote, 
 bodying forth the shapes of things unknown. The boundless scope of 
 poetic invention I hope to illustrate hereafter, when wc come to survey
 
 TRrxiI TUE FOUNDATION OF TOETKY. 27 
 
 the creative energy in all its varied forms of our Englisli poets, better 
 than now by abstract description. Poetry, as the word originally sig- 
 nified, is creation, and in this (let it reverently be said) lies its divinity. 
 It is creative ; — not by step-by-step attainments of the reasoning facul- 
 ties, but by processes which philosophy has not yet analyzed. I do not 
 question that imagination, like the other intellectual powers, tias its 
 laws ; but so rare is the endowment in its high degree that mental 
 science has devised no theory explanatory of its mode of action. For 
 instance, the visionary world that Shakspeare called into existence and 
 peopled with creations is mysterious if the attempt is made to exi)lain 
 it apart from the action of the imagination. Even then, accustomed 
 as men are to regard chiefly the more subordinate operations of the 
 mind, it raises admiration to see how, taking names and events obscure 
 by a remote antiquity, he has animated them with more of life and of 
 truth than ever could have been gained from the chronicles or histoi'y. 
 In God's providence over the human race, a great poet is given rarely, 
 and therefore stands apart and above millions of his kind ; and hence, 
 when they behold him, not toiling with tedious and unsteady deduc- 
 tions, but scattering the light of truth from the fire kindled within his 
 spirit, they give to that fire the name of " inspiration." But the di- 
 vineness poetry partakes of is attributable also to its efficacy in ac- 
 complishing higher purposes than any other department of literature. 
 The chief aim of all genuine poetry is to teach by imaginary examples 
 and by the embodiment of abstract truths. The element in which 
 poetry dwells is truth ; and when imagination divorces itself from that 
 relation, it declines into the neighbourhood of empty fictions or the 
 dreams of lunacy. Eut there is a prevalent notion that imagination is 
 the power that especially draws away from truth ; and hence it is 
 looked on with apprehensive distrust. Doubtless it is liable to grievous 
 abuse ; and so, let it be remembered, is every talent committed to man, 
 for cultivation or for culpable neglect. But, when the inventions of 
 poetic genius are confounded with falsehood, it is prejudice and vulgar 
 error. It is a narrow conception of truth which confines it to what are 
 called matters of fact, — events which have actually transpired, and 
 which would exclude even the truths of exact science. There are 
 truths of our inner life as well as of the outward, — spiritu;il an*! 
 visionary, — of the imagination and the feelings as well as of the senses. 
 TTie record of a criminal trial, with all the details of evidence fortified 
 by the sanction of an oath, is matter-of-fact truth ; and yet there is a 
 higher and better truth— more of the essence of truth, and therefore 
 more permanent — in the imaginative story of the conscience-stricken
 
 28 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 agonies of Macbeth, — the blood-stained hauntings of remorse pursuing 
 its victim as he is plunged lower and lower in tlie depths of crime. 
 Wliat actual incidents are more true than the tumultuous heart-break- 
 ing of King Lear ? " Facts are fleeting, perishable tilings ; but the 
 spiritual creations of a true poet's imagination are truths that wake to 
 perish 'never ! " 
 
 The prime virtue of all the imitative arts — painting and sculpture as 
 well as poetry — is the representation of their archetypes imaginatively. 
 The characteristic of the productions of a genuine artist is the pre- 
 dominance of imagination, without which they sink into servile and me- 
 chanical copying ; and it can scarcely escape the observation of any one 
 who -nTll examine the style of a portrait from a master's hand, and that 
 of an inferior artist, that the exactness of a likeness mechanically 
 identical with its original does not make the same unpression of truth 
 as those indescribable touches which appeal tlirough the eye to the 
 imagination. Eut I beg you also to observe that it is part of the very 
 nature of each one of the Pine Arts to pause in the process of imita- 
 tion at a point beyond wliich the beholder's imagination, aroused by 
 what is given, moves on unconsciously to the completion of the work. 
 It is the painter's part so to combine imaginatively light and shade and 
 colour, that we gaze on the canvas without a thouglit that the imita- 
 tion of form is supplied l)y the instinctive action of imagination. Again, 
 the sculptor's part is the imitation of form ; and he works in marble 
 because its purity is the fit material for his abstractions horn colour. 
 Thus it is that painting and scul})ture have their respective purposes, 
 beyond which they do not aspire, each attaining what the other omits ; 
 and the pleasure derived from each is made up of what the eye beholds 
 and the imagination supplies, the impression thus gained from a true 
 work of art being that of truth in its full integrity. This is imagin- 
 ative imitation. Now, there is another species of work more ambi- 
 tious than either sculptiire or painting ; for it disdains the bounds of 
 each ; and it might be thought that if there was any mode of represent- 
 ing the human countenance so that there shoidd be at the same time 
 resend)lancc of form as in bust or statue, and also of colour as in paint- 
 ing, this would be the most excellent imitation. There seems to be 
 a good deal of reason in this : the likeness would be so com])lete there 
 would be no need for the help of the imagination and no danger of its 
 leading astray. This would be what might be called matter-of-fact 
 imitation. And if any one is disposed to think that it must be more 
 true because more exact, let him compare tlie impression made by a 
 piece of sculpture or of painting with that of a figure or bust in wax-
 
 POETRY AN IMITATIVE AKT. 29 
 
 work. The imaginative delight awakened by the former is changed 
 into disgust increasing with the closeness of resemblance, producing a 
 kind of indignation at what seems like a device to cheat the senses. 
 
 The affinity between poetry and the other Fine Arts — painting and 
 sculpture — lies in the principle common to them aU, and which is the 
 very essence of imaginative imitation, — the blending, in all genuine 
 works of art, likeness and uidikeness, sameness and difference. This, 
 when first suggested, seems paradoxical. But, to show how essential 
 an element difference is in such imitation, I need only remind you of 
 the stony and colourless imitation in sculpture, and that there coidd be 
 no greater outrage upon taste and the principles of the art than any 
 attempt to remove that difference by superadding to the likeness of 
 fonn the likeness of colour. Now, in poetry, the medium of imita- 
 tion is the more subtle one of language, and the imagination and the 
 feelings are to be moved by means of words as the painter moves them 
 by the visible tints upon the canvas or the sculptor by marble. The 
 impression made by a great poem and a great pamting or statue are 
 kindred and analogous ; having a common origm in the creative energy 
 of genius, they are addressed to the same faculty of imagination, and 
 therefore the spiritual agency of all of them is aUke. How close is 
 this affinity may be shown by the compositions in which poets convey 
 the impressions made on them by the other arts. A picture, for in- 
 stance, of two females, by Leonardo da Vinci, has occasioned those 
 lines, in which a woman's imagmation has made words subserve the 
 purpose of the canvas : — 
 
 " The lady Blanche, regardless of all her lover's fears, 
 To the Ursuline couvent hastens, and long the abbess hears : — 
 ' Oh, Blanche, my child, repent ye of the courtly life ye lead ! ' 
 Blanche looked on a rose-bud, and little seem'd to heed. 
 She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought 
 On all her heart had whisper'd and all the nun had taught: — 
 ' I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines mj' fame ; 
 All Christendom rcsoundeth the noble Blanche's name ! 
 Nor shall I quickly wither, like the rose-bud from the tree. 
 My queen-like graces shining when my beauty 'i gone from me. 
 But, when the sculptured marble is raised o'er my head, 
 And the matchless Blanche lies lifeless among the noble dead, 
 This saintly Lady Abbess hath made me justly fear 
 It nothing will avail me that I was worshipp'd here.' " 
 
 Within the last two hours I have had the gratification of viewing an 
 exquisite piece of art, which has presented to my mind the finest illus- 
 tration I have ever met with of the affinity between poetry and other
 
 30 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 imitative arts. The work alluded to, I am pro\id to say, graces the 
 home of a Philadelphia geutlemau, one to whoso eiilighteuc-d patronage 
 the cause of the riue Arts is greatly indebted. It is a piece of statuary 
 embodying a sculptor's happy imagiuatiou who probably had uo thought 
 that the same conception had been embodied by a poet's words, — a pas- 
 sage in the " Excursion. " presentiug the same image : — 
 
 " I have seen 
 A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to her ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell, 
 To which, in silence hush'd, her verj' soul 
 Listen'd intensely, and her countenance soon 
 Brighten'd with joy ; for, murmuring from within, 
 Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby, 
 To her belief, the monitor express'd 
 Mysterious union with its native sea." 
 
 Nor can I omit the fine description, by Landor, of the 
 
 " Sinuous shells of pearly hue 
 Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
 In the sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked. 
 His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave. 
 Shake one, and it awakens ; then a])ply 
 Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 And murmurs, as the ocean murmurs there." 
 
 I have spoken of the necessity of some element of difference in all 
 the arts ; and before dismissing this part of the subject, it is proper to 
 inquire what constitutes that difference in poetic imitation. Poetry is 
 separated by a bright distiuguishing-linc from ordinary language, inas- 
 much as it not only appropriates to itself the choicest forms of speech, 
 but also the additional graces of metrical harmony. There is thus 
 acquired a power peculiar to poetry in comparison with other compo- 
 sitions ; for it is enabled to address itself toman's natural susceptibility 
 to the beauty of a regular succession of harmonious sounds, and thus 
 music is brought into alliance. It has been frequently suggested that 
 the most ancient poets M'cre led to adopt a metrical form, to enable 
 their hearers, in a barbarous age, more easily to recollect their com- 
 positions. If poetry were like the familiar rhymes employed to recall 
 the number of days in each month, the theory might be true ; but, 
 otherwise, it seems to me rather a shallow one. The truth lies deeper, 
 ' — in the influences exercised over the heart bv sound, when controlled
 
 MELODIOUS sou:s'D. 31 
 
 by principles of haniioiiy, and consequently concuiTcnt and subsidiary 
 to the aims of true poetry. Besides, the poet, speaking- better thoughts 
 and better feelings than are passing commonly through the minds of 
 men, instinctively seeks, as their appropriate garb, a better language 
 and a better music. The pure heart of poetry needs the voice of the 
 purest and most graceful forms of language. I shall have occasion 
 hereafter to illustrate the admirable adaptation of the English metres to 
 the expression of various passions and feelings and moods of imagin- 
 ation : at present I can only cite a poet's tribute to the iniiuencc of 
 melodious though unintelligible sounds, — a tribute in strains as musical 
 as the music they celebrated : — 
 
 " Behold her, single in the field, 
 Yon solitary Highland lass, 
 Reaping and singing by herself: 
 Stop here, or gently pass. 
 , Alone she cuts and binds the grain. 
 And sings a melancholy strain. 
 Oh, listen ! for the vale profound 
 Is overflowing with the sound. 
 
 " No nightingale did ever chant 
 
 More welcome notes to weary bands 
 Of travellers, in some shady haunt. 
 
 Among Arabian sands ; 
 Such thrilling voice was never heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides. 
 
 " Will no one tell me what she sings ? 
 
 Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
 For old, unhappy, far-off things. 
 
 And battles long ago. 
 Or is it some more humble lay. 
 Familiar matter of the day, — 
 Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 
 That has been, and may be again ? 
 
 " Whatc'er the theme, the maiden sang 
 
 As if her song could have no ending 
 I saw her singing at her work, 
 
 And o'er the sickle bending : 
 I listcn'd, motionless and still ; 
 And, as I mounted up the hill, 
 The music in my heart I bore 
 Long after it was heard no more.'
 
 32 I.ECTUllE SECOND. 
 
 Again, inasmuch as one great duty and labour of the human mind is 
 the attainment of truth by the logical and analytical processes of 
 science, it is apt to become an habitual opinion lluit there is no other 
 truth than scientific truth, forgetting that it belongs to the imagination 
 and the feelings as well as the understanding. Let not my words be 
 perverted for a monu^ut into a disparagement of scientific research ; but 
 earnestly do I protest that it is not all. The man of science, wedded 
 to his analytical processes, may biing himself to look on nature with 
 only a scientific eye ; and at length the inteUeetual part of his being 
 may become whoUy divorced from the moral. There have been 
 astronomers whose intellects have reached the distant spheres of the 
 material universe and become familiar with the courses of orbs millions 
 of miles on high, whose hearts at the same time grovelled in the most 
 pitiable weakness of infidelity and atheism. The study of nature may 
 be made too exclusively scientific, — the intellect sharpened while tlie 
 sensibilities and the imagination are deadened. Tlie human form, and 
 the countenance beaming with intelligence and feeling, may to the eye 
 of the anatomist be no more than the flesli and blood elotliing a gliastly 
 skeleton. The botanist may walk abroad with his thoughts so busied 
 with processes of classification that the brightest verdure shall not 
 touch his heart. To the mere man of science the rainbow may bring a 
 train of thought on the laws of reflection and refraction, the prismatic 
 colours and their arrangement : it may bring all this ; and, if he has 
 cultivated only the analytical powers of his mind, it may bring notliing 
 more. But all the truth is not in the books of Optics. From childhood 
 wc are taught that the bow was set in the clouds to inspire confidence 
 and hope in the breasts of those Avho had witnessed the terrors of the 
 Deluge, and as a perpetual em])lcm of divine mercy and protection. 
 Knowing by what hand it was placed there, and for what purpose, it is 
 no great stretch of faith to believe that there is in it — we know not 
 how — an intrinsic power to stir in the breast of each descendant of 
 Noah somewhat of the same emotion as it awakened when first resting 
 on the heights of Ararat. With aU this, science does not purport to 
 have anything -to do; and, accordingly, all that it teaches respecting 
 that phenomenon cannot touch the feeblest sympathy. But there are 
 prohalily few minds so diill as not to recognise an expression of a feeling 
 of their own in the simple exclamation bui-sting from a poet's lips : —
 
 SCIENTIFIC I^'^A'ESTIGATION OF TRUTH. 33 
 
 " 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 be it when I shall grow old, 
 Or let me die ! " 
 
 The inquiry may naturally suggest itself, whether the imaginative 
 truth which poetry aspires to is not above the reach of humanity, and 
 unavailing therefore to its necessities. Unquestionahly, if any one goes 
 forth into active life with an undisciplined imagination, expecting from 
 the world what the world cannot give, the result is as disastrous as the 
 aim is irrational. But if the heart take counsel of imagination for the 
 guidance of its passions, the chastening and elevating of its aflections, 
 there is no danger in the height of the imaginative standard. In proof 
 of this position there has been conclusively quoted that precept of the 
 Saviom-'s which bids men, with all the accumulation of their faculties, 
 " Be perfect," and, more than that, sets before them for imitation the 
 model inimitable of God's own perfection. The precept may ■with diffi- 
 culty be reconciled -nith the rules of our calculating faculties, but it is 
 addressed to the imagination and comprehended by it. It stands the 
 most sublime of all the divine sentences in the Sernion on the Mount, 
 — the most ennobling and elevating woi-ds ever spoken to poor human- 
 ity. It may also be noticed, in vindication of the calumniated power 
 under discussion, that the Christian rule for the guidance of our con- 
 duct to others is addressed to the imagination ; and thus you may see 
 that one evil of a sluggisli imagination will be a sluggish sympathy 
 with our fellow -beings. 
 
 But the energies of poetry are employed not only in invention, but 
 in the discovery of truth : — not only, in Lord Bacon's words, " for the 
 invention of a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more 
 absolute variety," but to revive the neglected glories of the world as it 
 is, to gather the fragments of splendour from amid the ruins of our 
 fallen nature, to lift from the soul the weight of custom and material- 
 ism, to awaken a consciousness to the neglected emotions of daily life, 
 and to trace the associations between the universe of sense and the 
 spiritual life within us. These are the aims of true poetry ; and to 
 grasp the thoughts and feelings which are perpetually ilitting across 
 the mind, eluding the touch of a gross philosophy, there are a thousand 
 influences at work, which in the pride of our calculating faculties are 
 despised, because they are not susceptible of measurement by the under- 
 standing. Will any one who has reflected on the constitution of man, 
 
 D
 
 34 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 both spiritual and material, and the world in which he is placed, ven- 
 ture to say, for instance, tliat the sun travels his glorious course only 
 to light men to their work and give them warmth ? Why then doeg he 
 rise in such magnificence, and why set with such ever-varying splen- 
 dour ? Why is it that every unclouded night ten thousand stars are 
 looking down upon us from the heavens ? WTiy is it that even the* 
 storm comes arrayed with a sublimity of its own ? Why does the earth 
 break forth from its winter's torpor in all the luxuriance of spring ? 
 And why is there beauty in the human countenance ? Men and women 
 would no doubt accomplish their work as well and be as vaeful if every 
 face Ave looked on was the face of ugliness. Influences that cannot be 
 expounded are active on every side and during every period of life ; and 
 though unimportant when mentioned separately, no one can divine how 
 great is their sway in the formation of human character. Who can ex- 
 plain how music falling on the ear moves the spirit within us ? and yet 
 we know that it can give courage in the hour of battle and fervour to 
 acts of devotion. I cannot tell how the soft blue of an unclouded sky 
 so impresses the feelings with a sense of its placid beauty that the 
 heart of him who looks up to it from amidst the turmoil of life is touch- 
 ed as with a blessing; but this I know, — that, when God foretold the 
 curses with which he would visit his rebellious people, among the pen- 
 alties announced by the inspired lawgiver there was a threat tliat the 
 sky should be to tlicm like brass. 
 
 It is tlie poet's duty to deepen human sympathies and to enlarge their 
 sphere ; to cast a light upon the common heart of the whole race ; to 
 calm the anxieties and to sustain the highest and farthest purposes of 
 our being. Imagination, the prime nourisher of hope, is the character- 
 istic of man as a progressive creature ; and its most strenuous efforts 
 are given to dignify, to elevate, to purify, and to spiritualize. In the 
 histoiy of the Htcraturc of all nations the herald of its day is the morn- 
 ing-star of poetij ; and, when it passes away, the last light that lingers 
 after it is the ever-aspiring ray from its setting orb. In all ages and 
 conditions of society it is present ; for it is supplied from " the inex- 
 haustible springs of truth and feeling wliicli are ever gurgling and boil- 
 ing up in the caverns of tlie Inuiian heart." Such being tlie purpose of 
 poetry, it may be safely said that it is moral wisdom. Its closest affm- 
 ity is with religion ; for it ministers to faith and hope and love. A 
 meek and dutiful attendant in the temple of faith, it is in humble alliance 
 for the defence and rescue of exposed humanity. It has been sagely 
 rcinarkf'd by a philosophic writer, tliat the belief is erroneous that the 
 hearts of tlie many are constitutionally weak, languisliing, and slow to
 
 SPIRITUAL ASPIRATIONS. 35 
 
 answer the requisitions of things ; and that rather the true sorrow of 
 humanity consists in this : — not that the niiud fails, but that tlie course 
 and demands of action and life so rarely correspond with the dignity 
 and intensity of human desires, and hence that which is slow to languish 
 is too easily tiu-ned aside and abused. To this are all the great produc- 
 tions of the Muse directed, controlling the discord between the course 
 of Ufe and the dignity of human desires, chastening the passions and 
 guiding them in safe channels and to worthy objects. In Shakspeare's 
 wonderful delineation of the melancholy of Hamlet, it is the representa- 
 tion of a noble heart aching with a sense of the hollowuess, the insufficiency 
 of the stale and unprofitable uses of the world to answer its aspirations. 
 There is the wi'ctchedness and the desolation of a spirit feeling itself at 
 variance with life ; and this morbid mood of mind speaks in words ex- 
 pressive of a gloomy absence of delight in all he looks upon, and yet at 
 the same time the loftiest consciousness of the endowments of the human 
 soul : — " It goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, 
 the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent canopy, 
 the air, tliis brave o'erhanging firmament, — this majestic roof, fretted 
 with golden fire, — why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and 
 pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man ! How 
 noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how 
 express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, 
 how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals !" 
 
 This is the language of disease, — of disease to which aU are exposed, 
 because, amid the frailty and corruption of om- natural desii'cs, the heart 
 will sink down to low objects and be perverted to unholy ones. When 
 the suppUes of the heart fail and its cravings cannot find their proper 
 nourishment, the world and all that is upon it become unsubstantial and 
 unreal. The Ufe, in which is staked eternal happiness, becomes worth- 
 less and barren, as it seemed to the guilty fancy of Macbeth, — " this 
 bank and shoal of time." It is poetry that is charged with the duty of 
 ministering its help to this peril of humanity. Imagination, chastened 
 and cherished, will discover dignity and happiness in life's lowliest 
 duties, and, rising higher, wiU behold — as an angel might behold — this 
 earth with its dark sea, with aU that is vile upon the surface and witli 
 the nations of the dead mouldering beneath, yet a star glittering in the 
 firmament and peopled with beings redeemed for immortality. 
 
 If such be the nature and the power of poetry, it should not be diffi- 
 cult to discover some mighty influences exerted by it tipon the mind of 
 man. When we look into the region of paganism, what was the high 
 poetry of the ancients but a struggle for something more adequate than 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 a sensual faith to fill the caverns of the heart ? When the knowledge of 
 the Godhead, too vast for the fallen mind, was dispersed into the fanta- 
 sies of polytheism,^when a thousand deities were enshrined in gorgeous 
 temples and in the household, — when men were bowing down before 
 images, or worshipping the sun, or fire, or whatever they might chance 
 to turn to, — amid all these perverted creeds the most subhme aspii-- 
 ations, those approaching nearest to the sphere of truth, were the 
 efforts of poetic genius. It was neither reason nor the lore of philoso- 
 phic schools, but the creative faculty of imagination, that wTestled most 
 strenuously with paganism. The moral wisdom of ancient heathendom 
 was in its great poems. It was by the breath of iftiagination that the 
 mist of superstition was broken ; and ever and auou a portion of it 
 floated upward, a white and sunlit cloud. 
 
 The philosophy of the most enlightened nation of antiquity went 
 do-ma, down, till it settled into the u-on inhumanity of Stoicism and 
 the imbruted sensuahty and fieud-Hke scorn of the Epicurean ; but in 
 the domains of imagination the light and warmth of truth were never 
 whoUy quenched. On that sublime occasion when an inspired apostle 
 struck a blow at the superstitions of Greece (St. Paul at Athens), his 
 spu'it stirring within him, — for he "saw the city whoUy given to 
 idolatry," — he was encountered by philosophers ; and tlius was the 
 scornful question : — " What will this babbler say ? " " And when he 
 preached the resun-ection of the dead, they mocked." Now, when the 
 pride of pagan philosophy was thus arrayed in enmity against Christi- 
 anity, I beg you to reflect upon the fact that enough of truth had been 
 preserved in pagan poetnj to enable that same apostolic tongue to 
 mingle the familiar words of the Greek poets with the lessons of the 
 gospel. 
 
 So is it in aU ages. Wliat is indeed poetry is subservient to truth 
 and to man's moral growth. Our complex nature — the mysterious 
 mingUng of the spiritual and the material — baffles philosophy ; and, 
 reviewing the annals of knowledge and looking only to its human 
 sources, a deeper insight into the nature of the soul has been gamed by 
 poetry than by countless theories from the exploded dogmas of antiquity, 
 even to the latest metaphysical scheme devised by tlie materialism or 
 mysticism of our own times. The light of revelation shut out, tliis 
 earthly life is a long and darksome cavern ; and when in imagination I 
 })ehold the liuman race threading their way through it, I see the mighty 
 ])octs, at distant intervals, the oidy torch -bearers in the vast procession, 
 holding on high a light to reach the rock-ribbed roof. Wliat is it but 
 their truth that has perpetuated their poems better than aU the litera-
 
 INFLUENCE OF POETET. 37 
 
 t\ire of remote times, and brought down in safety the Homeric poems 
 from an age so ajicient that history has never reached it ? What fact 
 could I mention more impressive than the existence of those poems, — 
 at tirst dependent on the mere memory of an affectionate admii-atiou, 
 and tlien on the perishable records in ancient use, and yet preserved 
 probably more than three thousand years ? Their moral wisdom has 
 won the blessing of length of days. When our thoughts seek other 
 acquaintance than what the Bible gives with ages long ago, they travel 
 back to Homer. Of all the literatm-e other than what was recorded by 
 direct inspiration he is reverenced as the father. Li the fine lines of a 
 living poet, little knoAvii, — 
 
 " Far from all measured space, yet clear and jolaia 
 As sun at noon, ' a mighty orb of song ' 
 Illumes extremest heaven. Beyond the throng 
 Of lesser stars, that rise, and wax, and wane, — 
 The transient rulers of the fickle niain, — 
 One stedfast light gleams through the dark and long 
 And narrowing aisle of memory. How strong ! 
 How fortified with all the numerous train 
 Of human truths ! Great poet of thy kind 
 Wert thou, whose verse, capacious as the sea, 
 And various as the voices of the wind, 
 SweU'd with the gladness of the battle's glee, 
 And yet could glorify infirmity, 
 When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined." 
 
 If we seek to judge of poetry by recorded instances of its influence, 
 there might be cited the classical event commemorated by ISiHton, — 
 the fierceness of Spartan and Macedonian warfare checked by verse, 
 when 
 
 " The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 
 
 The house of Piudarus, when tower and temple 
 Went to the ground ; and the repeated air 
 Of sad Electra's poet had the power 
 To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare." 
 
 Or in modern history might be suggested that beautiful incident in the 
 life of the conqueror of Canada, when, on the eve of the victory upon 
 the " Heights of Abraham," Wolfe expressed a Mollingness to exchange 
 the anticipated glory of his conquest for the fame of Gray's Elegy. 
 But, in arguing from historically-recorded instances of poetical in- 
 fluences, let me refer to cases of wider operation. It is stated by 
 Bishop Buraet, in the " History of his Own Times," that when James 
 II. was in very unsteady possession of the English throne, a ballad was
 
 38 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 made — ti'eating the Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous 
 luauuer, aud with a bui'dcn, said to be Irish words — tliat made an im- 
 pression on tlie king's army that cannot he imagined hy those who saw 
 it not. The whole army — and, at last, the people, both in city and 
 country — were singing it perpetually ; and " perhaps," he adds, "never 
 had so slight a thing so great an effect." Again, if a song helped to 
 bring about the Ecvolution of 1GS8, and to drive the Stuarts from theii- 
 dynasty, another song, harmonizing with another mood of the people's 
 heart, — the sentiment of ancient loyalty, — was near bringmg the 
 exiled family back again. In the rebellion of 174^5, when the young 
 Pretender made his victorious march upon Edinbui-gh to set his banish- 
 ed foot on the threshold of the palace of his forefathers, the lineage of 
 Scotland's ancient kings was welcomed to its own ag-ain; and every 
 breeze that blew over Scotland — highland and lowland, the streets of 
 the metropolis and the blasted heath of distant moors — brought with it 
 the burden of the cavalier-song chanted by loyal Scotsmen to the music 
 of the Highland Clans : — 
 
 " Then, Fear, avaunt ! upon the hill 
 My hope shall cast her anchor still, 
 Until I see some peaceful dove 
 Bring hack the branch I dearly love. 
 Then will I wait, till the waters abate, 
 
 Which now disturb my troubled brain. 
 Else never rejoice till I hear the voice 
 
 That the king enjoys his own again." 
 
 In proof of the enduring influence of what is addressed to the imagin- 
 ation, far higher authority may be adduced. In the sacred history of 
 the chosen race of Israel, Avhen the promised land was almost reached, 
 and the inspired lawgiver and leader was to relinquish liis great charge, 
 the command of the Deity came to him, bidding hira write a song to be 
 1 aught to the children of Israel, to be put into their mouths, that it 
 might be a witness against them in after-ages. When the Divine Pro- 
 vidence designed to imprint upon the memory of the nation what should 
 endure generation after generation, he inspired his sei-vant to speak, not 
 in tlic stem language of reason and law, but in the impassioned strains 
 of imagination. The last tones of that voice wlueh had roused his coun- 
 trymen from slavery and sensuality in Eg;^-pt, and ch(!ered and threat- 
 ened and rebuked them during their wanderings, which had announced 
 tl)e statutes of Jehovah, had proclaimed victory to the obedient, and 
 pronounced judgment on tin; rebellious,— the last tones, which were to 
 go on sounding and sounding into distant ages,— were the tones of
 
 TUE SONGS OF ISRAEL. 39 
 
 poetry. The last iuspiratiou which came down from God into the heart 
 of Moses burst forth in that sublime ode which was his death-song. 
 And w^hy was this ? " It shall come to pass," are the words of Scrip- 
 ture, " when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song 
 shall testify against them as a witness ; for it shall not be forgotten out 
 of the mouths of their children." Well may we conceive how, in after- 
 times, when Israel was driven by the hand of Midian into caves and 
 dens, — when, smitten by the Philistines, the Ark of God was snatched 
 from them, — when, after Jerusalem had known its highest glory, the 
 sword of tlie King of the Chaldees smote their young men in the 
 sanctuaiy, and spared neither young man nor maiden, old man nor him 
 tliat stooped for age, — or when the dark -browed Israelite was wander- 
 ing in Nineveh or Babylon, an exile and a slave, — how must there have 
 risen on his heart the memory of that song, with its sublime image of 
 God's protection : " As an earj/le stirreth up her nest,Jfuttereth over her 
 youn^, spreudeth abroad her wings, taketh them, heareth them on her v:ings, 
 so the Lord alone did bear them ; and there was no strange God with him .-" 
 or its other mighty appeal to the imagination in the threat, — " / lift 
 up my hand to heaven, aiid say, I live for ever. If I tchet my glittering 
 sword, and my hand take hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to 
 mine enemies, and will reward them tliat hate me." 
 
 "VVTien any one is disposed to undervalue poetry, it should be remem- 
 liered that the one volume of divine prediction addi'essed to all mankind 
 is the most poetical on which the eye has ever rested. It is the proud- 
 est attribute of imagination that, when the wisdom of God came down 
 to earth to speak to man through inspired lips, it was addi-essed emi- 
 nently to this faculty of the mind; and it is worth a thousand argu- 
 ments in defence of poetry, — the simple fact, whether explained or no, 
 that inspired patriotism and prayer and praise and thanksgiving took 
 the voice of so7ig, and that prophecy, and even the Redeemer's lessons, 
 are glowing with the fervour of the visionary power. 
 
 It not unfrequently happens that, the dignity of poetry and its value 
 admitted, the subject is dismissed with the thought that what is called 
 a taste for poetry is not within the power of the will to attain. The de- 
 gree in which it may be acquired will indeed vary with the proportion 
 of imagination possessed by each reader ; but it is wholly erroneous to 
 suppose that accurate taste in poetry or any of the kindred arts is other 
 than an acquired talent. It is an acquisition by reflection and cdntinued 
 intercourse with the best models ; it is the result of intellectual and 
 moral activity ; and the notion that it is a natural gift — an instinct, as 
 it v.'ere — is the conclusion of ignorance or the fallacious plea of mental
 
 40 LECTUKE SECOND. 
 
 sluggishness. The fallacy has been pliiloso])hically traced to its source 
 by a writer whose language will best serve to present the tnith to 
 you: — 
 
 "Taste is a word which has been forced to extend its services far 
 beyond the point to which philosophy would have conliued them. It is 
 a metaphor taken from a, passice sense of the human body, and trans-' 
 ferred to things ^vhich are in their essence not passive, — to intellectual 
 acts and operations. As nations decline in productive and creative 
 power, they value themselves upon a presumed rehuement of judging. 
 The word ' taste ' has been stretched to the sense which it bears in 
 modern Europe by habits of self-conceit, inducing that inversion in the 
 order of things whereby a passive faculty is made paramount among the 
 faculties conversant with the Tine Arts. Proportion and congruity, 
 the requisite knowledge being supposed, are subjects upon which taste 
 may be trusted. It is competent to this office ; for, in its intercourse 
 with these, the mind is passive, and it is affected painfully or plcasur- 
 ably as by an instinct. But the profound and exquisite in feeling, the 
 lofty and universal in thought and imagination, or, in ordinary language, 
 the pathetic and sublime, are neither of them, accurately speaking, ob- 
 jects of a facility which could never, without a sinking in the spirit of 
 nations, have been designated by the metaphor Taste. And why ? Be- 
 cause, without the exertion of a cooperating power in the mind of the 
 reader, there can be no adequate sympathy Avith cither of these emo- 
 tions : without this auxiliary iuqjulse, elevated or profound passion can- 
 not exist." 
 
 That which is so inadequately called a taste for poetry is the know- 
 ledge of the abiding principles in human nature on which the art rests 
 and the feelings which recognise their truth. It is the high office of 
 philosophic criticism to minister to it. In the unripe and undisciplined 
 period of taste, vicious productions will win its favour ; and only with 
 the chastened and invigorated spirit will there be congeniality with 
 chaste and elevated models. The value of sucli taste is enhanced at 
 every period of its improvement, until at length it brings that deep 
 emotion of delight familiar to a cultivated imagination, — a rich dowry 
 of intellectual and moral happiness. The passionate sensibility which 
 Ls an clement of poetic character may, indeed, increase the pains as well 
 as the pleasures of the spirit ; but another element is pliilosophic faith, 
 whose happy attendants arc love and hope. The dark periods are mo- 
 mentary because uncongenial ; and the main portion of a true poet's 
 existence — I speak in reference to his spiritual life— is happy above the 
 lot of mere worldly intellects. When a late poet exclaims, —
 
 MILTON — COLERIDGE. 4-1 
 
 " Most men 
 Are cracllod into poetry by wrong : 
 They learn in suifering what they teach in song," 
 
 it was the expression of a passing morbid sentiment. So it was but a 
 chance and discordant mood that was meant in that noble stanza of 
 Wordsworth : — - 
 
 " I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, — 
 The sleepless soul that pcrish'd in his pride, — 
 Of him who walk'd in glory and in joj', 
 FoUowng his plough along the mountain-side. 
 By our own spirits are we deified : 
 We poets in our youth begin in gladness ; 
 But thereof come in the end despondency and madness." 
 
 I shall have occasion hereafter to treat of the disordered intellect and 
 melancholy of Co\vper ; of the insanity of Collins ; of Chatterton's 
 fearful frenzy, calmed only by the cup of poison ; of the sad part of 
 Bums's career ; and to show that none of them had their origin in the 
 gift of imagination. But in the pages of biography I know of nothing 
 more sublime and illustrative of the soul-sustaining power of poetry 
 than the hermit old age of Milton. The happy visions of his youth 
 were followed by a tempestuous life, in which one storm of disappoint- 
 ment after another burst iipon his devoted head. As a patriot, a Chris- 
 tian, a husband, and perhaps as a father, his best hopes were frustrated. 
 In the arena of political life, and in the sacred recess of home, his heart 
 was as hopeless as his sightless eyes, but happiness communed with 
 him in the 
 
 " Unpolluted temple of his mind." 
 
 He went away from an age that was unwortliy of him, — not to complain, 
 not to repine, not to stain his spirit with bitterness, but to build 
 
 " Immortal lays, 
 Though doom'd to tread in solitary ways, 
 Darkness before and danger's voice behind 
 Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel 
 Sad thoughts ; for from above the starry sphere 
 Come secrets, whispcr'd nightly to his ear ; 
 And the pure spirit of celestial light 
 Shines through his soul, ' that he may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight.' " 
 
 The same spiritual visitant irradiated the gifted but darkly-diseased 
 existence of Coleridge ; for from his very heart there came the gratitude 
 of that wise acknowledgment: — "Poetry has been to me its own ex-
 
 42 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 ceeding great reward. It has soothed my afflictious ; it has multiplied 
 and reiined my enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given 
 me the habit of wishing to discover tlie good and beautiful in all that 
 meets and suiTouuds me." Let me also bring the calm but earnest 
 testimony of a living writer, eminent in another department of letters, 
 whose life, devoted to laborious research, has produced three great his- 
 torical works, each sufficient to give him fame. It is in the latest of 
 these that ]\Ir. Hallam remarks, " They who have known what it is, 
 when afar from books, in solitude, or in travelling, or in the intei-vals of 
 worldly cares, to feed on poetical recollections, to niui-mur over the 
 beautiful lines whose cadence has long delighted the ear, to recall the 
 sentiments and images which retain by association the charm which 
 early years once gave them, — they will feel the inestimable value of 
 committing to the memory, in the prime of its power, wliat it wlU easily 
 receive and indelibly retain. And I know not, indeed, whether an edu- 
 cation that deals much with poetry — such as is stiU in use in England 
 — has any more solid ai'gument among many in its favour than that it 
 lays the foundation of intellectual pleasures at the extreme of life." 
 
 It is mental inactivity that is so fatal to all just criticism and to the 
 genial appreciation of poetiy. No one who takes up poetiy as a mere 
 matter of elegant amusement or an indolent recreation need expect to 
 look higher than the most subordinate departments of the art. A great 
 poem is the production of all the noblest faculties of the human nund ; 
 and what but the rash presumption of ignorance can suppose that such 
 works are to be approached except by strenuous thought, by reverential 
 study, and by deep meditation. In this lies the immeasurable space 
 between poems and what are usually termed works of fiction. The 
 common run of novels and romances are read with scarce any intellect- 
 ual cooperation on the part of the reader, the gratification for the most 
 part consisting in mere relief from vacuity of mind. The difference is 
 as wide, too, in the enjoyment derived from the two great classes of 
 works of iningination. That from the novel is fugitive, it lieing praise 
 to say of a novel that it can be read with pleasure a second time, and a 
 more frequent recuiTcnec being a rare tribute to its merits. Applying 
 the same test to poetry, the indisposition, on the part of any one com- 
 petent to judge, to peruse a poem a second time is almost equivalent to 
 its condemnation. The higher works of the art comprehend a fund 
 of intellectual interest inexhaustible. Nine out of ten novels, when 
 read, are flung aside for ever ; while at each study of a great poem the 
 imagination expands with the perception of new beauties and new pow- 
 ers. With each expansion of the imagination effected l)y reflection and
 
 DUE PROPORTION OF INTi:LLECTUAL POWERS. 43 
 
 familiarity with the classic models a deeper insight is gained into the 
 glories of the spii'it of a great poet. In the volume of the great drama- 
 tist, for instance, there are depths inuumeraljle that have not yet been 
 fathomed, and which remain to be soonded by an imaginative philosophy. 
 
 In bringing this lectui-e to a close, let me revert to a retlection pre- 
 viciusly presented : — that a prime purpose of every one who thoughtfully 
 seeks to develope the faculties with which he is gifted should be to give 
 to those faculties their due proportionate cultivation. Life is made up 
 of an almost intinite variety of demands on the human character, — the 
 thousand minute incidents of daily occurrence, the weightier trusts from 
 which no one can isolate himself, and those responsibilities which, be- 
 ginning here, will have their event beyond all time. A great error of 
 human existence is devotion to one set of duties at the expense of 
 others, — the partial formation of character, the culture of some facul- 
 ties, and the wilful or thoughtless abandonment of others. 
 
 Let them be all present in a just subordination, without prostrating 
 the other intellectual powers. I have endeavoured to assert the majesty 
 of the imagination, thus claiming only 
 
 " That the king may enjoy his own." 
 
 The world is swayed by two principles antagonistic when divorced, — 
 the spirit of contemplation, hermit-like seeking a retreat, and, what is 
 more in the ascendant, the spuit of action, hurrying into the thorough- 
 fares of society, and restless, wretched, and helpless in any chance mo- 
 ment of reluctant solitude. The temptation to which the mere man of 
 letters is exposed is the disposition to withdraw from the active life in 
 which, in common with his feUow-men, his lot is cast, into the cloister 
 of his ideal world. I have had occasion to speak earnestly on the im- 
 jjortance of literary cultivation ; but I desire a condemnation equally 
 earnest of the exaggeration of that importance at the cost of other 
 duties, that pedantry which leads into the exclusive and narrow-spu-itcd 
 error of making literature the standard by which all tilings are to be 
 measured. There is, bearing on this subject, a beautiful incident in the 
 biography of Sir Walter Scott, to whom a young friend chanced to make 
 a remark conveying the impression of a suspicion of poets and novelists 
 being accustomed to look at life and theworld only as the materials for art. 
 A soft and pensive shade came over Scott's face as he said, " I fear you 
 have some very young ideas in your head. Are you not too apt to mea- 
 sure things by some reference to literature, — to disbelieve that anybody 
 can be worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, — 
 a taste for it ? God help us ! what a poor world this would be if that
 
 44 LECTUUE SECOND. 
 
 were the true doctrine ! I have read books enough, and observed and 
 conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly-cultivated minds too, 
 in my time ; but, I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from 
 the lips of poor tnieducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of 
 severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking 
 their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and 
 neighboui-s, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. 
 We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny 
 unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything cis moonshine 
 compared with the education of the heart." 
 
 The most accomplished condition of humanity is that in which habits 
 of contemplation and of action exist in harmony. The noblest eulogy 
 was pronounced on the celebrated Sir Philip Sydney, by his philosophic 
 friend and biographer, when he said of him, " He was the exact image 
 of quiet and action, happily united in him, and seldom well divided in 
 any." The equal cultivation of each spiritual gift that is bestowed on 
 us is that true idea of education set forth by Lord Eacon in a passage 
 full of a wise imagination, closing his enumeration of the obstacles to the 
 advancement of learning, and which in conclusion I desire to quote : — 
 
 " The greatest error is the mistaking or misplacing the last or furthest 
 end of knoM'ledge ; for men have entered into a desire of learning and 
 knowledge, sometimes upon natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite, 
 sometimes to entertain tlioir minds with variety and delight, sometimes 
 for ornament and reputation, and somethncs to enable them to victory 
 of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession, and 
 seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gilt of reason, to the 
 benefit and use of men ; as if there were sought in knowledge a couch 
 whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit, or a terrace for a 
 wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect, 
 or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon, or a fort or 
 commanding ground for strife and contention, or a shop for profit or 
 sale, and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the I'e- 
 lief of man's estate."
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 TIEE DA"WTir OF ENGLISH POESY— DIFFICULTIES OF DESCRIBING IT— OBSOLETE LAN- 
 GUAGE—CHAUCER THE FATHER OF ENGLISH POETRY— LATIN POETRY— REVIVAL 
 OF LEARNING— ENGLISH LANGUAGE— ITS TRANSITION— STATUTES OF EDWARD 
 THE THIRD-GOWER— AGE OF CHIVALRY— INVASION OF FRANCE— CRESSY AND 
 POITIERS— THE BLACK PRINCE- THE CHURCH— VVICLIF-CHAUCERS BIRTH, A.D. 
 1328— FRIENDSHIP AVITH GOWER— TASTE FOR NATURAL SCENERY— THE FLOIVER 
 AND THE LEjVF— BURNS'S DAISY— ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE— CANTERBURY TALES- 
 ITS OUTLINE— HIS RESPECT FOR THE FEMALE SEX— CHAUCER'S INFLLtENCE ON 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE—" THE WELL OF ENGLISH UNDEFILED "—HIS VERSI- 
 FICATION-HIS DEATH, A. D. UCO. 
 
 THE era of English poetry may be described as a period of about five 
 hundred years. At the remote point of time foitning the distant 
 boundary of those five centuries stands a name illustrious enough to 
 justify the usage of placing it at the head of the English poets when 
 they are considered chronologically. A great living poet closes the 
 catalogue.* It is a consideration of some interest that the calendar 
 which opens so nobly with the name of Chaucer closes worthily in our 
 day with that of Wordsworth. It is a gratification to the literary 
 student to know that, when he seeks acquaintance with the earliest 
 English poets, he wiU encounter, not the feeble and dull productions of 
 rudeness and mediocrity, but works belonging to the higher order of 
 the art ; and also that, when he brings down the study to the literatiu'e 
 of the present time, he will not have occasion to mourn over the de- 
 generacy of modern inspiration. Upon each frontier of those five hun- 
 dred years stands the landmark of high poetic genius. It is also wor- 
 thy of remark that the history of English poetry is contemporaneous 
 with that of the language. Almost as soon as the language spoken in 
 England assumed a form which has continued intelligible to later gener- 
 ations, there appeared a poet of the first rank, who made it the voice of 
 his inspiration. In the primitive age of English literatiu'e there is one 
 (and but one) name of distinguished eminence. If, therefore, our sub- 
 ject is to be treated with regard to historical considerations, there can- 
 not be a moment's hesitation as to the period when it is to be taken up. 
 
 * In 1841, Wordsworth was living.
 
 40 LECTUllE THTED. 
 
 The arrangement of this course of lectures is attended, in this par- 
 ticular, with a disadvantage to which it is proper to advert, though 1 
 am not aware that it can be avoided except by the sacrifice of more im- 
 portant considerations. The portion of literature in Avhich any reader 
 is naturally first interested is that which is accessible in the fresh and 
 famiUar forms of contemporaneous language ; and it is only as the taste 
 is invigorated and the knowledge of former ages increased that he car- 
 ries his reading into earlier literatui-e, no longer displeased or dismayed 
 by antiquated or obsolete dialects. This is properly the course of every 
 student in his individual investigations as he follows the guidance of his 
 own taste. His course is against the stream of time. To obey the 
 same instinct in presenting the subject to your consideration would have 
 enabled me better to conciliate your attention than, I fear, I can hope 
 to do in treating the old English poetry. The advantage of beginning 
 the coui'se with modern poetry and passing by a retrogade movement 
 into its previous eras was not to be relinquished without reflection ; 
 but, at the same time, such a method would have involved an abandon- 
 ment of the advantages arising from giving to the subject somewhat of 
 an historical form. I have therefore concluded rather to encounter the 
 risk and inconveniences alluded to, in order to trace the march of the 
 English Muse, and, collaterally, the rise and progress of the English 
 language. 
 
 1 shall not therefore stniggle against the tide of time, though in 
 moving with it, and setting out at a period when the language was in 
 many respects not the English language now spoken, we must hold con- 
 verse with extinct dialects, — words and forms of expression which have 
 yielded to the same power of death which long ago conquered the lips 
 that uttered them. It is a weary thing, no doubt, communing with our 
 native language through the medium of dictionaries and glossaries, to 
 meet, as it were, the curse of Babel upon our own hearth. It is pain- 
 ful to hear the dear voice of our mother tongue like the voice of a 
 stranger and an alien. The relation in which Chaucer stands to suc- 
 ceeding poets is that of an ancestor to a long lineage of descendants. 
 " The line of English poets," says Mr. Southey, " begins with him, as 
 that of English kings witli William the Conqueror ; and, if the change 
 introduced by him was not so great, his title is better. Kings there 
 were l)efore the Conquest, and of great and glorious memory too. But 
 the poets before Chaucer are like the heroes before Agamemnon : even 
 of tliose whose works have escaped oblivion the names of most have 
 perished." " The Father of English Poetry," " The Morning Star," are 
 the metaphorical phrases so tritely associated with Chaucer's name as
 
 KEVITAL OF LEARNING. 47 
 
 to show tlie general sentiment respecting him. It could scarcely have 
 happened that this kind of rank would have been assigned to an author 
 of secondary merit. But it should be distinctly understood that his 
 fame rests not only upon the fact of his being the acknowledged father 
 of Eugbsh poeti-y, but as one of our greatest poets. 
 
 Before entering on the question of his merits, it is proper to examine 
 Ills position relatively to the literature of Europe generally and then to 
 the language of England. The fourteenth century, — the period from 
 the year 1300 to 1400, — it will be remembered, was the first century of 
 the rising literature of Europe. The Latin language, which had long 
 since ceased to be a living, coUoquial language, had not fallen into the 
 entire obsoleteness of a dead language; for it continued to be the 
 medium of communication for the learned community of all Europe. 
 But in the time just alluded to — the latter Middle Ages — the vernacular 
 tongues in the respective countries were beginning to assume a distinct- 
 ive form, and thus to furnish to tlie author an instrument by which he 
 could not only move the monastic intellect of the scholar, but arouse the 
 neglected faculties of all to whom his writings could be made accessible 
 in times when printing had not yet superseded the toilsome and limited 
 labours of the copyist. In the history of modem European literature 
 the foremost great name is that of Dante, and in immediate succession 
 is that of Petrarch. These were men of the fourteenth century ; and I 
 have alluded to them for the purpose of showing that the little island 
 we trace our history from was not far beliind old Italy in the inteUectiial 
 career. When poetic genius, after its slumber of more than a thousand 
 years, began to breathe again beneath the genial atmosphere of the 
 South, the strain was quickly caught by the cold nations of the Nortli, 
 and the inspiration of the Muse found a fit tone in words which before 
 were known only as the rude and uncouth dialect of barbarism. Be- 
 tween the death of Dante and the birth of Chaucer there was an interval 
 of a very few years. With the second great poet, Petrarch, the life of 
 Chaucer was contemporary. All belonging to the foiirteenth century, 
 it will be perceived that the rise of English poetry was coincident with 
 the early era of the modem literature of Europe. The ancestral position of 
 Chaucer in the annals of our poetry makes it important to fix in the 
 mind a distinct idea of the period of time in which he flourished. This 
 may readily be done by the recollection that he died, at an advanced 
 age, in the year 1400, — the border-year of two centuries. He was an 
 author during the last half of the fourteenth century. 
 
 Eixing the date of Chaucer's time, let us next briefly examine the 
 condition of the language of his nation. Eor the information of those
 
 48 LECTURE TIIIKD. 
 
 whose attention has not been dra\Tn to the subject, it maybe proper to 
 state that the English language is a composite language, the chief 
 elements being the Saxon and the Norman. It is extremely difficult — - 
 l)erhaps impossible — to say when the English language had its begin- 
 ning, because the transformation from the Anglo-Saxon was a series of 
 slow and gradual changes. What was the nature of those changes 
 would be an inquiry leading me away from the present subject, and too 
 important to be disposed of cursorily. The Norman or French dialect 
 was a great tributary to the main current of Saxon words, and the two 
 streams which long flowed in separate channels were at lengtli flowing 
 together. The earliest specimens of English writing, as distinguished 
 from the more ancient Anglo-Saxon, belong to the latter part of the 
 thirteenth centmy, not long before the year 1300 ; but they show a 
 rude and imperfect condition of language. The process of formation 
 was still going on ; and it was not till the time of Chaucer that the 
 language was saturated with the infusion of Erench it was capable of 
 receiving. It must be borne in mind that changes in written language 
 would not be concurrent with changes in spoken language. Eor some 
 two 01^ three centuries the Erench language was spoken by the higher 
 classes of society in England, until it was gradually superseded by the 
 new dialect, in which the language of the Norman conquerors was com- 
 bined with the native speech of the Saxons. In all that was written 
 the change came on more slowly : — the statutes of the realm, — the 
 pleas in courts of justice, — the proceedings of various tribunals, — 
 epistolary correspondence, even of a private nature, — were for a time 
 in Latin, and afterward, and still longer, in French. Now, after the 
 elements of the English language had, by means of colloquial use, begun 
 to acquire a consistency and a form, it had yet to acquire a literary ex- 
 istence. And how was this to be gained ? In the reign of Edward 
 III., it was enacted by Parliament that all pleas in the courts of justice 
 should be j)leaded and adjudged in English instead of French; and yet, 
 a hundred years after, we are told Ihat the provision was only partially 
 enforced. If legislation was too feeble to control tlic form in whicli 
 judicial and teelmical thought was to be clothed, nothing could be ex- 
 pected from it in modifying or changing the mould of literature. No; 
 it was not for the decree of legisbition or p]iiloso])]iy to work out this 
 revolution, — to raise the colloquial dialect, the familiar forms of speech, 
 to the dignity of the learned idiom in whicli men pronounced the 
 thouglits they desired to perpetuate in writing, — ^to give honour to the 
 vulgar English, — to set the vernacular speech (long literally the dialect 
 of slaves) as high as the clerkly Lathi and the royal, aristocratic French
 
 TKAN'SITIOTSS OF THE LAXGUAGE. 49 
 
 of the Norman nobility. The change was to be wi-ought by the inagic 
 iuflu(-ncc of tlie poet. The poet, addi-essiiig himself to the heart of 
 the people, needs the people's own speech. So it is in all languages ; 
 their hidden powers are first disclosed by the poets ; for their theme is 
 the knowledge which should be open unto all. TeUing, in measured 
 strains, of the passions and the feelings common to humanity, they lay 
 aside the learned dialect, secret to all but the initiated, and reveal the 
 uukuo^\ai powers of common speech, and, at the same time, refine and 
 improve it. The literary existence of all languages has its date, there- 
 fore, with their early poetry. The poet who contributed to this influ- 
 ence in a larger degree than any other was, unquestionably, Geoffrey 
 Chaucer. He did not, however, stand alone ; and the measui-e of his 
 genius may be taken not only by a positive standard, but by compari- 
 son with his contemporaries, among whom stands Gower, the second in 
 point of merit of the poets of the age of Edward III. The reign of 
 that ambitious and warlike prince was signalized not less by the glory 
 of foreign conquests in his wars for the crown of Trance than by the 
 intellectual activity and the outbreak of imagination which distin- 
 guished its literature. I shall have occasion hereafter to show that, as 
 in this first era of English poetry, each brilliant period that followed 
 was also distinguished for its national importance in a political point of 
 view. It may perhaps impress the consideration to allude to these in 
 anticipation. After the age of Edward III., the next great literary era 
 M-as the age of Queen Elizabeth, then of the Commonwealth, then of 
 Queen Anne, and then the late period in which England was again, as 
 in the first period, summoning all its energies in the strife with Trance. 
 As far as I may be justified in drawing a general principle from the in- 
 duction, it would seem that an exalted state of national feeling was the 
 atmosphere best fitted to sustain the poetic spirit. Duiing the period I 
 am treating of, the enthusiasm of the English people had been wi-ought 
 to its highest pitch : they had aimed to achieve the vast ambition of 
 their king to seize the diadem of Friince ; and never did the pulse of 
 the nation beat higher than when victory perched upon their banners on 
 the ])lains of Cressy and of Poitiers. The manners and habits of the 
 ^Middle Ages were still untouched by the changes wliich afterward dis- 
 tinguished that period of European history from more modern times. 
 The spirit of chivalry was in its vigour, giving life to institutions and 
 customs which have now long been obsolete and extinct. The fifty 
 years during which Edward occu])ied the throne make the most 
 brilliant half-century in the annals of England. The strong am; of tlu; 
 king had shaken the monarchy of Erance to its centre ; and when that 
 
 E
 
 50 LECTUBE THIRD. 
 
 hand began to stiffen with age, the sword was wielded by his illustrious 
 son, — the bright pattern to the nobles who formed his court and 
 emulated the character portrayed in the lines of Shakspeare : — 
 
 " In war was never lion raged so fierce, 
 In peace was never gentle lamb more mild, 
 Than was that young and princely gentleman. 
 When he frowned, it was against the French, 
 And not against his friends : his noble hand 
 Did win what he did spend, and spent not that 
 Which his triumphant father's hand had won." 
 
 It would not be easy to pomt to any period when the adventurous 
 spirit of the people was more elevated by national enthusiasm. That 
 remarkable \\Titer whose wit could touch without profaning a serious 
 subject, the church -historian, Fuller, said of the long-contiuued war in 
 France, "that it made the English nation exceeding proud and exceed- 
 ing poor." But the chivalry of England, stimvdated by the victories of 
 Cressy and Poitiers, rested not content with those laurels. EoUoAving 
 the banner of their prince, they penetrated into the monarchy of 
 Castile ; and, doubtless, when the war-worn soldier came home again, 
 he brouglit with him legends gathered from Iberian and Moorish ro- 
 mances to mingle -with the popular literature of his ovra country. 
 
 The times of Chaucer were a stirring period in the annals of the 
 Church. The fii'st great Reformer was his contemporary. It is not 
 necessary, even were it appropriate, for me to say more on this point 
 than that it was then that the voice of Wiclif was raised against Papal 
 domination. The slumbering sentiments of ecclesiastical disaffection 
 ■were ^videly agitated. Tlie veil between the oracle of God and the 
 hearts of tlie people was torn away ; for the Bible was brouglit from 
 the sepulchres of a dead language and made a living English book. 
 Not only was there the agitation of war and religious controversy, but 
 there was, moreover, civil convulsion, — the first struggle of an oppressed 
 peasantry nen^d with the hope of freedom, when sixty thousand sekfs, 
 bursting their vassalage, were for a brief season masters of the metropo- 
 lis. I aUude to these subjects very cursorily ; but the student of 
 literature must reflect on the leading characteristics of eacli literary 
 epoch, — of no one more than this of tlie early English poetry. It is thus 
 that we learn the influencos wliich niodil'y and oftx-u control tlie poet's 
 inspirations, and which fashion tlic nation's licart to wliich those inspir- 
 ations are addressed. 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer was bom in the year 1328, at London. He was a 
 man of gentle birth. His education befitted his birth, and his lot was
 
 CHAUCEU'S LIFE. 51 
 
 cast in noble and kingly company. His long Life was spent not in mon- 
 astic or clerkly seclusion, but in the busy public life of two animated 
 reigns. The royal favour of Edward III. and Richard II. was bestowed 
 on him ; and official records perpetuate the fact of his appointment to 
 several stations, the precise nature of which cannot well be ascertained 
 after the lapse of ages, with the exception of the one in which he was 
 associated in an embassy to the court of France, charged with the im- 
 portant and delicate diplomacy of negotiating a marriage between the 
 young Prince of Wales and a daughter of the Trench monarch, — pro- 
 bably to confirm that peace which had for a time closed the long war 
 between the two kingdoms. There is a biography of Chaucer, written 
 by the novelist Godwin, which fills four weU-sized octavo volumes ; and 
 yet the authentic facts of his life may be stated in less than that num- 
 ber of pages. Very little is known of him, and that little has less con- 
 nection with his literary character. It Avould, in truth, be a strange 
 thing if memorials had been preserved of any man of letters, no matter 
 how worthy, who lived in the early ages of a nation's literature. That 
 kind of merit was yet but imperfectly appreciated ; and, besides, let it 
 be remembered that Chaucer flourished before the invention of printing, 
 and his labours were therefore only known by the more limited and un- 
 certain process of manuscript. A few isolated particulars, chance- 
 recorded, are all that can be reasonably looked for touching the lives of 
 the early EngUsh poets. There is often a disposition to lay hold of 
 these few incidents, and from them, by means of conjecture, sometimes 
 plausible, sometimes preposterous, and always fantastic, to spin out a 
 theory of the unknown life. Of the few authentic events of Chaucer's 
 life I have stated all I mean to state, — all that appears to be of inter- 
 est. As subserving the purposes of criticism, I can attach Little value 
 to the fact of his having, during one period of his life, held an office 
 connected with the collection of customs in the port of London, with 
 an injunction in the patent of his office : — " That the said Geoffrey 
 write with his own hands his rolls touching the said office, and continu- 
 ally reside there, and do and execute all things pertaining to said office 
 in his own proper person and not by a substitute ; " for, whatever con- 
 clusion one might arrive at, whether that such an office with sucli a 
 condition of tenure was adverse to the freedom of song, or whether it 
 was favourable, or, as is most probable, inoperative for either good or 
 evil, the opinion would be no more than empty hypothesis. It is, how- 
 ever, of interest to know that Chaucer was not only a scholar, but a 
 gentleman and a courtier ; not because of any narrow considerations of 
 courtly patronage, but because his intercoui'se with the world was cal- 
 
 E 2
 
 53 LECTUUE THIUD. 
 
 culatcd to give his poetry a more enlarged cliaracter than commonly 
 prevailed. The literature of the Middle Ages was cast in scholastic 
 moulds. The favourite form of imaginative comi)«sition was allegory, 
 varied only by classical story or romances devoted to the celebration of 
 supernatui-al heroes and their monstrous dangers and exploits. In all 
 this there was a weary repetition of commonplaces, and, in a word, a 
 want of the life of poetry. WTiat seemed therefore needed to give the 
 first great impulse to English poetry was the appearance of some one 
 not only endowed with poetic genius, and an intellect cultivated witli 
 the best scholarship of the age, but also adding to the love of books 
 familiarity jvith the human heart, gained by intercourse with men i'.i 
 the arena of actual life. Hence it is that I have attached importance 
 to Chaucer's courtly and public career. He brought the English Muse 
 from cloistered seclusion forth into the light of open day, and, no longer 
 enveloping her in the veil of antiquity, he displayed her in the native 
 freshness of her youth. In these respects the contrast between Chaucer 
 and his most eminent contemporary, the poet Gower, is strongly marked. 
 Tlic chief production of Gower, bearing the Latin title Confessio Aman- 
 tis, is a voluminous didactic poem, composed of the extinct mythology 
 of ancient i)aganism quaintly intermingled with narratives from tlie 
 Hebrew Scriptures and the legends of Greek and Roman story, — the 
 adventures of Jupiter and Hercules, of Gideon and Job, of Medea and 
 Lucre tia. It consequently bears, apart from its language, the stamp of 
 no particular time or countiy, and might as appropriately have belonged 
 to any other century as to its o^vn. 
 
 But not so with Chaucer, whose poetry, while tiiie to nature, and 
 therefore to all ages and climes, shows the impress of England and the 
 foui'tcenth century. With his bodily vision, and with that spiritual 
 eyesight, — the imagination, — he looked upon the world in whieli lie 
 lived and on the men in whose thronged company he moved ; and hence 
 
 " Old England's tuthers live in Chaucer's lay 
 As if they ne'er had died. He group'd and drew 
 Their likeness with a sjjiiit of life so gay 
 That still they live and breathe, in fancy's view, 
 Fresh beint,'s fraught with time's imperishable hue." 
 
 One great proof of the genius of Chaucer and his superiority over his 
 contemporaries is to be traced in this : — that he gave to his poetry a 
 deeper and stronger sympathy Avith man's actual life. Not content 
 with the conventional topics of the poetry of the Middle Ages,, he 
 followed the guidance of his own inspirations and found nature. When 
 we find him portraying his countrymen such as he saw them in the
 
 QUALirr OF chauceh's poktrt. 53 
 
 streets of Londou, and mingliug these vivid but komcly deseriptious 
 with loftier and more romantic themes, we trace the hent as well as the 
 vigour of his genius, disdaining to confine the freedom of its movement 
 to the beaten track of his metrical predecessors. 
 
 It is proof of the native energy of Chaucer's genius that, not con- 
 tent with transmitted inspiration, he sought the elements of poetry in 
 its primal sources. It was much, in an age when the poets were apt to 
 till their urns chiefly from the classical aqueducts of antiquity, that one 
 should seek the limpid fountain as it bui'st from the native rock or rose 
 noiselessly in the bosom of the green earth. There are, scattered 
 thi'ough the poems of Chaucer, allusions to traits of his own character 
 and personal habits. The autobiographical passages in the writings of 
 eminent men are those which are always seized on with avidity ; and in 
 the case of our ancient poet they are singularly complete. Apart, 
 however, from these direct descriptions, there would be no difficulty in 
 fashioning our imagiuiugs of his personal character. He was a student, 
 a man of books, — manuscript books, let it he remend)cred ; for tlie ai-t 
 of printing came slowly on near a himdred years later. The habitual 
 downcast tendency of his looks was a trait perpetuated in his portrait, 
 and at once an eii'ect and a sign of literary appKcation and of the re- 
 flective cast of his mind. Conscious of this habit, he puts a pleasant 
 allusion to it into the mouth of one of liis imaginary companions : — 
 
 " ' "What man art tlioii,' quoth he, 
 ' That lookest as if thou would'st find a hare ? 
 For ever on the ground. I see thee stare.' " 
 
 But, while Chaucer knew well, as we leani from his own words, the 
 studenl/s aching brow and sight dimmed by poring on the written page, 
 he loved, too, ■with as deep a love, the fairer and more glorious book of 
 natui-e. Largely did he share that element of aU great poetic genius, — 
 a passion for the outward world, that which is commonly called nature, — 
 a passion springing from a consciousness of its influence on the' spiritual 
 part of our being. He was endowed with too capacious an intellect 
 not to know that the soul of man is fitted to the external world, and 
 that its education comes not from books alone. The undying soul 
 which animates each human being was breathed liy tlie Creator into a 
 material body, — a union as mysterious as death wliicli separates it ; and 
 who, without impeachment of divine Wisdom, can question that agencies 
 innumerable, felt by the physical frami-, are transmitted to the spirit in 
 its secret dwelling ? It is not the providence of God to bestow sncli 
 impulses in vain :— the bright colours and the fresh aii-s of spring, the
 
 54 LECTURE TiriRT). 
 
 sere and de.atli-foretelling hues of autumn, the dirge-like tones of the 
 voice of winter, are meant to reach, beyond the senses, to the spirit 
 which is within. If there were times when Chaviccr, with a student's 
 intensity, liung over pages on which the wisdom of other days was re- 
 corded, there were also times when his heart beat high with the fervid 
 enthusiasm which glows with the love of nature, partaking the emotion 
 uttered by a later poet : — 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 Shall teach you more of man— 
 Of moral evil and of good — 
 Than all the sages can. " 
 
 The poetry of Chaucer abounds with passages of great beauty and — 
 what is essential to all — true descriptive poetry, manifesting the fresh, 
 ness and truth of actual observation, shown not so much in mere pre- 
 cision of detail as in the animation wliich is sure to be wanting in all 
 secondai-y description. Perhaps I can cite few passages more free from 
 obsolete phraseology than the brilliant lines containing one of his 
 descriptions of morning : — 
 
 " The busy lark, the messenger of day, 
 Saluteth in her song the morning grey : 
 And fiery Plurbus riscth up so bright, 
 That all the orient laugheth at the sight, 
 And with his streames dricth in the greves 
 The silver droppes hanging on the Icves." 
 
 It would be harsh criticism to object to the sun being designated by the 
 cold mythological title ; for it is only very recent poets that have 
 learned to lay aside that fashion of speech. This fault — excusable in 
 an early writer — should not disparage a description which fairly sparkles 
 with the dew of morning. 
 
 In Chaucer's love of nature there is one element of it, as a poetic 
 feeling, in which may be traced affinity between the earliest and the 
 latest of the great English poets. I refer to his imaginative moralizing 
 over even the humblest flowers that deck tlie bosom of liis native 
 ground, — not an incongruous combination of bofany and poetry, such 
 as the language of flowers and such fanfastic devices. 1 am speaking 
 of that which has a truer aim, — one development of poetry's chief 
 philosophy, in making things visible types and shadows of things in- 
 visible. It is an utterance of imagination often scorned l)y intellectual 
 y)ride, but precious, as any one may fe(;l who will reflect that a few 
 Bible-words have made the lowly, untoiling lilies dear to the whole 
 Christian world. Chaucer's poem of the "flower and the Leaf" ia
 
 BITEIfs's ADDRESS TO THE DAISY. 55 
 
 full of this gentle morality, and is as beautiful an allegorical pastoral as 
 the language has produced. It was a tribute to that modest tlower, 
 the daisy. Afterwards the flower, honoured by the early bards, enjoyed 
 no more than, now and then, some chance notice, like the one tender 
 word for it from the lips of the crazed Ophelia. And so its neglect 
 lasted till, about fifty years ago, on the bleak side of a Scottish hill, a 
 sturdy ploughman checked his plough ; for in the mid-path of the furrow 
 there was looking up to him the " wee," modest, crimson-tipped flower 
 of a mountain-daisy. Within the manly bosom of that ploughman m^'is 
 beating the heart of Hobekt Burns ; and, though the flower was soon 
 crushed beneath the ploughshare, it had beamed long enough on a poet's 
 eye to inspire the most touching strain that had been breathed ever 
 since the days of old Chaucer : — 
 
 " Cold blew the bitter biting north 
 Upon thy early, humble birth ; 
 Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 
 
 Amid the storm, 
 Scarce rear'd above the parent earth 
 
 Thy tender form. 
 
 " The flaunting flowers our gardens yield 
 High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield ; 
 But thou, beneath the random bield 
 
 Of clod or stane, 
 Adorns the histie stibble-fleld, 
 
 Unseen, alane." 
 
 The flower and its fate called up, to Burns's fancy, associations of 
 maiden innocence abused and ruin's plough-share driving over the short - 
 lived happiness of suffering merit ; but this article of the poetic creed, 
 neglected for five centuries, has been reaunounced more strongly by a 
 later voice : — - 
 
 " Thanks to the human heart by which we live, — 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, — 
 To me the nearest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 The deepest response to Chaucer's imaginative and thoughtful love 
 of nature's humblest forms comes from the latest of his great successors, 
 who has thus taken up a strain that had been hushed for near five hun- 
 dred years, — a strain of gratitude as well as of poetry to the modest 
 flower, as the origin of various spiritual emotions : — ■ 
 " A hundred times, by rock or bower, 
 Ere thus I have lain couch'd an hour. 
 Have I derived from thee, sweet flower, 
 Some apprehension,
 
 56 LECTtlllE THIRD. 
 
 Some shady love, some brief delight, 
 
 Some memory that had taken flight, 
 
 Some chime of fimcy, wrong or right. 
 
 Or stray invention. 
 
 " If stately passions in me bum, 
 And one chance look to thee should turn, 
 I drink out of an humbler urn 
 
 A lowlier pleasure : — 
 The homely sympathy that heeds 
 The common life our nature breeds, — 
 A wisdom fitted to the needs 
 
 Of hearts at leisure. 
 
 " And all day long I number yet, 
 All seasons through, another debt, 
 Which I, wherever thou art met. 
 
 To thee am owing : 
 An instinct call it, — a blind sense, — 
 A happy, genial influence. 
 Coming one knows not how, nor whence. 
 
 Nor whither going. 
 
 " Child of the year, that round dost run 
 Thy pleasant course, — when day 's begun 
 As ready to salute the sun 
 
 As lark or leveret, — 
 Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain, 
 Nor be less dear to future men 
 Than in old time ; — thou not in vain 
 
 Art nature's favourite." 
 
 I have noticed the independence of Chaucer's genius in seeking the 
 native sources of 4)oetic inspiration ; but, in doing so, I should give a 
 false idea of his productions, if I left the impression that they were 
 chiefly of his own invention. He was a voluminous poet ; so much so that 
 the press of his country has as yet furnished no -worthy edition of his 
 entire works. During the greater part of his life his literai-y efforts 
 were devoted to translating and paraphrasing the poets of France and 
 Italy and of ancient Rome. Of these works the most elaborate was the 
 " Romaunt of the Roar" a version of the French allegorical and romantic 
 poem with that title, and the poem of " Troiliis and Cressida," princij)ally 
 imitated from Boccaccio, but witli large additions. Dealing with a lan- 
 guage of which the vocabulary was yet unsettled and the metres not re- 
 duced to system, Chaucer was thus gradually invigorating his genius for the 
 chief work on which his fame rests. Jt is a remark of Mr. Ellis, in liis ex- 
 cellent " Specimens of the Early English Poets," that it may be doubted 
 wlietherhe thought himself suflieienlly qualilicd to undertake an origimd
 
 CHAUCER S HUilOUR. 57 
 
 composition till he was sixty years of age, at which time it is conjec- 
 tured he began to execute the plan of his " Canterhury Tales." The 
 arrangement of the poem bearing this title into one harmonious series 
 was a conception that would do credit to any period of literature. If 
 suggested, as is probable, by the " Decameron " of Boccaccio, — where a 
 company is represented as having retired to a place of safety from the 
 raging of a pestilence, and amusing themselves with tales of mirth, — it 
 is free, as has been observed by Mr. Coleridge, from all reproach of 
 unfeelingness to which the plan of the Italian author exposes his nar- 
 rators. 
 
 Chaucer's plan was to present a collection of narrative poems, en- 
 livened by a variety both of subject and of tone, comprehending the 
 range of tragic and comic invention. A usage of the Middle Ages, still 
 prevalent in the poet's day, afforded an appropriate mode of executing 
 the idea. The work opens with an allusion to the season of the year 
 when the mild temperature of spring tempted people from all quarters 
 of England to joiUTiey on pilgrimages to the slirine of the sainted martyr 
 at Canterbm'y. Tlie poet, bent on the same pious errand, finds himself 
 a lodger at the Sign of the Tabard, in Southwark, in company with the 
 [U'oraiscuous gathering of pilgrims of various occupations and spheres 
 of life as well as both sexes. 
 
 The prologue to the Canterbury Tales is an elaborate description of 
 this company, and, beyond all question, gives the modei'n reader a more 
 complete notion of the manners and customs of the fourteenth century 
 than could by any research be gathered from historical records. The 
 state of society, the way of life, the social habits of our ancestors, five 
 hundred years ago, are vividly presented, with various details, the me- 
 mory of which must have perished had it not been perpetuated by the 
 conservative magic of the poet. The prologue is a complete poem in 
 itself, not presenting indeed proofs of Chaucer's highest powers, but 
 abouucUug in strokes of the happiest discrimination of character, and 
 wonderfully graphic as a delineation of life with all its actual varieties. 
 It places the author, too, as not only one of the earliest, but one of the 
 most successful of English satirists. The satire most genial to the 
 gentle spirit of Chaucer is that in which the serious is blended with the 
 playful. He was a kindly-tempered humourist, better pleased to touch 
 with a tender hand the weaknesses of men than to task their follies and 
 their crimes. There is in his chiding more of the placid smile of Horace 
 than the fierce indignation of Juvenal. The various portraits in the 
 prologue owe their effect in a high degree to the delicacy of the satir- 
 ist's strokes. We see the shipman, sunburnt and managing his steed
 
 58 LECTUKE Til 1111). 
 
 with a sailor's usual style ; the prioress, with the precision of a nun, 
 linding herself in a somewhat mixed and secular society, and with her 
 amiable ailectatiou of both in the pronunciation of her I'rench and the 
 fashions at the tal)le, and yet withal a natural placidity sliiniiig through 
 her assumed statelincss. In the descriptions of the sergeant-at-law and 
 the doctor of physic, Chaucer's skill in bringing out a characteristic 
 trait in a very few words is especially conspicuous. Of the lawyer, it 
 is said, — 
 
 " Discreet he was, and of great reverence ; 
 He seemed such, his wordes were so wise." 
 
 With a memory stored with judicial decisions and the statutes of the 
 realm, he is portrayed as the busiest of mortals ; and then it is added, 
 with that quiet humour which is for ever jetting out of Chaucer's 
 l)ages,— 
 
 '•■ And yet he scomt'd busier than he was." 
 
 The doctor of physic is described as deep-versed in surgery, and in 
 the natural magic and astrology which made so large a part of the medi- 
 cal practice of the Middle Ages : — 
 
 " Anon he gave to the sick men his (lielp) ; 
 Full ready had lie his apothecaries, 
 To send him drugges and his lettuaries. 
 For, eche of them made other for to winne, 
 Their friendship was not newe to beginne." 
 
 The satire stops not with this allusion to the doctor and apothecary 
 I)laying into each other's hands ; for, after an imposing list of his medi- 
 cal authorities, one expressive line informs us that 
 
 " His study was but little on the Bible ; " 
 
 a reproach on the medical profession, the justice of which I shall not 
 assume to discuss. Sufficient is it for my purpose, in commenting on 
 Chaucer's powers of satire, to remark that it is a reproach at one time- 
 .•io current that it called forth a vindication in that curious treatise, the 
 linligio Medici of Sir Thomas Brown. The same subject, with a sug- 
 gestion of the cause, is also alhuh-d to by one of the dramatic j)oets of 
 a subsequent age ; — 
 
 " I have heard, — how true 
 I know not,— most ])liy>icians, as they grow 
 Greater in skill, grow less in their religion, — 
 Attributing so much to natural causc8 
 That they have little faith in that they cannot 
 Deliver reason for."
 
 THE TILLAGE CLEUGTMAN. 59 
 
 The most exqirisitely-drawn character — most pleasing in its sim- 
 plicity and grace — is that of the clergyman. I can quote no better 
 specimen of Chaucer's descriptive style, prefacing it with a remark 
 which may give additional interest to the passage, — that it has been 
 conjectured that the poet had the original of the portrait in his friend, 
 the pious rector of Lutterworth, the first of the great R,eformers, John 
 Wiclif. It has also been supposed that Dryden applied his imitation of 
 the passage to the pious Bishop Ken ; aud one of the commentators 
 suggests that Goldsmith cast his eye on Chaucer's engaging description, 
 and accordingly transferred a trait or two of the clerical cliaracter in its 
 brighter view-to the preacher in his " Deserted Village." 
 
 " A good man there was of religioun, 
 That was a poore parson of the town ; 
 But rich he was of holy thought and work ; 
 He was also a learned man, a clerk, 
 That Christe's gospel truly woulde preach ; 
 His parishens devoutly would he teach : 
 
 * ^ iti * * 
 
 Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 
 And in adversity full patient. 
 Wide was his parish and houses far asunder, 
 But he ne left nought for no rain nor thunder, 
 , In sickness and in mischief, to visit 
 
 The farthest in his parish. 
 
 « • « « « 
 
 He sette not his benefice to hire, 
 And left his sheep, accumbred in the mire. 
 And ran into London, unto Saint Paule's, 
 To secken him a chantry for souls, 
 Or with a brotherhood to be withold. 
 But dwelt at home and kepte well his fold ; 
 So that the wolf ne made it not miscarry. 
 He was a shepherd, and no mercenary ; 
 And, tho' he holy were, and virtuous, 
 He was to sinful men not dispitous ; 
 Ne of his speeche dangerous, ne digne, 
 But in his teaching discreet and benign. 
 To drawen folke to heaven with fairness. 
 By good ensample, was his business. 
 But, if were any person obstinate, 
 What so he were of high or low estate. 
 Him would he snibben sharply for the nones : 
 A better priest I trow that nowhere none is." 
 
 Among the pilgrims going to Canterbury, and thus chance-coUeoted 
 at the inu at Southwark, it is agreed, at the suggestion of their host.
 
 60 LECTVKE THIRD. 
 
 that, for mutual amusement, each one shall tell at least one tale in go- 
 ing and another on tlieir return from Canterbury. This is the fable of 
 the poem, in the execution of which it wiis contemplated by the author 
 to connect the narratives by appropriate introductions and by episodes 
 prompted by the incidents of the pilgrimage. It would carry me beyond 
 my limits to enter upon anything like a critical analysis of this scries 
 of twenty -three narrative poems, which are finely introduced by the 
 " Kniglit's Tale," — the tragic story of Palamon and Arcite. The frame- 
 work of the tales is, in most, if not in every instance, borrowed from 
 older poets, especially those of Italy ; but this was a process which, as 
 with Shakspeare, still left ample scope for originality. The mention of 
 the great dramatic poet reminds me of another important resemblance 
 between the constitution of liis mind and Chaucer's. I mean that pos- 
 session, in equal congeniality, of tragic and comic powers, which is one 
 of the signs of the highest order of human genius. The most intelli- 
 gent editor of the " Canterbury Tales," Mr. Tyrwliitt, has noticed, as a 
 great difference, that in tlie serious pieces Cliaucer often follows tlie 
 autlior he borrows from with the servility of a mere translator ; where- 
 as, in the comic, he is generally satisfied with borrowing a slight hint of 
 his subject, which he varies, enlarges, aud embellishes at pleasure, and 
 gives the whole the air and colour of an original, — a sign that his genius 
 rather led him to compositions of tlie latter kiad. It appears to me, 
 Jiowever, that the admirable pathos wliich is so often to be met with on 
 his pages may well impair somewhat the confidence of this opinion ; 
 and I cannot but feci that it is difficult, if not impossible, to pronounce 
 whether the natural bent of his genius was to tragedy or comedy. 
 Whichever opinion may be Jidopted, it would, indeed, be a wrong, be- 
 cause a partial judgment ; for there is an order of imaginations, to 
 which Cliaucer's belongs, which is comprcliensive of the whole range of 
 human emotions, having at command alike both tears and smiles. How 
 vain, for instance, and how sliallow, would be the criticism wliich would 
 seek to decide whether the characteristic power of the mind which 
 created Hamlot and which created Falstaff was either tragic or comic, 
 instead of a larger energy inclusive of them both ! It is indeed true 
 that there pen'ades the writings of Cliauci'r a hearty and manly clieer- 
 fulness, so easy and unaircctod tliat it suggests the thouglit ratlier of a 
 joyous temperament tiian tlie meditative cast of mind for which he was 
 distinguished. It is impossible to read his poetry without being im- 
 pressed with a sense of his deep insight into human nature, and, besides 
 that, his strong and well-disciplined judgment and good, plain, practical 
 common sense. And here let me take occasion to say that I hold that
 
 Chaucer's genius. 61 
 
 hii1)it of plain philosophy— the power of looking at things aright — to bo 
 a trait of true genius. lu the coiu-se of tliese lectures 1 shall be able — 
 I know that I shall be aljle — to show you that the freaks and caprices 
 of the intellect, perverse notions, and morbid, distempered feelings be- 
 long to the secondary order 'of mind, and that it is a miserable fallacy 
 which ascribes them to genius of the first rank. I shall have occasion 
 to deal with the productions of spirits as glorious as' any that have 
 adorned the annals of the human mind, and from them prove that the 
 reproach of the wrong head or the wrong heart is falsely cast upon true 
 genius. The good sense I have spoken of as a trait of Chaucer's 
 character is finely exhibited in the course of the tale told by the Oxford 
 Student, — the story of the patient Grisilda, — that pattern of woman's 
 endui-auce, — a wife chosen from humble life by a noble husband, who is 
 led by a strange fancy to subject her patience to trials the severest his 
 ingenuity could devise to wound a wife's and a mother's heart. The 
 poet gives the narrative as if his owti patience could ill brook the 
 heartless trifling with the heroine : — 
 
 " He had assayed her enough before, 
 And found her ever good. What needeth it 
 Her for to tempt, and always more and more ? 
 Though some men praise it for a svibtle wit 
 (But, as for me, I say that evil it fit) 
 T' assay a wife when that there is no need, 
 And putten her in anguish and in drede." 
 
 An officer is sent to tear her child from the mother's arms and to talct; 
 it away to death. After the silence of her first amazement, — 
 
 " But at last to speaken she began, 
 And meekly she to the sergeant pray'd, 
 So as he was a worthy gentleman, 
 That she might kiss her child ere that it died. 
 And in her lap this little child she laid. 
 With full sad face, and 'gan the child to bless. 
 And thus she said, in her benigne voice, — 
 ' Farewell, my child ; I shall thee never see ; 
 But, since I have thee marked with the cross. 
 Of the thilke Father blessed mayest thou be, 
 That for us died upon a cross of tree. 
 Thy soule, little child, I him betake ; 
 For this night shalt thou dicn for my sake.' " 
 
 The tone of Chaucer toward woman is the thoughtful deference of a 
 Ckristian gentleman, or, to use a term perhaps more appropriate to the 
 age in which he flourished, a Christian kniglit, — a spirit as remote on
 
 62 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 tlie one hand from flippant contcin|)t as on the other from vapid and 
 sentimental adoration. In the tale 1 have just quoted from, he adds, — 
 
 " Men speak of Job, and most for his humbless ; 
 As clcrkcs, when them list, can well indite 
 Namely of men, but as in sothfastnesse. 
 Though clerkes praisen women but a lite. 
 There can no man in humbless him acquitc 
 As woman can, ne can be half so true 
 As woman be." 
 
 The writings of Chaucer have an interest in connection with ecclesias- 
 tical history ; for, abounding as they do in keen and earnest satire of 
 clerical and monastic abuses, they have truly been reckoned among the 
 means by which popular sentiment was animated and prepared for the 
 great change of the Reformation. The celebrated John Fox, the 
 martyrologist, expressed surprise that they were suffered to elude 
 ecclesiastical censorship, whose severity was spent on many less in- 
 fluential productions. Not to such abuses was the satire of Chaucer 
 confined ; and it is a proof of the vigour of his mind that in one of the 
 " Canterbury Tales," apparently prompted by a sudden indignation, he 
 has turned the light of his genius upon the grand delusion of the 
 Middle Ages, — the search for the plulosopher's stone. The tale is a 
 curious and elaborate representation of the sleights of alchemy, written 
 no doubt for the purpose of rescuing the simple-minded from falling 
 victims to vain hopes of thcu" om'u and the artful impositions of others. 
 It is conceived in a most vivid detestation of the folly and falsehood ; 
 and, with other manifestations of the same spirit, shows how largely 
 this old poet shared that one prime element of a poet's heart, — the 
 love of truth. 
 
 There is an important question as to the influence of Chaucer's 
 poems on the English language. On this point, opinions the most 
 opposite have been sustained. On the one hand, by an early etymologist 
 he has been condemned as its chief corrupter ; as having brought into 
 the language, in the strong phrase of the writer, " cart-loads of Nor- 
 man words," — a reproach which has been repeated by many later 
 authors; on the other hand, it is to tliis same Chaucer was ajjplied 
 the phrase so often quoted in ignorance alike of its authorship and 
 of its application, — " the well of English undefiled." This tribute 
 to his illustrious predecessor in verse was from the poet Spenser. 
 The full examination of this subject -would involve details not 
 suited to the occasion. The Saxon and Norman languages, or, to 
 describe them by other names, the English and French, were not then
 
 Chaucer's imfluence on the language. 63 
 
 two distinctly-separated streams. They were beating together in 
 stormy agitation, and no one could either control the tide or foresee its 
 future course. It was Chaucer's fate to float upon those waves. " If," 
 says the poet's most intelligent editor, "we could suppose that the 
 English idiom in the age of Chaucer remained pure and unmixed as it 
 was spoken in the court of Alfred or Egbert, a)id that the French was 
 still a foreign, or at least a separate language, is it credible that a poet, 
 writing in English on the most familiar subjects, would stuff his com- 
 positions with French words and phi-ases which must have been unin- 
 telligible to the greatest part of his readers ? Or, if he had been so 
 very absurd, is it conceivable that he should have immediately become 
 not only the most admired but also the most popular writer of his times 
 and country ?" It was Chaucer's misfortune to have only an unformed 
 — an unripe — language ; but, to prove that his influence on that lan- 
 guage was powerful and happy, it is enough to observe the strength of 
 thought, the variety of feeling, the delicate shades of meaning, of which 
 he made the language expressive. It is no proof of Chaucer's having 
 corrupted a pure dialect that the language of his poems has become 
 obsolete, and that, too, not recently ; for an English historian, writing 
 two hundi'ed years ago, remarks that an EngKshman needs an inter- 
 preter to understand Chaucer's English. It is also well as wittily ob- 
 served by the same writer— the church-historian, EuUer — that, if the 
 poet left the English tongue so bad, how much worse did he find it ! 
 and, accordingly, he gives him the praise of having refined and illumin- 
 ated it. It is the opinion also of a very competent judge in our own 
 day, it being remarked by Southey that in no other country has any 
 writer effected so much with a half-formed language. Retaining what 
 was popular, and rejecting what was barbarous, he at once refined and 
 enriched it. The language which has not reached a firm consistency is 
 doomed to grow obsolete ; and a poet of the seventeenth century — 
 Waller — thus deplores the wrong done by the hand of Tune to the early 
 poets : — 
 
 " We write in sand ; our language grows, 
 
 And like the tide our work o'erflows. 
 
 Chaucer his sense can only boast, — 
 
 The glory of his numbers lost ; 
 
 Years have defaced his matchless strain ; 
 
 And yet he did not sing in vain." 
 
 A literary question has also been made respecting the character of 
 Chaucer's versification ; and it may be considered an undecided discus- 
 sion, with high authority on each side, whether his verse is rhythmical.
 
 64 LECTUltE TUIRD. 
 
 to be read by cadence, admitting a considerable variety in the nnmber 
 of syllables in each line, or metrical, — that is, with lixed metres and 
 limited to ten or eleven syllables. This question is one too much of 
 technical prosody to be more than alluded to. But, as has been well 
 remarked by one of the disputants, " be it as it may, it is no slight 
 proof of Chaucer's sagacity that he should have pitched the key and 
 determined the length of verse which, after so many experiments and 
 the lapse of nearly five centuries, have been found to accord best with 
 the genius of language, and that his ' riding rhyme,' under the more 
 dignified denomination of the ' heroic couplet,' should be the measure 
 which Drydeu and Pope and their followers have preferred to all others 
 for grave and lofty subjects." 
 
 The extended plan of the poem of the Canterbury Tales, as stated in 
 the prologue, was never accomplished ; and it stands the mighty frag- 
 ment of the genius of the first of the great English poets, — one sur- 
 passed in the versatility of his powers only by the unapproachable genius 
 of Shakspeare. The plan was wonderfully elaborate, and wonderfully 
 achieved, too, when we consider that it was entered on by tlie poet at 
 the advanced age of threescore. Life was too short for the vast specu- 
 lations of the poet's imagination ; for not only does the proposed series 
 of the tales remain unaccomplished, but it will be remembered that it is 
 over the imperfect fragment of one of them that jMilton laments in that 
 fine passage of " II Penseroso," where he craves the power to call up 
 . the lost poets from oblivion : — 
 
 " O sad virgin, that thy power 
 Might raise Musirus from his bower. 
 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
 Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek. 
 And made hell grant what love did sock ! 
 Oh, call on him tliat left half told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold ; 
 Of Camball and of Algarsife, 
 And who had Canace to wife. 
 That own'd the virtuous ring and glass ; 
 And of the wondrous horse of bra.ss 
 On which the Tartar king did ride." 
 
 That Cluiuccr did not achieve all tliat his genius meditated was a 
 misfortune ; but the trutli must not be withlicld, lliat there rests on his 
 memory the reproach of having in some of his productions stained his 
 inspirations with the grossness of his times. That it was the grossness 
 of an age still rude and unrefined is the extenuati(m. It is a plea which
 
 HIS BLEMISIIKS. G5 
 
 may well be uttered in apology for one, the general tendency of wliose 
 poetry is indisputably moral. The blemishes which disfiguix it are of 
 that kind which may disgust, but which can scarcely contaminate. His 
 gentle spirit had its season of contrition for his poems which "sounen 
 unto Sin," and for which he prayed forgiveness. In the hour of death 
 the thought of their popularity was agony to him : he is said to have 
 exclaimed, — " Woe is me that I cannot recall and amiul these things ! 
 but, alas, they are continued from man to man, and I cannot do what I 
 desii-e." The lofty aspiration of the verses considered his last composi- 
 tion — the -voice from the anguish of a dying bed — may plead for the 
 oblivion of the imperfection of some of his writings : — 
 
 " The wrestling of the world asketh a fall : 
 Here is no home ; here is but wildernesse. 
 Forth, pilgrim ! forth, O beast, out of thy stall ! 
 Look up on high, and thank thy God of all." 
 
 Chaucer died in the year 1400, leaving the countless generations who 
 repeat the English tongue a body of poetry which, if destined in the 
 lapse of time to be wi-apped in the dust of an antiquated dialect, was 
 destined also to contribute to the development of the genius of some of 
 the mightiest of his successors. His tomb was in the city of his birth, 
 in that consecrated receptacle of the dead where, in honottr of him, — 
 the father of EugHsh poetry, — have since been gathered, in the Poets' 
 Comer of the Abbey, the remains and the monuments of the family of 
 the bards of England. " He lies bm-ied," says Fuller, " in the south 
 aisle of St. Peter's, Westminster, and since hath got the company of 
 Spenser and Drayton, — a pair royal of poets, enough almost to make 
 passengers' feet move metrically who go over the place Avhere so much 
 poetical dust is interred."
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Spcnsrr anb il^c pinstrtlsg. 
 
 KEIAl'SE IN ENGLISH POETRY ATTER CHAUCER FROM 1400 TO 1553— ITS CAUSES— THE 
 WARS OP THE ROSES— ECCLESIASTICAL DISTURBANCE— THE REFORJIATION AND 
 aUEEN ELIZABETH— AYYATT AND SURREY— THE SONNET-BLANTC VERSE— SACK- 
 \^LLE- ELIZABETH'S REIGN AND CHARACTER— CLASSICAL LEARNING-THE BRIT- 
 ISH CHURCH— SPENSER'S BIRTH, IN A. D. 1553— THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR— ITS 
 ALLEGORY— THE FRIENDSHIP OF SYDNEY— SPENSER'S RESIDENCE IN IRELANI>— 
 THE FAIRY QUEEN, IN 1590-SIR WALTER RALEIGH-THE GREAT WORK OF SPEN- 
 SER—MILTON'S PRAISE— SPENSER'S MIGHTY IMAGINATION— APPEAL TO HUMAN 
 SYMPATHIES— CHIYALRIC SPIRIT— RELIGIOUS AIM— MR. HALLAM'S CRITICISM- 
 HYMN TO BEAUTY-THE SPENSERIAN STANZA— ALLITERATION— HIS BLEMISHES 
 —THE EPITHALAMIUM— DEATH, A. D. 1598— THE BRITISH MINSTRELSY AND BAL- 
 LADS— KINMONT WILLIE— SIR PATRICK SPENS— ARMSTRONG'S GOOD-NIGHT. 
 
 I FEEL great reluctance to occupy one moment of your time with 
 words of apology ; for, while no one can be better aware than I am 
 how often these lectures will stand m need of it, I trust it is the dictate 
 of a truer modesty which prompts me to set them before you simply 
 without pretension and without apology. There is, however, an embar- 
 rassment I cannot escape, wluch I therefore wish to mention in one or 
 two words : I mean the perplexity between a desire to do all the justice 
 I can to each subject as it rises up in its abundance to my mind, and, 
 on the other hand, the anxiety not to trespass too largely on your pati- 
 ence, — a point on which I am the more solicitous because of the very 
 kind attention that thus far has been extended to me. The subject 
 allotted to tliis evening transcends reasonable bounds, at the risk of 
 impairing unity of impression. 
 
 It is somewhat unfortunate for the complete propriety of llie meta- 
 phor by which Chaucer is so often designated, that the " morning star " 
 of English poetry was not followed by the light of day. The genius of 
 the first of our English poets shone, indeed, like the last of the starry 
 host newly risen above the outline of some dark nioimtain, l)ut not, like 
 it, to mingle its beams with the light of tlie coming dawn. Tliat early 
 outbreak of imagination was not followed by the Hood of light which 
 flows in with the perfect day, which was still far distant. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of these relapses in intellectual advance- 
 ment is the long interval between the death of Chaucer, in the year 
 liOO, and the birth of the next of England's great poets, Edmund
 
 EJJ^GLISH POETRT AFTER CHAUCEU. 67 
 
 Spenser, iu 1553. This period of more than a century and a half is 
 comparatively a desolate tract ; and, parting with Chaucer iu tlie era of 
 The Middle Ages, we gain companionsliip with no other master-spirit 
 until within tlie domain of modern times. With a beauty of illustration 
 whicii does not often adorn the pages of Warton's " Histoi-y of English 
 I'oetry," he happily compares the appearance of Chaucer in the language 
 to a premature day in spring, after which the gloom of winter returns, 
 and the buds and blossoms which have been called forth by a transient 
 sunshine are nipped by frosts and scattered by storms. 
 
 For this blank in the aimals of the English Muse there must have 
 been causes, — some, it may be, beyond the sight of philosophy ; for it 
 seems to me tliat the vast spiritual ocean of the human mind has its 
 tides, not like the daily cui-rents which are swayed hj the near influ- 
 ences of the moon, but with an ebb and flood enduring for some un- 
 known tenu of ages, and ruled by God's hidden providence over the 
 destinies of mankind. Without, therefore, veutming to penetrate into 
 regions wliere speculation should humbly veil its eyes, there still are 
 causes which may be assigned for the interruption of English Literature 
 during the fifteenth century : — seven reigns of disputed legitimacy, 
 thirty years of civil slaughter, which first brutalized and then crushed 
 the nation's heart, so that to this day the hues which the Creator's 
 hand has given to the rose seem stained with blood. The period suc- 
 ceeding the wars of the Houses of York and Lancaster was not such as 
 to give the needed repose to the nation's spirit, ^v^•etchedly wasted by 
 its long agony. Tlie reign of the second of the Tudors, — 
 
 " That majestic lord 
 Who brake the bonds of Rome," — 
 
 was a time of ecclesiastical revolution, cabned, indeed, during the few 
 short years of that saintly youth, — 
 
 " King, child, and seraph, blended in the mien 
 Of pious Edward." 
 
 But the nation, crushed by the dominion of one woman, was soon to 
 rise to its highest elevation under the sway of another. It is not my 
 theme to discuss the character of Queen Elizabeth, to weigh her power 
 of sovereignty with her feminine or unfeminine frailties, presenting her 
 in one light as described by the poet Gray, — with " lion port and awe- 
 commanding face," or in another, or, it may be, only a different shade 
 of the same light, — the inimitable virago, according to the free and 
 more familiar description of Sir Walter Scott. Enough for the present 
 subject is it that the forty-four years during which she held the sceptre 
 
 F 2
 
 G8 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 is the most glorious of the English reigns, -whether the sources of that 
 glory are to l)e traeed to the sovereign herself, or to tlic wisdom of tlie 
 counsellors or the courage of the soldiers by whom licr throne was en- 
 circled. 
 
 In speaking of the literary interreign between Cliaucer and Spenser 
 for the piu'pose of a general impression, I should give a very erroneous 
 view were I to leave you to suppose that during that period of more 
 than a centiuy and a half the voice of the English Muse was hushed. 
 It did not, indeed, produce works belonging, like the Canterbury Tales 
 and tlie Fairy Queen, to the highest order of poems ; but there flourish- 
 ed those who well deserve notice before entering ou the more glorious 
 Elizabethan era. 
 
 It is usual to mark the early part of the sixteenth century as an 
 epoch in the history of English poetry, and justly so when we consider 
 the improvement it received from two poets wlio lived during the reign 
 of Henry VIII., and whose names are scarce separable, from early and 
 long association. They were men of aristocratic rank, — Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt, the lover of Anne Boleyn, and Henry Howard, the ill-fated Earl 
 of Surrey, the latter especially being esteemed one of the chief reform- 
 ers of English verse. Acquaintance with the more reiined poetry of 
 Italy, acquired eilher by dii'cct personal intercourse or by study, intro- 
 duced important changes into that of England. Harsh, pedantic, and 
 uupoctical fashions of speech, an ambitious style which betrayed it- 
 self as early as the time of Cliaucer, and became more prevalent after- 
 wards, were thrown aside. The language was made at once more 
 graceful and more simple, and Italian forms of verse introduced. The 
 sonnet was for the first time naturalized into English poetry, to prove, 
 as I shall show hereafter, congenial with its spirit and fitted to be the 
 vehicle of a vast variety of thoughts and emotions. The inctres of 
 English verse were more strictly disciplined ; so that the merit has 
 been claimed for Surrey of having l)een the first to lay aside tlie early 
 rhytlimical form for tlic more regular metrical construction. There is, 
 moreover, due to him, beyond all question, the fame of having given 
 the first example of hlank rersp, — that form which has ]n-ovcd so emi- 
 nently and jjcculiarly adapted to the language that it has been well said 
 to dcsei'vc the name of the Englhh metre, — a construction, as we shall 
 familiarly sec in the series of these lectures, so rich and varied in its 
 music : for it will sound to us in the mighty di'ama of Shakspeare, in 
 the epic language of the Paradise Lost, in the more humble strains of 
 The Task, and the utterance of the high philosophy of The Excursion. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that Surrey bro\ight to the cause of letters an
 
 STEBNHOLD AND UOPKINS. 69 
 
 iuflueuce important in that period, — tlie influence arising from diijnitv 
 of rank and lionourable public services. He was noble by birth and by 
 character, a courtier and a soldier ; but his bright career had a destiny 
 of blood. There is nothing in the annals of English history of which 
 we acquire an earlier and moi'e vivid impression than the domestic 
 tyranny of the Eighth Henry, — to a child's fancy the British Blue- 
 Beard of its story-book, — driving from him his wives, the mothers of 
 his children, and devoting more than one fair neck, once lovingly em- 
 braced, to the bloody handling of the executioner. What reign in the 
 range of history so execrable ? And let me help your hearts to a still 
 more fervid hatred by reminding you what was almost the last act of it. 
 Henry Howard had been in childhood an inmate of the palace, — the 
 playmate of the monarch's child ; and wlicn he grew into raanliood, he 
 was a loyal and honoured courtier and a gallant aud trusted solcUer. 
 But it was SiuTey's fate, and his only crime, to bear the name of 
 Howard, — a name which had newly become odious to the despot's ear. 
 He was committed as a traitor to the Tower ; and in the very same 
 week in which death was slowly travelling through the unwieldy bulk 
 of the bloated tyrant, the young poet, the gallant Surrey, at the age of 
 twenty-seven, laid down his head to meet a traitor's death upon the 
 scaffold. 
 
 Another copartnei-ship in poetry, closer than that of Surrey and 
 "VVyatt, and suggesting very different associations, is to be briefly noticed 
 in the succeeding reign of Edward YI., when was produced the first 
 metrical version in English of the Psabns of David, by two v^Titers 
 whose names have ])ecome the symbols of duhiess and ^ATetched versifi- 
 cation, — Thomas Stenihold aud John Hopkins. It would assuredly be 
 a bold attempt to vindicate from its long-continued reproach the poeti- 
 cal character of these two good men. They w^ere indeed for the most 
 part but sorry versifiers, in whose hands the sublimity — or, to use a 
 more adequate term, the omnipotence — of the original Hebrew psalmody 
 was often lost in their flat and prosaic phraseology and clumsy metres. 
 But it should be remembered that the translation of the Psalms into 
 English metre is an enterprise that has never yet been successfully 
 achieved, though even the name of Milton stands among those by whom 
 it has been adventured. It is also to be remenilDered Tliat honourable 
 testimony has been borne by high authority to the exactness of the old 
 version in its coiTCspoudeuce to the Hebrew text, and that its faults are 
 redeemed by some passages of true portic spirit, a vigour, a simplicity, 
 and a dignity, befitting the lofty theme. The load of obloquy which 
 rests on the memory of Sternhold and Hopkins should be lightened a 
 little when we meet with a stanza such as this : —
 
 70 LECTURE FOTTRTII. 
 
 " The Lord descended from above, and bow'd the heavens most high, 
 And underneath his feet he cast the darkness of the sk}- : 
 On cherub and on cherubim full royally he rode, 
 And on the wings of mighty winds came flying all abroad." 
 
 My design, however, in adverting to this metrical version is not to 
 discuss its merits, but to remark that it served to incorporate, in how 
 rude soever a form, into English poetry that wonderful series of songs 
 which " Heaven's high muse whispered to David," — wonderful in its 
 adaptation to the church in all ages and in all nations, to the church in 
 victory or in woe, and to each Christian for all moods of devotion, — his 
 season of thanksgiving and joy, his hours of peril and affliction and of 
 contrite agony. It was this version that fitted to English lips the 
 music of the royal inspired singer ; and, as the homely verses were 
 year after year familiarized in the people's devotions, the matcldess 
 imageiy of the Hebrew poetry was sinking into the hearts of the men 
 of England, and inspmng that sacred character which is the glory of 
 all tlic highest inspiration of English poetry. 
 
 Just at the close of the gloomy reign of Queen ^Jarv there appeared 
 one poetical eifusion, showing a force of imagination which would have 
 placed its author in the highest rank of our poets, had he not rchnquished 
 his inspiration for the exclusive devotion of his genius during a very 
 long life to the political service of his country. " The Mirrour of 
 Magistrates " was the title of a work planned by Thomas Sackville, 
 Lord Buekhurst, and intended to comprise a series of narratives of the 
 disasters of men eminent in English histoiy. The first of these, with 
 the poetical preface, or " Induction," as it is styled, was all that he 
 contributed ; but in those few hundred lines there was an inventive 
 energy the like of which the English Muse had not before shown, and 
 a glorious o'ershadowing of the allegorical imagination which soon after 
 rose in the "Fairy Queen." Sackville's "Induction" stands as the 
 chief — the only great — poem between the times of Chaucer and of 
 fipenser. Allegorical poetry presents no more vivid image than in that 
 single line of his personification of Old Age, — 
 
 " His wither'd fist still striking at Death's door, — " 
 or tlic masterly personification of War : — 
 
 " Lastly stoode WaiTC, in glittering arms yclad. 
 With visage grim, sterne looke, and blackly hcw'd. 
 In his right hand a naked sworde he had, 
 That to the hiltcs was al with blood imbrew'd ; 
 And in his left (that kings and kingdomcs row'd) 
 Famine and fyer he held, and thcrcwythall 
 He razed townes and threwc down towers and all
 
 sackville's poetic genius. 71 
 
 " Cities he sakt, and realmes that whilom, flower'd 
 In honour, glory, and rule, above the best, 
 He overwhelmede, and all theyr fame devovver'd, 
 Consumed, destroy 'd, wasted, and never ceast 
 Tyll he theyr wealth, their name, and all opprest. 
 His face forehew'd with woundes, and by his side 
 There hung his terge with gashes deepe and wyde. 
 
 " In mids of which depaynted there we found 
 Deadly Debate, al full of snakey heare, 
 That with a bloody fillet was ybound, 
 Outbreathing nought but discord everywhere." 
 
 What a gloomy conception was the plan of the poem, — the stories of 
 the miseries of the great ! It was congenial to the reign in which it 
 was composed, and has been compared to a landscape on which the sun 
 never shines. More than that might be said. There not only hung on 
 Sackville's poetic genius a gloomy shade, but it may be thought to have 
 taken its colour from the lurid light of the flames of religious persecu- 
 tion. We may picture to our fancies this thoughtful poet turning his 
 footsteps beyond the confines of London, on a winter's day, — the dreary 
 season described at the opening of the poem, — wandering till night- 
 fall :— 
 
 " The darke had dimra"d the day ere I was ware." 
 
 And what was the spectacle he might have encountered? The dispers- 
 ing throng, that had just gathered round the stake where flames had 
 wrapped a martyr's body, the Are not yet extinct in the smouldering 
 ashes ; and perhaps the desolated famQy — the outcast wife and childi-en 
 — lingering on the spot where a spiritual hero had sealed his faith. It 
 was a fit age for poetry's darkest conceptions ; and readily might Sack- 
 ville frame his gloomy personification of sorrow to guide him in fancy 
 into the realms of death, and to hear from the lips of the dead the story 
 of their woes. Under this dreary guidance, his genius entered for a 
 brief season into the shadowy domain of imagination ; but soon after 
 he turned the powers of his mind into political service, in which he con- 
 tinued during the whole reign of Elizabeth and part of that of her suc- 
 cessor, when the hand of death was suddenly laid upon the veteran 
 statesman at the council-board of James I. It is a remarkable fact that 
 in actual life he personally witnessed two instances of political downf;;! 
 transcending any his tragic muse could have called up in his mournful 
 poem. He was one of that judicial tribunal which pronounced the 
 doom of Mary Stuart : it was from his lips that the unhappy queen re- 
 ceived the message of death ; and it was part of Buckhurst's stern duty 
 to behold the last look of that royal fair one, and to witness the blow
 
 72 LECTURE rOXIRTlI. 
 
 which severed from her now wasted body the bead which bad once 
 i,'littered with the diadems of both France and Scotland. It was also 
 Lord Buckhurst's lot — and these were perhaps the only two calamities 
 of his long and honourable career — to sit in judgment u]ion tlie Earl of 
 Essex when that nobleman fell from the pinnacle of queenly favour. 
 
 Referring Lord Buckhurst's poem to the time of Queen Mary, I 
 come now to the most illustrious period of English poetry. In using 
 the name of Queen Elizabetb to mark a literary era, there is a propriety 
 beyond mere cbronological convenience. In the recorded inspirations 
 of the ]\Iuse she fiUs so large a space, and genius poured forth such 
 abundant streams of higb-toned loyalty to her, that the student of 
 literature must contemplate this influence over the minds of ber con- 
 temporaries. It would be a small purpose for me to inquire how far 
 the literary loyalty of the age transcended its just bounds into the ex- 
 travagancies of adulation. Sufficient is the fact that such, whether in 
 excess or not, was the predominant feeling, of which, after all her pomp 
 and power were in the grave, there is fauuliar evidence in our very 
 Bibles ; for she stands recorded in the preface to our English version 
 in the glowing phrase, — " That bright occidental star. Queen Elizabeth, 
 of most bappy memory." It would cari-y me beyond my subject to treat 
 of her character ; but this I desire to say, — that the school in which 
 this sovereign was trained was the school of adversity. History pre- 
 sents no finer contrasts than between those two days of ber life. The 
 first, when, a culprit, on suspicion of treason, she was brought in 
 custody along the Thames to be committed to the Tower, and, perceiving 
 that the barge was steering to the traitors' gate, she refused to enter 
 that guilty portal, and, in the utter destitution of a young and helpless 
 woman, called God to witness she was innocent. The refusal and the 
 asseveration of innocence were unavailing ; and tbc first intelligence 
 that reached the prisoner announced that the scaffold had already 
 drunk the blood of a meeker victim, — the Lady Jane Grey, — and she 
 knew it was thirsting for hers. But the ear which is open when earthly 
 monarchs are deaf heard her cry of innocence, and in the course of a 
 few thougb weary years she was again 1hc inmate of tlic ancient fortress 
 of the metropoUs. She went forth the qtieeu of a rejoicing nation, sur- 
 rounded by cohorts of her devoted nobles and multitudes of a happy 
 people ; and, before the crown was set upon her brow, lifting her eyes 
 to heaven, she poured forth fen'id thankfulness to the Almighty for his 
 wondrous dealings, — for his wondrous mercies. " Wherever she moved," 
 says the record of this tbc first of her magnificent progresses, " it was 
 to be greeted by the prayers, the shouts, the tender words and uplifted
 
 CLA.SSICAL LEARNING. 73 
 
 hands of her people. To sach as bade ' God save her Grace ! ' she 
 said again, ' God save them all ! ' so that on either side there was no- 
 thing but gladness, nothing but prayer, nothing but eomfort." 
 
 Sucli was the fit opening of a reign for which was reserved a glory 
 which shall fade only with the world itself, — the glory that rose upon 
 our race in the genius of Edmund Spenser and William Shakspeare. To 
 the period usually comprehended in what is styled the age of Queen 
 Elizabeth, no less than about two hundred poets are assigned by a cata- 
 logue which by high authority is thought not to exceed the true num- 
 ber. With reference to English literature, we speak of the age of 
 Queen Elizabeth ; but it is proper to discriminate, by noticing that 
 there was in this particular a decided contrast between the early and 
 late portion of the reign, and that it is only the last half to which this 
 lustre properly belongs. It is this consideration which alone enables 
 us to reconcile with a true estimate of the times Sir Philip Sydney's 
 earnest complaint of the degraded condition of poetry. It was during 
 the last twenty years of the reign that the flood of poetic light burst 
 in : the large luminary of Spenser's genius had scarce mounted high 
 enough above the horizon for its beams to kindle all they touched, 
 when there arose the stiU more glorious shape of Shakspeare's imagin- 
 ation, like Milton's seraph, — " another morn risen on mid-noon." In 
 treating of this period of literature, the nature of these lectures will 
 oblige me to limit my views to these two poets, the matchless types of 
 their age, while, in doing so, I must pass in silence by not a few whose 
 fame would have shone more brightly in a less perfect day. There was 
 much to make the age eminently propitious to a great intellectual de- 
 velopment. The language had gradually reached its full stature. It 
 was not only adequate to the common wants of speech, but it was 
 affluent in expressions which had become incorporated with it from the 
 literature of antiquity. Classical learning in its best forms had been 
 made, as it were, part of the modern mind of Europe ; and in England, 
 imder EHzabeth, the great universities, which during the immediate 
 previous reigns suffered from violence, which had pierced even those 
 tranquil abodes, were gathering anew their scattered forces. The at- 
 tainments of the queen herself, acquired by the superior education 
 which Henry VIII. had the sagacity to give his daughters (and, as it is 
 one of the few good tilings to be said of him, let us not pass it by\ 
 created a sympathy, one of many, between her and the people. Besides 
 the treasures of classical literature, necessarily limited somewhat to the 
 learned, there was scattered through the reabn a literature familiar to 
 the popular mind, — the Gothic, as distinguished from classical lore, the
 
 74 LECTURE FOUETir. 
 
 early metrical romanee, the ballads, and the minstrelsy in all its forms, 
 — tales told by the fireside in the long English winter evenings, and 
 songs sung, as Shakspcare tells us, by women, as they sat spinning and 
 weaving in the sun. The eivil and religious condition of the country 
 furaished another impulse to its mental advancement, for it abounded 
 with aU that could cheer and animate a nation's heart. There was the 
 repose from the agony of ecclesiastical persecution, and it mattered 
 little what might be the foreign danger ; for there was the proud sense 
 of national independence and national power, — its moral force mightier 
 than even its physical. The spiritual communion with Rome was broken 
 I'or ever, and England was once more standing on the foundations of its 
 ancient Biitish chiirch. The Thames, his tide no longer governed by the 
 distant waves of Tiber, "glided at his own sweet will." The language, 
 I liave remarked, was enriched by phi-aseology of classical origin ; but 
 it had also gained what was more precious than aught that could come 
 from the domains of extinct paganism. The word of God had taken 
 the form of English words, and thus a sacred glory was reflected upon 
 the language itself. The fitness of the language for versification had 
 been greatly developed by the refinement and multiplicity of its metres, 
 so that the rich and varied melody of English words became audible as 
 tlie ancient rudeness of early dialects was cleared away. 
 
 The life of Edmund Spenser was nearly coincident with the last half 
 of the sixteenth century. Born in 1553, he died in 159S. The work 
 which won for him rank among the poets was the now almost-forgotten 
 poem entitled "The Shepherd's Calendar," — a series of twelve eclogues 
 adapted to the twelve months of the year. Having closed his collegiate 
 career at Cambridge, he dwelt for about the space of two years iu the 
 north of England, perhaps in the region whence in this ceutuiy has 
 issued so noble a strain of poetry. One proof of the poetic tempera- 
 ment was here given in his susceptibility to the attractions of a fair 
 one, immortalized, though unrelenting, under the fanciful name of 
 Kosahnd. The suit, though unsuccessful, stands recorded in as swe(;t 
 a line as ever told a poet's love : he 
 
 " Woo'd the- widow'd daughter of the glenne." 
 
 The opening of Spenser's literary career strikes me as eminently 
 characteristic of his gentle spirit ; for there was all the modesty of 
 genius, conscious of powers already proved by retired efforts and whis- 
 pering to itself mightier achievements in days to come, and yet withal 
 timid in trusting to the world's rude handling its secret communings 
 with the Muse. There was no precipitancy in rushing into the arena
 
 THE shepherd's CALENDAR. 75 
 
 of antliorsliip. Not till about his twenty-seventh year was his first 
 poem published ; and then it came forth without his name, dedicated in 
 the feigned and humble signature, " Immerito," to Sir Philip Sydney: — 
 
 " Goe, little booke ; thyselfe present. 
 As childe whose parent is unkent, 
 To hira that is the president 
 Of noblenesse and chivalrie ; 
 And if that Envie barke at thee, 
 As sure it will, for succour flee 
 Under the shadow of his wing." 
 
 The di"ead of malignant tongues or of unimaginative indifference, 
 painfully as they seem to have presented themselves to the poet's 
 sensitive apprehensions, was not strong enough to silence the voice of 
 his genius, which sought utterance, as genius always speaks, alone from 
 its own. inward promptings :^ 
 
 " For, pyping low in shade of lowly grove, 
 I play to please myselfe, all be it ill." 
 
 He sent forth the " Calendar " not in boastful emulation of more 
 famous productions which had preceded it, not to gain indiscriminate 
 applause, but the esteem of the wise and good of his own day by its 
 deferential imitation of those whom he looked up to as the masters of 
 English song : — ■ 
 
 " Followe them farre off, and their high steps addore; 
 The better please, the worse despise : I ask no more." 
 
 The aspirations of Spenser did not fail; he acquired not the mere 
 favour, not the mere patronage, but that which comprehended both, — - 
 the friendship of a great and a good man, — that model of the perfect 
 gentleman in a state of society where somewhat of the spirit of chivalry 
 was passing away, with its forms, and giving place to the habits of more 
 modem days, — Sir Philip Sydney. 
 
 " The Sliepherd's Calendar " is a pastoral in little more than name ; 
 for, containing but few descriptive passages, either of the seasons or of 
 natural scenery, it is in a great measure made up of allegorical allusions 
 to the political history and religious differences of his o^\^l times, — the 
 clergy of the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions being re- 
 spectively portrayed under the transparent guise of two classes of 
 shepherds. The reader of early English poetry will find in these 
 eclogues two fables — " Tlie Oak and the Bramble " and " The Kid and 
 the Eox" — ^not surpassed in any pei-iod of our literature for the grace- 
 ful pleasantry essential to that species of composition. It is worthy of
 
 7G LECTUEE FOURTH. 
 
 remark, that the jihraseology of the "Calendar" is much antiquated 
 beyond the time of its author, — so much so as to require at the date of 
 its publication an explanatory glossary. This may be attributed partly 
 to a desire common to poets of various ages, to gi^^e a kind of quaint 
 dignity <o their effusions by removing them from the familiarity of 
 contemporary spcc-ch; such, for instance, as the slightly-obsolete language 
 affected by Lord Byron in the first books of " Childc Harold." It 
 may also be traced to the instinctive disgust with the fasliionable style 
 of the pastoral poetry in vogue tliroughout Europe, in which the 
 thoughts and the expressions of courtiers and scholars were, in a 
 bmguage inflated, pedantic, and over-relined, put in the mouths of 
 shepherds, — a false taste censured in one of his other poems : — ■ 
 
 " Heapes of hvighe wordes uphoorded hidiously, 
 With horrid sound, though having little sense, 
 They thinke to be cliiefe praise of Poetry ; 
 And thereby, wanting due intelligence, 
 Have marr'd the face of goodly Poesie 
 And made a monster of their fantasie." 
 
 In shunning this error and aiming at a Doric sim])licity, the author 
 of " The Shepherd's Calendar " ran into the opposite extreme of un. 
 couth rvisticity. This poem may be regarded as experimental of the 
 author's powers and of the capacity of his countrymen to receive liim. 
 Ten years elapsed before it was followed by the great woi"k on which 
 his fame rests. During this interval tlie genial influence of Sydney's 
 fricndsliip was shed on Spenser's spiiit, inspiring him to loftier efforts 
 than his unpretending pastorals. If ever poet had reason to thank God 
 for the gift of a true friend, it was the author of tlie " Fairy Queen." 
 The chief value of Sydney's friendship was in the intellectual sympathy 
 it gave to one who seems to have borne his genius meekly on him. It 
 also brought the royal patronage ; and Spenser accomjianicd to Ireland 
 the lord-lieutenant, the good Lord Gray, as his secretary, in which 
 ca]")acity he rendered services on which was conferred the grant of a 
 lai-ge tract of laud, taken from the forfeited estates of one of the Irish 
 carls, subject, however, to tlie condition of cultivation and consequently 
 personal obedience to the ]-)roprietor. For several years Spenser's 
 dwelling-place was the ruined castle of Kilcolman, on the banks of the 
 river Mulia, commemorated in his poems. The real value, to a seholan 
 of his three thousand Irish acres cannot easily be judged of; but when 
 I consider that the English dominion over Ireland was at that time 
 maini aincd only by dint of militaiy occupation, the country, with aU its 
 goodly lakes and fair islands, swarming witli the fierce untamable na-
 
 SPEXSEH S RKSIDF.XCE IK lEELASD. 77 
 
 lives, lawless, revengeful, and treacherous, sparing no peaceful house- 
 hold,^the land devastated, dwellings plundered and in flames, the 
 churches in ruins, and religion depraved, — it seems to me that the royal 
 bounty to the poet might not unfairly be likened to a plantation in Cen- 
 tral Florida, — as fair a region as fiercely tenanted by the proM'ling bands 
 of Indians, scarce more ferocious than the native Irish whom Queen 
 Elizabeth spent her thousands sterling to subdue. In Spenser's well- 
 \\-ritten prose treatise on the state of Ireland he says, "At the execution 
 of a notable traitor I saw an old woman, which was his foster-mother, 
 take np his head, while he was quartered, and suck up all the blood 
 that ran thereout, saying, ' This earth was not worthy to drink it,' and 
 therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hau', crying out 
 and shrieking most terribly." When, in his immortal allegory, he de- 
 scribes the abode of Temperance, — "a goodly castle, plaste foreby a 
 river, in a pleasant dale, and the bruitish rabble that beleagured it," — 
 " Loe ; with outrageous cry, 
 A thousand villeins round about them swarm'd 
 Out of the rockes and caves adjoining nye :— 
 Vile caitive wretches, ragged, rude, deform'd 
 All threatning death, all in strange manner arm'd : 
 Some with unwieldy clubs, some with long speares, 
 Some rusty knives, some staves in fier warm'd. 
 Sterne was their looke ; like wild amazed steares. 
 Staring with hollow eies and stiife upstanding heares." 
 
 In all tliis the imagination may have contented itself yvith. the mere 
 function of the eye looking from the ruined turrets of Kilcolmau Castle. 
 It was uncouth society and a strange abiding-place for tlie gentle spirit 
 of Edmund Spenser to be consigned to ; but he has left, in the prose 
 treatise just referred to, proof that he contemplated the evil plight of 
 that ill-fated island with a manly spirit ; and we find not the petty 
 querulousness of his personal grievances, but a patriotic zeal in the ser- 
 vice of his sovereign and a Christian hopefulness to better the condition 
 of his fellow-men. If the natives were savage and debased, the face of 
 nature in the Green Isle was happy and smiling ; and hajiiiier and 
 brighter still was the country into wiiich the poet's imagination gained 
 entrance, the sunny, shadowy vales, the fair lakes, with their floating 
 islands, the delectable mountains, of Faeiy Land. Looking upon the 
 royal bounty to Spenser as little better than virtual banishment from 
 all he held dear in his native land, I feel sometimes inclined to regard 
 Queen Bess as a heartless pedant, craving adulation and yet ready to 
 remove from her English realm its brightest ornament. But Spenser 
 had not achieved the work which has endeared him to after-times ; and,
 
 78 LECTUEE FOUKTH. 
 
 besides, the rougli-liewn purpose of those who seut him into the waste 
 places of a turbulent province was shaped to a glorious end. Happy 
 was it that liis spirit was ^vithdra^^^l from the throug- — from the unpro- 
 pitious atmosjihcre of a court — to muse on s])iritual creations of his own 
 fancy, and amid the imaginative forms of truth which in bright and 
 countless legions came trooping round him. 
 
 In 1590 the first books of the " Fairy Queen " were published. The 
 poem came forth, not with the timidity of his little pastoral, without an 
 author's name, and speeding for shelter to the wing of a benignant 
 jjatron, but with the majesty of a loftier theme and a nobler inspiration, 
 it is ushered in with a dedication bearing the name of Edmund Spenser, 
 and addressed to the sovereign, — " The most high, mighty, and magni- 
 ficent Empress, renowned for pietie, virtue, and all gracious government, 
 Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, Erance, and Ireland, 
 and Virginia." There stands the name of that honoured State. There 
 is many a reason for the lofty spirit of her sons ; but it seems to me 
 that the pulse of their pride may beat still higher at the sight of the 
 record of " the vVncient Dominion " on the first page of the " Fairy 
 Queen." Tlie poet placed it there as a tribute to her from whom the 
 name was taken, and not less to the gallant enterprise of Ealeigh and 
 his adventurous followers. It is one of the interesting facts connected 
 with the composition of the " Fairy Queen," that before the poem was 
 given to the world the coui'se of Sir Walter lialeigh's adventurous life 
 brought him to the secluded dwelling of Spenser, by whom the interview 
 has been commemorated in verse. There are few occurrences in the 
 history of literature on M'hich the fancy can more jjleasingly dwell than 
 the meeting of two such men. Their characters, their varied achieve- 
 ments, — Kaleigh, fresh from his martial enterprises beyond the sea, and 
 fitly styled, in one of Spenser's imaginative allegorical titles, "The 
 Shepherd of the Ocean," at one tunc his sword unsheathed against the 
 ancient monarchy of Portugal, at another planting his foot on the un- 
 broken soU of the New World and penetrating into the amazed tenantry 
 of untamed Indians, and now greeted by the gentle Spenser, — the poet, 
 in the maturing of his genius, having transcended bounds more vast 
 tli;in the Atlantic or those which Kaleigh had overleaped; for he had 
 passed the limits of time and space, and now came back radiant, as it 
 were, witli the glory he had caught in "Fairy Land." They stood to- 
 gether beneath the jioet's roof, — the ruined castle of the ancient Irish 
 earl; they wandered togetlier amidst the ricli foliage of the Green 
 Island and along the banks of the river which flowed through the poet's 
 grounds, and, mingling for years the music of its How with the deep
 
 THE FAIRY QUEEN. 79 
 
 melody of his strains, has become associated with enchanted fairy 
 streams. When we conceive the soldier, " the Shepherd of the Ocean," 
 pouring into the poet's ear the story of his Atlantic pilgrimage, the 
 marvels of the New World, — and, on the other hand, the poet rehears- 
 ing his wondrous imaginations, his yet unfinished song, telling its story 
 too of a world, like America, newly discovered, — the brilliant and 
 boundless realms of Eairy Land, — we can almost imagine these two 
 gifted mortals, like the inhabitants of two different planets, meeting on 
 this dim spot which men call earth, and revealing to each other the re- 
 spective glories of their abodes. 
 
 The friendship of Raleigh supplied the loss of Sydney, who had met 
 his honourable death in battle, dying without witnessing Spenser's 
 great achievements in verse. When the poem of the " Faii-y Queen " 
 came forth, it was introduced with a magnificence characteristic of the 
 age ; for it was not only dedicated to the sovereign, but was prefaced 
 by a series of introductory verses addressed to the most illustrious 
 statesmen and soldiers of her court; — to Hatton, and Burleigh, and 
 Essex ; Howard, and Walsingham, and Raleigh ; to Buckhurst, whose 
 muse had slumbered since the noble eft'ort M'hich I have before spoken 
 of ; and not only to all these, but, with a truth and affection worthy of 
 the poet, to the mourning sister of his lost friend, Sir- Philip Sydney ; 
 and closing %vith an address, full of the chivalrous gallantry of his age, 
 " to aU the gratious and beautiful ladies of the court." 
 
 Having now reached the confines of Spenser's chief production, my 
 mind pauses with somewhat of dismay at the magnitude of the theme 
 before me. When I consider the vast plan of the poem and the mul- 
 titude of passages of surpassing energy and beauty, it is impossible 
 to escape the feeling of the inadequacy of criticism to a faithful por- 
 traiture of Spenser's genius. Were I to attempt to convey a general 
 idea in one comprehensive sentence, it woidd be by saying that the 
 " Fairy Queen " was the great emanation of the imagination of Pro- 
 testant England in the sixteenth century. Wlien Queen Elizabeth, at 
 the opening of her reign, made her public entrance into London, a 
 pageant was prepared in Cheapside, where Time accosted her, leading 
 by the hand his daughter Truth, and Truth presented the monarch 
 with the English Bible, upon which was written " Verbum FeriMis.'" 
 That fanciful ceremony was a type of the state of popular thought and 
 feeling which in its highest mood, as exalted by imagination, produced 
 the great allegorical poem under consideration. The taste for alle- 
 gorical poetry had for a long time been predominant. It entered 
 largely into the imagination of Chaucer and his contemporaries, and
 
 80 LECTURE FOUKTn. 
 
 more recently into Sackville's "Induction." It seems to mc to have 
 closed with Spenser, passing away — as is remarkable — in the full glory 
 of the zenith. This poem shows the power of allegory in its true and 
 most imaginative fonn, — not the spurious and insipid allegory of the 
 imaginative personification of abstract qualities, but the expression 
 of a covert sense under an apparent fable. The plan of tlie " Faiiy 
 Queen" is both elaborate and involved, and could scarce be stated 
 without consuming more time than would be prudent to devote to it. 
 Its general purpose, in the author's words, was " to fashion a gentle- 
 man or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline," — a purpose so 
 pm-e and so exalted that well might Milton say, addressing himself to 
 the Parliament of England, " I dare be known to think our sage and 
 serious poet Spenser a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." Each 
 book of the poem was intended to be allegorical of some vh-tue, such as 
 hoUuess, temperance, chastity, Iriendship, justice, and coui'tesy, and 
 each represented or defended by a knight, as the whole allegory was to 
 be coloured by tlie genius and institutions of cliivalry, — a chivalry, 
 however, impregnated with tlie spirit of Christianity, and therefore 
 more pure and spiritual than the mere earthly system that passed under 
 the name. The primal clement of a great poet's power is the know- 
 ledge of the human heart ; and, wherever his imagination may roam to 
 gather its materials from witliout, there must first be communion with 
 all that dwells in the recesses of his own soul. This meditative imagina- 
 tion was Spenser's in an illustrious degree ; and when rising from the 
 deep of his omti spirit to look abroad, there seems to have been no spot 
 of the knowledge of the civilized world which the vision of his far- 
 seeing imagination did not comprehend. Sacred and profane, ancient 
 and modern, classical and romantic, histoij or fable or legend, all that 
 the ingenuity of man has devised or his memory perpetuated, are 
 gathered together ; not a promiscuous and discordant nuvss, but fused 
 by the heat of poetic genius and poured out in one glowing and 
 glittering flood. And here let nie take occasion to invite attention 
 to the prime constituent of imagination, — imagination as described by 
 Shakspeare, " all compacl,"— the faculty of blending into one harmo- 
 nious and consistent whole the various elements it calls together. On 
 the pages of the " Eairy Queen " you meet, for instance, the exploded 
 mytliologyof ancient paganism and tlie immortal mysteries of Christian 
 faith so sliadowcd fortli together tliat the sanctity of the last is yet 
 noways sullied by profane contact; the blind cravings of benighted 
 antiquity are so united with the light that has been shed upon the be- 
 liever's heart that all is made subservient to the cause of truth. It is
 
 SPENSEE's illGllTY IMAGINATION". 81 
 
 superficial and unimaginative criticism wliich censures what it often 
 calls the confusion of paganism and Christianity. It is a false criticism, 
 attributable to an incapacity to sympathize with a high and strenuous 
 effort of imagination, and from which I shall hereafter have occasion to 
 vindicate also the poetry of Milton. To the apprehension of philosophi- 
 cal criticism there is no incongruity in combinations thus imaginatively 
 presented. When, for instance, one of Spenser's heroes visits the 
 realms of the lost spirits, whom does he behold ? In one spot, Tantalus, 
 consumed with the hunger and the thirst of centuries, and with the 
 dread thought of centuries to come ; and, not far away, another wretch 
 plunged into the infernal waters, washing and wringing his blood-stained 
 hands eternally, hopelessly, — the deep damnation of Pontius Pilate. It 
 is the poorest technical criticism which halts to notice that one is 
 brought from the fictions of paganism and the other from truths re- 
 corded in Holy Writ. This matters not. To the fervid imagination they 
 are both realities ; for they are both images of eternal woe, — the suffer- 
 ings hereafter of a wicked Ufe. 
 
 The might of Spenser's imagination was manifested not only in har- 
 monizing the materials his erudition had accumulated from every region 
 of learning, but in making his creations independent of all particular 
 time or space ; giving them indeed a habitation and a name, but an ex- 
 istence purely imaginative, in the limitless land of Fairy, above the do- 
 mains of History and Geography. He places you, as was said by 
 Coleridge, " in a dream, — a charmed sleep ; and you neither -wash nor 
 have the power to inquire where you are or how you came there." 
 Now, in this poetic process there was imminent danger, — danger of the 
 poet's soaring so high as to break the chain of sympathy with the human 
 heart of mortal man dwelling below upon the earth. His flight might have 
 carried him into a region above tlie clouds, —into an atmosphere too subtle 
 to sustain the life of man's frail spirit. The fatal ultraism of supernatural 
 invention is the unnatural. The highest proof of the excellence of the 
 " Fairy Queen " is to be found in its command over our s\nnpathies ; 
 for this is conclusive of its fidelity, even amidst all the exuberance of 
 fancy, to nature. The wondrous region teems with human feelings ; 
 it is full of humanity, — humanity refined and glorified. The sviperna- 
 tuj-al realm which Spenser has peopled with the multitudinous creatures 
 of his fancy seems Kke the earth arrayed in some spiritual illumination, 
 as if man's dim and gross vision had been couched to behold the bright 
 soldiers encamped around the dwellings of the just ; as if to these 
 bodily eyes of ours were revealed the hosts of our ministering angels ; 
 as if it were granted us to see the invisible visitants of the human soul, 
 
 G
 
 82 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 speeding on their errands of love, or roaming witli purposes of hate. 
 When the imagination is duly kindled by this unequalled allegory, it 
 loses not its earthly sympathies ; and yet at the same time it is en- 
 chanted, like Milton's Gorans beholding "a fairy vision" 
 " Of some gay creatures of the element 
 That in the colours of the rainbow live. 
 And play i' the plighted clouds." 
 
 And how is it that the poet, amid all the ethereal movements of his 
 fancy, has ever held his foothold on the earth, going to the utmost 
 verge of the fanciful, and never passing the bounds which separate it 
 from the fantastic ? Chiefly by the deep insight, essential to all great 
 poetry, into human nature, — a knowledge of that living soul given by 
 God's breath to the dust of the ground from which man was formed ; a 
 knowledge of the soul in the weakness of its fallen state ; and— what 
 gives to Spenser's muse her saci'ed character — a knowledge of the soul 
 in the more hopeful condition of the redemption. Besides these, the 
 chief and grand elements of the poet's power, he humanized his lofty 
 allegory by making it an elaborate tale of chivalry ; and this was in an 
 age when the tilt and tournament had not become, like the Eglinton 
 farce, an empty and frivolous pageant, — an age of martial excitement, 
 the early modes of warfare not wholly superseded, and therefore the 
 feats of arms and knightly adventures still in high repute. Another 
 means by which the allegory was twined about the heart is to be traced 
 in the frequent allusions to the poet's own country and its illustrious 
 monarch, by which he has made his fairy creations akin, as it were, to 
 British blood. Thus wc have these elements to solve the eartiily and 
 unearthly characters of the magic poem. It is all fairy, and yet full of 
 all that fills the human heart ; it is full of patriotism ; and, more than 
 all, it is full of Christianity. 
 
 That Spenser designed the " Taiiy Queen " as a profoundly moral 
 and religious ])oem will be apparent to any one who studies it in a true 
 imaginative spirit ; and its sacred character has not been duly appreci- 
 ated simply because the unimaginative reader recognises for devotional 
 poetry only that in which the lesson is obtruded in its more direct 
 .shape, — a mode of instruction utterly uncongenial with Sjx'nser's ge- 
 nius, llie modest, shrinking delicacy of his nature recoiled from hand- 
 ling holy tliemes too palpably. The veiled teaching of truth accorded 
 not only with this trait of his genius, but also with the illimitable pow- 
 ers of his imagination. To the reader of devotional poetry who expects 
 to find the piety all spread out u])on the surface, the strains of Spenser 
 will sound like the wild stories of secular romance ; but to the ear of a
 
 RELTCUOUS ATM OF THE FAIliT QUEEJT. 88 
 
 cultivated imaglnatiou tliey come like echoes from the oracle of God. 
 "When the celebrated John Wesley — a man who in spiritual affairs ex- 
 erted probably as wide an influence over his fellow-men as any man who 
 has ever lived — gave direction for the clerical studies of his Methodist 
 disciples, he recommended them to combine with the study of the He- 
 brew Bible and the Greek Testament the reading of the " Fairy Queen." 
 Whether this advice was given for the copious imagery and pious senti- 
 ments, or for the abundant, fervid, and melodious diction of Spenser's 
 poetry, it is no weak authoi'ity ; for no one knew better than Wesley 
 how mighty an agent is the imagination in swaying the hearts and in- 
 tellects of men, and the consequent importance of the cultivation of it. 
 
 The religious aim of the " Pairy Queen " is especially to be discerned 
 in the first book, which is deemed the finest of the six, and is in itself a 
 complete poem. The legend of the Knight of the Red Cross, or Holi- 
 uesse, is an allegory as perfect in the execution as in the conception. 
 The knight represents the militant Christian arrayed in the spiritual 
 panoply described by St. Paul. Christian Truth, or the Church, is 
 typified in the person of the heroine, " the heavenly Una with her milk- 
 white lamb ; " and the poet of Protestant England portrayed Popery, 
 or spiritual error, under the form of Duessa. My limits forbid my at- 
 tempting any amplified comment on the poem ; which I need the less 
 regret, as it is in my power to refer you to an inimitable series of criti- 
 cal papers on the subject from the pen of Professor John Wilson, of 
 Edinburgh, in reference to which that calmly -judging critic, Mr. Hal- 
 lam, characterizes the author as a living writer of the most ardent and 
 ("uthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as a rush of mighty waters, and 
 who has left it for others almost as invidious to praise in terms of less 
 rapture as to censure what he has borne along in the stream of unhesi- 
 tating eulogy. These papers have great value as pieces of imaginative 
 and philosophical criticism, written in a sjiirit of such glowing admir- 
 ation of Spenser that I would most earnestly recommend them as the 
 best means of extending and reviving the study of tlie "Pairy Queen." 
 They are to be found in Blackwood's Magazine, beginning in the year 
 1833. 
 
 It is the remark of this eloquent writer that no poet ever possessed 
 a more exquisite sense of the beautiful than Spenser. This is to be 
 traced in his descriptions of external nature, and, in a still more sur- 
 passing degree, his portraitures of female beauty. There is no poet of 
 whose powers isolated quotation woidd convey a more inadequate im- 
 y)ression than Spenser, because it seems to have been the delight of his 
 spirit to luxuriate in its own imaginings of holiness and virtue and 
 
 G 2
 
 84 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 beauty, and then to pour forth a long-continued strain, of which the 
 well-sustaLncd effect would be marred by disjoiiited extract. In one 
 instance a description of a fair sylvan huntress is expanded to a hundred 
 lines ; in which, after the poet has wrought up the sense of admiration 
 by a matchless profusion of fancy and imageiy, the last touch is given 
 to the woodland beauty in tliis stanza : — 
 
 " Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wjTe, 
 
 About her shoulders wercn loosely shed ; 
 
 And, when the winde amongst them did inspyre, 
 
 They waved like a penon wyde dispred, 
 
 And low behinde her backe were scattered : 
 
 And, whether art it were, or heedlesse haj), 
 
 As through the flowering forrest rash she fled, 
 
 In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap, 
 And flourishing fresh leaves and blossoms did enwrap." 
 
 But more exquisite far than any other, rises to our imagination the 
 form of Una, radiant with the simple grace of heavenly truth, — beauty 
 beaming through her sorrows as she wanders searching for the deluded 
 Christian soldier : — 
 
 ' Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid, 
 One day, nigh weario of the yrkesome way, 
 From her uuhastie beast she did alight, 
 And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay 
 In secrete shadow, far from all men's sight. 
 From her fayre head her fillet she undight, 
 And layd her stole aside. Her angel's face, 
 As the great eye of heaven, shynid bright. 
 And made a sunshine in the shady place : 
 Did never mortall eye bchulde such heavenly grace." 
 
 The high spirituality of Spenser's genius is in nothing more con- 
 spicuous than his power of awakening the sense of the beautiful by his 
 imaginative pictures of wliat may be called s])iritual beauty, as dis- 
 tinguished from natural beauty, lie seems to delight in llu; possession, 
 as it were, of a new sense, — his mind's eye charmed with the vision of 
 moral loveliness, — an imperishal)le grace, celebrated in his beautiful 
 " llymne in Honour of Beautic : " — 
 
 " Beautie is not, as fond men misdeemc, 
 An outward shew of things that only sceme. 
 
 " For that goodly hew of white and red 
 With wliich the cheekes arc sprinkled, shall decay ; 
 And those swcetc rosy leaves, so fairly spred 
 Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away 
 To tliat they were, ev'n to corrupted clay !
 
 THE HYMN TO BEAUTY. 85 
 
 That goldcu wyvc, those sparkling stars so bright. 
 Shall turne to dust, and lose their goodly light. 
 
 " But that fairc lampe, from whose celestiall ray 
 That light procecdes which kiudleth lovers' fire, 
 Shall never be extinguisht nor decay ; 
 But, when the vital spirits doe expire. 
 Unto her native planet shall retyre ; 
 For it is heavenly borne and cannot die. 
 Being a parcell of the purest skie." 
 
 Spenser's exquisite sense of the beautiful was, I may say of coiu-sc, 
 accompanied with as vivid a conception of the opposite images of 
 horror and affright ; to whicli we owe the wonderful pictures of the 
 "Temple of Pride," the "Cave of Despair," and the "Den of Mam- 
 mon," demanding a strenuous effort for the reader's imagination to keep 
 pace with the poet's. For instance, the abode of " Temperance " is 
 assailed by a turbulent throng of " Lusts " and " Passions," led on by 
 one thus portrayed : — ■ 
 
 " Which suddeine horrour and confused cry, 
 
 When, as their capteine heard, in haste he yode 
 
 The cause to weet, and fault to remedy. 
 
 Upon a tygre swift and fierce he rode. 
 
 That as the windc ran underneath his lode, 
 
 Whiles his long legs nigh raught unto the ground. 
 
 Full large he was of lirabe and shoulders brode ; 
 
 But of such subtile substance and unsound, 
 That like a ghost he sccni'd lohose graceclothes were unhound. 
 
 ***** 
 *"' As pale and wan as ashes was his looke ; 
 
 His body leane and meagre as a rake, 
 
 And skin all witlier'd like a dryed rooke ; 
 
 Thereto as cold and dreai-y as a snake. 
 
 That secm'd to tremble evermore and quake. 
 
 All in a canvas thin he was bedight, 
 
 And girded with a belt of twisted brake ; 
 
 Upon his head he wore an helmet light. 
 Made of a dead man's skull, that secm'd a ghastly sight." 
 
 But I must forbear from any attempt to enter on this kind of detailed 
 comment on the poem, which cannot be pursued without a sense of 
 amazement at the unbounded sources of Spenser's imagination. 
 
 The scope of these lectures has of necessiiy a limit in the 
 examination of any one production of fhe poet's ; but there is no finer 
 theme for me to indulge the hope of returning to in some future course, 
 and rendering that full homage which is due to the " Fairy Queen." 
 
 It is a common but very erroneous literary opinion which gives to
 
 86 LECTURE FOUHTir. 
 
 Pope the merit of liaving earned the versification of English poetry to 
 its highest perfection. With all the refinement of his numbers, be still 
 falls below the author of the " Tairy Queen " in the variety, the power, 
 and the matchless melody of verse. The instrument which Spenser 
 sounded was one of far greater compass, unequalled in the depth and 
 sweetness of its tones. The fame too often given to Pope is the right- 
 ful property of his great predecessor, who, among other achievements in 
 this department of his calling, gave to the poetry of his language that 
 structure of verse which bears his name, — the Spenserian Stanza. He 
 seems to have considered that there was due to bis elaborate poem a 
 peculiar and appropriate metrical fashion ; that it should have a voice 
 of its own. When you come to analyze the stanza, it is found to be one 
 of considerable complexity; and the effect on the ear is such that if the 
 movement seems ever embarrassed, as it were, by conflicting currents of 
 sound, occasioned by the reduplication and the involution of the rhymes, 
 still, it passes over these obstacles victoriously in the long Alexandrian 
 verse which gives so magnificent a close to every stanza. The follow- 
 ing sianza appears to me, in this respect, typical of its structure : — 
 " As a tall ship tossed in troublous seas, 
 
 Whom raging winds, threatning to make the prey 
 
 Of the rough rocks, doe divcrsly disease, 
 
 Mectes two contrarie hillows by the waj-. 
 
 That her on either side doe sore away, 
 
 And boast to swallow her in greedy grave, — 
 
 She, scorning both their spights, does make wide way. 
 
 And, with her brest breaking the foamy wave, 
 Does ride on both their backs, and fain herself doth save." 
 
 The effect is also very frequently enhanced by Spenser's ' revival of 
 the alliteration, which has been employed to an excess in the very early 
 English poetry. In his master-hand it loses its artificial and mechanical 
 appearance, and gives often to the line a richness of sound the secret 
 of which is not discovered till examined analytically. The Alexandrine 
 closing of the following stanza has, it will be observed, peculiar force 
 and beauty, resulting in part from the alliteration : — 
 
 " For, round about, the walls yclothed were 
 
 "With goodly arras of great majost}'. 
 
 Woven with golde and silke so close and ncre, 
 
 That the rich metal lurked i)rivily, 
 
 As faining to be liidd from envious eye ; 
 
 Yet here and there, and everywhere, unwarcs 
 
 It shevv'd itselfe, and shone unwillingly, 
 
 Like to diseolour'd snake, whose hidden snares 
 Through the green grass his long, brijht-burnisht back declares."
 
 * 
 
 THE EPITllALAMIUM. 87 
 
 Uuable to poiut to a hundred of the characteristic beauties of the 
 " Fairy Queen " which I must pass in silence, I have no disposition to 
 spend a moment on what are considered its imperfections. One of 
 these is thus finally disposed of by the eloquent critic whose papers on 
 the poem have been referred to : — " Spenser's style is said to be diffuse. 
 So is the style of a river when it chooses to become a lake. But a 
 river never chooses to become a lake Avithout a sufficient reason for such 
 change of character. It keeps a look-out how tlie land lies, and adapts 
 its career to circumstances all its way down from source to sea. There 
 YOU see it shooting straight as an arrow ; here you might mistake it for 
 a mighty serpent uncoiling in the sun ; there you almost wonder why 
 it is mute, till you gaze again and are ashamed of yourself for having 
 expected voice from one so still and deep ; and here you see the old 
 tops of trees swinging in the storm, but hear not the branches creak, 
 because of the thunder of the cataract. Just so with Spenser. One 
 hour you see him — that is, his poetry — carelessly diffused in the sun- 
 shine and enjoying the spirit of beauty, in which he lies enveloped as in 
 a veil of dreams ; another, he winds away lucidly along flowery banks, 
 with a sweeter and yet sweeter song as he nears the bowers on the 
 borders of paradise ; now, as if subdued by a sudden shadow, his 
 brightness grows a glimmer, and the glimmer a gloom, and, wondering 
 what noise it is you hear, you catch a sight through the mist of white 
 tumbling waves, and recoil in alarm from a monstrous sea." 
 
 The " Fairy Queen " exists in a fragmentary state. Of the twelve 
 projected books but six are complete. There is, I think, little if any 
 reason to suppose that the poem, according to the original plan of it, 
 was ever finished. The tradition of the other books having perished is 
 very improbable. 
 
 The conception was perhaps too vast to be achieved even by the 
 powers of Spenser ; and, whatever might have been effected with length 
 of days, his life closed in its prime maturity. During the latter period 
 of his existence his domestic happiness had been for a brief season 
 greatly enlarged by a happy marriage, which inspired one of the most 
 poetical of liis occasional poems. The " Epithalamium " is thus charac- 
 terized by Mr. Hallam :— " It is a strain redolent of a bridegroom's joy 
 and of a poet's fancy. The English language seems to expand itself 
 with a copiousness unknown before while Spenser pours forth the 
 varied imagery of this splendid little poem. I do not know any other 
 nuptial song, ancient or modem, of equal beauty. It is an intoxication 
 of ecstasy, ardent, pure, and noble. But it pleased not Heaven that 
 these day-dreams of genius and virtue should be undisturbed." Spenser
 
 88 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 retired to his residence in Ireland witti his wife, — one of the three 
 "Elizabeths" — he has commemorated as dear to him,— his mother, his 
 queen, and his bride. A very few short years passed over his happy 
 home, gladdened, too, by the voices of his children. The rebellion of 
 Tyrone broke out ; Kilcolman Castle was seized and fired by the rebels, 
 from whom Spenser, with his wife and t^A'o young children, scarce 
 escaped. His property, and the intellectual treasures of his unfinished 
 writings, were in a moment destroyed ; but, sadder far to think of, there 
 perished in the flames the poet's infant child. Spenser liastened to 
 London, and, after the lapse of a few weeks,— the inarticulate voice of 
 his lost babe doubtless for ever sounding in his ears, the vision of its 
 tender limbs wrapped in flames for ever burning on his fancy,— the au- 
 thor of the " Fairy Queen " breathed his last. He died at an inn : it has 
 been said, heart-broken and starving ; — this may be exaggeration ; — but 
 certainly heart-stricken and in need. Sydney was in the grave ; Raleigh 
 was far away upon the sea; Burleigh had no sympathy with the sufi'er- 
 ing bard ; and Essex was not the quick friend he had found in others. 
 
 " Spenser, 
 For all the glory that thy copious song 
 Pour'd on the great, what did thi'V pour on thee ? " 
 
 His body was buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Cliaucer. 
 His pall was borne by poets ; and the last honour pai d to him whose 
 genius had been so purely devoted to elevate and beautify the ideal of 
 womanly character was paid by a woman's affectionate reverence. A 
 monument was erected by Anna, Countess of Dorset, with this simple 
 inscription :— " Here lies, expecting the second coming of our Saviour 
 Jesus, the body of Edmund Spenser, the prince of poets in his time, 
 whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works wliich he left 
 behind him. He was bom in London, in the year 1553, and died in 
 the year 1598." 
 
 In examining that literary period to which Spenser belongs, there is a 
 department of poetry which it is necessary for me to allude to with 
 much more brevity than contents me. I mean the Minstrelsy, which, 
 having begun at a remote and unknown period of the language, is sup- 
 posed to have flourished most in the latter part of the sixteenth century, 
 and especially on the frontier between England and Scotland. 
 
 lict it be remembered that it was of one of tliese rude ballads that 
 Sir Philip Sydney, immediately before the time of Spenser and Shak- 
 speare, when more ambitious poetry failed to satisfy the longings of 
 his imagination, said, "I never lie.inl the ohl song of Percy and Doug- 
 lass that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet."
 
 T?R1TISU MINSTRELSY AND BALLADS. 89 
 
 The martial state of society among the border-population seems to 
 have fostered a minstrelsy distinguished for the vivid energy of its 
 strains, the boldness of its descriptions, and a wild intermixture of 
 rf)ugh humour and simple pathos, which have rarely, if ever, been 
 caught by even the best of its imitators. The border-life was one of 
 jierpetual danger and activity. Private feuds assumed somewhat of 
 the dignity of national war ; and the frequent themes of the minstrel 
 were acts of lawless violence or the griefs of a widowed wife and a 
 childless mother. The ballads have been handed down from generation 
 to generation, — for the most part treasured only on the tablets of 
 memory ; but often in these fragments there is a force and a graphic 
 reality which stimulates the imagination to a ready apprehension of the 
 imperfect tale. For instance, in such a lament as this : — 
 
 " Ilic upon Hielands, 
 
 And low upon Tay, 
 Bonnie George Campbell 
 
 Radc out on a day. 
 Saddled and bridled 
 
 And gallant radc he ; 
 llame cam his gude horse, 
 
 But never cam he ! 
 
 " Out cam his auld mither, 
 
 Weeping fu' sair, 
 And out came his bonnie bride 
 
 Riven her hair. 
 Saddled and bridled 
 
 And booted rade he ; 
 Soon hame cam the saddle, 
 
 But never cam he ! 
 
 " My meadow lies green 
 
 And my corn is unshorn ; 
 My barn is to build 
 
 And my babies unborn. 
 Saddled and bridled 
 
 And booted rade he ; 
 Soon hanie cam the saddle, 
 
 But never cam he ! " 
 
 Among the ballads collected wivh such affectionate zeal by Sir Walter 
 Scott, there is one which has struck my fancy as describing the border- 
 life with even more than the usual animation. It is entitled " Kin- 
 mont WiUie," and relates the rescue of a prisoner from Carlisle Castle 
 by the Lord of Buccleugh : — a very gallant exploit, and, what was un- 
 common, effected without bloodshed.
 
 90 LECTUKE FOURTU. 
 
 The boldness of tlie Scots in thus surprising an English fortress is 
 said to have highly incensed Queen Elizabeth, and to have endangered 
 the peace of the; two kingdoms. When Euccleugh was afterwards pre- 
 sented to the English sovereign, tradition tells us that, in her peremptoi-y 
 way, she demanded how he dared to undertake an enterprise so despe- 
 rate; and the undaunted chieftain's answer was, " WTiat is it that a 
 man dares not do?" — a reply which so struck the queen that she ex- 
 claimed, " With ten thousand such men our bi'other of Scotland might 
 shake the firmest throne of Europe." 
 
 At an advanced part of my course I shall have occasion to i-ecur to 
 the early minstrelsy, in showing how the revival of the study of it con- 
 tributed to reanimate English poetry, and especially how, sinking into 
 the heart of Walter Scott, it, more than any other external iniluence, 
 made him what he was. How must the fire of his imagination have 
 glowed with the restoration and perusal of this ballad, narrating, in its 
 rude fashion, an adventure of his own clan, led on by an ancestor of 
 his own chieftain, — the Lord of Buccleugh. I shall quote such stanzas 
 of the ballad as wiU keep the train of the story : — 
 
 " Oh, have ye na' heard o' the fausc Sakcldc, 
 
 Oh, have ye na' heard o' the keen Lord Scroope ? 
 How they ha'c ta'cn bauld Kinmont Willie, 
 On Haribce to hang him up ? 
 
 " Had Willie had but twenty men, 
 But twenty men as stout as he, 
 Fausc Sakrlde had never the Kinmont ta'cn, 
 Wi' eight-score in his companie. 
 
 " They band his legs beneath the steed, 
 They tied his hands behind his back ; 
 They guarded him, five some on cacli side. 
 And they brought him ower the Liddcl-rack. 
 
 " They led him through the Liddel-raek, 
 And also through the Carlisle sands, 
 Tlu^y brought him to Carlisle Castle, 
 To be at my Lord Scroope's commands. 
 
 " ' My hands are tied, but my tongue is free, 
 And wha will dare this deed avow ? 
 Or answer by the border-law, 
 
 Or answer to the bauld Buccleugh ? ' 
 
 " ' Now haud thy tongue, thou rank reiver, 
 There 's never a Scot shall set thee free ; 
 Before ye cross my castle-gate, 
 1 trow, ye shall take farewell o' me.'
 
 KINMOXT WILLIE. 91 
 
 " ' Four u.V ye that, my lord,' quo' Willie : 
 
 ' By the faith o' my body, Lord Seroope,' he said, 
 ' I never yet lodged in a hostelrie 
 But I paid my lawing before I gaed.' 
 
 " Now word is ganc to the bauld keeper 
 In Branksome Ha', where that he lay. 
 That Lord Seroope has ta'en the Kinmont Willie 
 Between the hours of night and day. 
 
 " He has ta'en the table with his hand ; 
 He garr'd the red wine spring on hie : 
 ' Now a deep curse on my head,' he said, 
 ' But avenged of Lord Seroope I '11 be ! 
 
 " ' Oh, is my helmet a widow's coif? 
 
 Or my lance a wand of the willow-tree ? 
 Or my arm a lady's lilye hand. 
 That an English lord should lightly me .' 
 " ' And have they ta'en him Kinmont WilliL> 
 Against the truce of border-tide, 
 And forgotten that the bauld Buccleugh 
 Is keeper here on the Scottish side ? 
 
 ' ' Oh, were there war between the lands, — 
 
 As w^ell, I wot, as there is none, — 
 I would slight Carlisle Castell high. 
 Though it were built of marble stone 
 ' ' I would set that castell in a flame, 
 
 And slokcn it with English blood : 
 There 's never a man in Cumberland 
 Should ken where Carlisle Castell stood. 
 
 ' ' But since nae war 's between the lands, 
 
 And there is peace, — and peace should be, — 
 I "U neither harm English lad nor lass, 
 
 And yet Kinmont freed shall be.' 
 ' He has call'd him forty marchmen bauld, 
 
 Were kinsmen to the bauld Buccleugh. 
 ■»*»»* 
 
 • -Vnd as we cross'd the batable land, 
 
 When to the English side we held, 
 The fir.-.t o' men that we met wi', 
 
 Wha should it be but fause Sakeldo ? 
 
 * ' Where be ye gaun. ye hunters keen r ' 
 
 Quo' fause Sakelde ; ' come, tell to me." 
 ' We go to hunt an English stag 
 
 Has trcspass'd on the Scots countrie.' 
 ' ' Where be ye gaun, ye marshal men ? ' 
 Quo' fause Sakelde; ' come, tell me true.'
 
 92 LECTUEE FOUETH. 
 
 ' We go to catch a rank reiver 
 
 Has broken faith wi' the bauld Bucclcugh.' 
 
 " ' Where be ye gaun, ye mason hids, 
 Wi' a' your hiddcrs lang and hie ? ' 
 ' \Vc gang to hunt a corbie's nest 
 
 That wens not far frac Woodhouselce.' 
 
 ■ And when we left the Stranchaw bank, 
 
 The wind began full loud to blaw, 
 But 't was wind and weet, and fire and sleit, 
 When we came beneath the castell-wa'. 
 
 ■ We crept on knees, and held our breath 
 
 Till we placed the ladders against the wa', 
 And sac ready was Buccleugh himself 
 To mount the first before us a'. 
 
 ' He has ta'en the watchman by the throat, 
 
 He flung him down upon the lead : 
 • Had there not been peace between our lands, 
 
 Upon the other side thou hadst gacd.' 
 • ' Now sound our trumpets,' quo' Buccleugh : 
 ' Let 's waken Lord Scroope right nicrrilie ' 
 Then loud the warden's trumpet blew ; 
 
 ' Oh, wha dure meddle wi' me ? ' 
 « * * » » 
 
 They thought King James and a' his men 
 Had won the house wi' bow and spear ; 
 
 It was but twenty Scots and ten 
 That put a thousand in sic a stear. 
 
 ' Wi' coulters and wi' fore-hammers, 
 We garr'd the bars bang merrilie, 
 Until we came to the inner prison, 
 
 Where Willie Kinmont he did lie. 
 ' And when we cam to the lower prison. 
 Where \Villie Kinmont he did lie, — 
 ' Oh, sleep ye ? w:.kc ye, Kinmont Willie, 
 
 Upon the morn that thou 's to die." 
 ' ' Oh, I sleep saft, and 1 wake aft ; 
 
 It 'a lang since sleeping was fleed frac me. 
 Gie my service back to my wife and bairns, 
 And a' gudc fellows that spier for me.' 
 
 ■ Then Red Rowan has hcnte him up. 
 
 The starkest man in Tcviotdale : — 
 ' Abide, abide now. Red Rowan, 
 
 Till of my Lord Scroope 1 take farewell.
 
 KINMONT WILLIE. 9$ 
 
 " ' Fat' well, farewell, my gude Lord Scroopc 
 y ) gude Lord Scroopc, farewell ! ' he cried. 
 ' I 11 pay you for my lodging-mail 
 
 When first we meet on the border-side.' 
 
 " Then shoulder high, with shout and crj-. 
 We bore him down the ladders lang ; 
 At every stride Red Rowan made 
 I wot the Kinsmen's aims played clang. 
 
 " ' Oh, mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie, 
 
 ' I have ridden horse baith well and wood ; 
 But a rougher beast than Red Rowan, 
 
 I ween, my legs have ne'er bestrode. 
 ' And mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie, 
 
 ' I've pricked a horse out ower the firs. 
 But, since the day I back'd a steed, 
 
 I never wore sic cumbrous spurs.* 
 " We scarce had won the Hanshaw bank, 
 
 When a' the Carlisle bells were rung. 
 And a thousand men on horse and foot 
 
 Cam wi' the keen Lord Scroope along. 
 
 " Buccleugh has tiirn'd to Eden Water, 
 
 Even where it flow'd frae bank to brim. 
 And he has plunged in wi' a' his band. 
 
 And safely swam them through the stream. 
 
 " He turn'd him on the other side. 
 
 And at Lord Scroope his glove flung he : — 
 ' If ye like na' my visit in merry England, 
 In fair Scotland come visit me.' 
 
 " All .sore astonish'd stood Lord Scroope ; 
 He stood as still as rock of stane ; 
 He scarcely dared to trew his eyes 
 
 When through the water they had gane. 
 
 " ' He is either himself, a (dicl from below ;) 
 Or else his mother a witch maun be ; 
 I wadna' ha'e ridden that wean water 
 for a' the gowd in Christentie.' " 
 
 As fine a specimen of the ancient ministrelsy as can be given is wliat 
 Coleridge called " the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spcins." It is 
 one of the historical ballads, the precise occasion of which is wrapped, 
 however, in mystery, except that it has some relation to the Scottish 
 princess who was seated on the throne of Norway, thus occasicming an 
 intercourse between those two countries. 
 
 It is a noble example of the unknownminstrel's powers of description: —
 
 94 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 " The king sits in Dunfermline town, 
 Drinking the blude-red wine ; 
 ' Oh, where will I get a skuly skipper 
 To sail this new ship of mine ? ' 
 
 " Oh, up and spake an cldem kniglit 
 Sat at the king's right knee : — 
 ' Sir Patrick Spcns is the best sailor 
 That ever sail'd the sea.' 
 '• Our king has written a braid letter, 
 And seal'd it with his hand, 
 And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens 
 Was walking on the strand. 
 
 " ' To Norroway, to Norroway, 
 To Norroway o'er the faini ; 
 The king's daughter of Norroway, 
 'T is thou maun bring her hame.' 
 
 " The first word that Sir Patrick read, 
 Sae loud, loud laughed he ; 
 The niest word that Sir Patrick read, 
 The tear blinded his e'e. 
 •' ' Oh, wha is this has done this deed. 
 And tauld the king o' me, 
 To send us out, .at this time o' the year, 
 To sail upon the sea .' 
 
 " ' Be it wind, be it weet, he it hail, be it sluet, 
 Our ship must sail the faim ; 
 The king's daughter of Norroway, — 
 'T is wc must fetch her hame.' 
 
 " They hoysed their sails on Moncnday mom, 
 Wi' a' the speed they may : 
 They ha'e landed in Norroway, 
 Upon a Wodensday. 
 
 " They had na been a week, a week. 
 In Norroway, but twae, 
 When that the lords of Norroway 
 Began aloud to say, — 
 
 " ' Ye Scottishmcn spend a' our king's gond. 
 And a' ourqueenc's fee.' 
 ' Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars laud, 
 Fu' laud I hear ye lie. 
 
 " ' For I brought as much white monie 
 As gars my men and me ; 
 And I brought a half-fu' of gude r<d gnwd 
 Out ower the sea wi' me.
 
 SIR PATRICK SPENS. 95 
 
 ' ' Make ready, make readj% my merry men a', 
 
 Our gude ship sails the mora ;' 
 ' Now ever alack, my master dear ! 
 I fear a deadly storm. 
 
 ' ' I saw the new moon, late yestre'en, 
 Wi' the old moon in her arm ; 
 And if we gang to sea, master, 
 I fear we '11 come to harm.' 
 
 ' They had na' sailed a league, a league, 
 A league but barely three, 
 When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, 
 And gurly grew the sea. 
 
 ' The ankers brake and the topmasts lap. 
 It was sic a deadly storm ; 
 And the waves came o'er the broken ship 
 Till a' her sides were torn. 
 
 ' ' Oh, where will I get a gude sailor, 
 
 To take my helm in hand 
 
 Till I get up to the tall topmast 
 
 To see if I can spy laud ? ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, here am I, a sailor gude, 
 To take the helm in hand, 
 Till you go up to the tall topmast : 
 But I fear you '11 ne'er spy land.' 
 
 " He had na' gane a step, a step, — 
 A step but barely aue, — 
 When a bout flew out of (the) goodly rfhip, 
 And the salt sea it came in. 
 
 " ' Gae fetch a web o' the silken claith, 
 Another o' the twine. 
 And wap them into our ship's side, 
 And let na' the sea come in.' 
 
 " They fetch'd a web o' the silken claith, 
 Another o' the twine, 
 And they wapp'd them round that gude ship's side. 
 But still the sea cam in. 
 
 " Oh, laith, laith were our gude Scots lords 
 To weet their cork-heel'd sho-m ; 
 But lang or a' the play was play'd 
 They wat their hats aboon. 
 
 " And mony was the feather-bed 
 That fluttcr'd on the faim ; 
 And mony was tlie gude lord's son 
 That never mair cam hame.
 
 96 LECTURE FOUBTH. 
 
 " Tlie ladycs wrang their fingers white, 
 The maidens tore their hair, 
 A' for the sake of their true loves, — 
 For them they '11 see nae mair. 
 
 " Half owcr, half ower to Heberdom 
 'T is fifty fathoms deep, 
 And there lies gudc Sir Patrick Spens, 
 Wi' the Scots lords at his feet." 
 
 Let me take leave of these ancient strains with one very short frag- 
 ment, — Armstrong's " Good-night," — in which, if I have been presum- 
 ing too much upon your patience, you may find a wish of your own 
 expressed for you : — 
 
 " This night is my departing night ; 
 For here nac longer must I stay ; 
 There 's neither friend nor foe o' mine 
 But wishes me away. 
 
 " What I have done through lack of wit 
 I never, never can recall ; 
 I hope ye 're a' my friends as yet : 
 
 Good-night, and joy be with you all."
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 SPKNSERS DFATH AND RHAKSPEARES BIRTH— nsTLUENCE OF THE AGE— INDE- 
 PENDENCE OF HIS IMAGINARY CREATIONS— SJIALL KNOWLEDGE OF THE IN- 
 DIVIDUAL—UNSELFISHNESS OF GENIUS — A SPIRITUAL VOICE IN ALL TIME- 
 SHAKSPEARE TRADITIONS— HIS BIRTH, A. D. 1564— DE.\TH, A. D. 1616— CERV.ANTESS 
 DEATH— EPITAPH— EDUCATION — BEN JONSON — POWER OVER LANGUAGE— THE 
 DRAMATIC ART CONGENIAL TO HIS GENIUS— KENILW'ORTH AND QUEEN ELIZA- 
 BETH— SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON— THE ARMADA— HIS PATRIOTISM AND LOYALTY 
 — SUBJECTIVENESS OF THE MODERN EUROPEAN MIND— SHAKSPEARE AND BA- 
 CON—VENUS AND ADONIS— LUCRECE— THE DRAMAS— THE SONNETS— DRAMATIC 
 ART IN ENGLAND— SACRED DRAMAS— MYSTERIES AND MORALITIES— HEYWOOD— 
 MINOR DRAMATISTS-" THE GENTLE SHAKSPEARE "—THE ACTING DRAMA-PRIMI- 
 TIVE THEATRES— MODERN AD.APTATIONS— LEAR AND RICHARD III.-THE SUPER- 
 NATURAL OF THE DRAMA-MACBETH— THE TEMPEST HIS LAST POEM. 
 
 AT the very time when, in au obscure lodging in London, the 
 gentle spirit of Edmnud Spenser was passing away froiu its fresli 
 sorrows and the worldly troubles so meekly complained of in various 
 passages of his poems, there was dwelling under some humble roof of 
 the same city the mightiest of his many contemporaries among the 
 poets, — William Shakspeare. The beginning of his dramatic career 
 dates about the time of the publication of the " Fairy Queen," not far 
 from the close of the sixteenth century. The term of his authorshij) 
 belongs not, like Spenser's, exclusively to the reign of Queen Elizal)eth, 
 but, beginning in that reign, it survives during a portion of that of licr 
 successor, James I. 
 
 At the outset of these lectures T took occasion to recognise as one of 
 the offices of criticism to trace the correspondence between the spirit of 
 a great author and that of his age and country, as well as the course of 
 his personal bfe. The historical and biographical illustrations have a 
 value which no careful student shoidd overlook ; for often lie will find 
 that a knowledge of the temper of the times, the characteristics of the 
 age, and the individual position of the author, will give a deeper insight 
 into his genius. But, im])ortant as tliis process of criticism is, it is 
 essentially subordinate to the higher functions of criticism, — the phi- 
 losophy of judging the creations of genius ])y immutable principles of 
 truth, above the range of all that is local, personal, or temporary. It is 
 a prime element of the best order of intellectual endowment to dwell, 
 
 H
 
 98 LECTURE riFTU. 
 
 M unlike, in alight of its own; and he who socks to illustrate by ex- 
 ternal and reflected rays alone shuts his eyes to the chief source of its 
 illumination. 
 
 The iirst principle which meets my reflections upon Shakspcare is the 
 independence of his imaginative creations of all the incidents wliich are 
 valuable in the appreciation of most woi'ks of genius. We know, indeed, 
 the age and the character of the age in which he lived ; but, as if to 
 teach the principle just stated, tlie materials of knowledge of Shak- 
 speare's personal history have in all important particulars been swept 
 away. We do not even know how to speU his name, — a question of 
 orthography on which recently in England there has been a very ani- 
 mated discussion, occasioned by the discovery of one of the very rare 
 autographs of the poet ; and the argument goes pretty strongly to show 
 that the usual way is a wrong way. 
 
 Of the ]nan Sliakspeare we know literally nothing that is of any worth 
 for the exposition of his character as a poet. The letters which made 
 up his name are far less symbolical of the personal existence of a human 
 being than of the creative origin of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear, and 
 Cordelia, or Juliet and Desdemona, and the other realities that rise up 
 in our thoughts at the sight or sound of the Avord " Sliakspeare." Erom 
 his individual history nothing ever intrudes to disturb the perfect im- 
 ])ression made by those inventions into which he seems to have trans- 
 ferred his whole uatui-e, — this self-forgetfidncss, this unconscious self- 
 devotion, bearing witness to the perfection of his creative powers. This 
 transmigration, as it were, of a great poet's spirit into the characters he 
 invents or the ideas he embodies has furnished an eloquent living divine 
 an apposite illustration in expounding the Christian duty of self-sacri- 
 fice ; and I quote the passage for its reflex coimection witli the subject 
 now under discussion : — 
 
 " Wliatever has been truly excellent among the products of the hu- 
 iii;m mind has sprung from the very same source of all good, bolli in 
 !he natural and in the moral world, — the spirit of sclf-sacrilice. Look, 
 for example, at poetry. The might of the imagination is manifested by 
 its launching forth from the petty creek, where the accidents of birth 
 moored it, into the wide ocean of being, ^by its going abroad into the 
 world around, passing into whatever it meets with, animating it and 
 becoming one with it. This complete union and identification of the 
 poet with his poem — this suppression of liis own individual, insulated 
 consciousness, Avith its narrowness of thouglit and })etl inesscs of feeling 
 — is wliat we admire in the great masters of that whicli, for this reason, 
 we justly call classical poetry, as representing tliat which is symbolical
 
 SMALL KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDITIBrAL. 99 
 
 aud universiil, — not thai which is merely occasional and peculiar. This 
 gives them that majestic calmness wiiich still breathes u])on iis from the. 
 statues of their gods. This invests their works with that lucid, transpar- 
 ent atmosphere wherein eveiy form stands out in perfect distinctness, 
 only beautified by the distance which idealizes it. This has delivered 
 those works from the casualties of time and space, and has lifted them 
 up, like stars, into the pure firmament of thought ; so that they do not 
 shine on one spot alone, nor fade like earthly flowers, but journey on from 
 clinie to clime, shedding the light of beauty on generation after gener- 
 ation. The same quality amounting to a total extinction of his own 
 selfish being, so that his spirit became a mighty organ through which 
 uatui'e gave utterance to the full diapason of her notes, is what we 
 wonder at in om- own great dramatist, and is the groundwork of all his 
 other powers ; for it is only when purged of selfishness that the intel- 
 lect becomes fitted for receiving the inspirations of genius." 
 
 The loss, therefore, of biographical information respecting the English 
 Dramatist ceases to be to me a subject of regret, because his genius 
 was not swayed by time, or place, or fortune. It is a small conception 
 which presents Shakspeare to our minds in his individual personality, 
 limited to one ti-act of the earth, and one tract of time, aud to one little 
 island, one little half-ceuturJ^ To the truer thought the idea of Shak- 
 speare comes as the idea of a voice, ^a spiritual voice, mighty and mul- 
 titudinous, like the ocean's voice in mid-Atlantic, attuned to no age and 
 echoing to no shore ; — aud, like ocean too, taking its colour from its 
 own unfathomed deep, and not from the sod of the lands it beats upon. 
 I repeat that I know of not a single incident iu the obscui-e story of 
 Shakspeare's life of sigrufieaney for the study of his poetry. Yet there 
 has prevailed on this point — natui-ally, too — an insatiable curiosity, the 
 fruit of which lias been the accumulation of as miicb i-ubbish as was 
 ever raked into one heap by the industry of one impulse. I would be 
 the last to attem])t to brush away a literary tra^dition, no matter how 
 remote or how frail the testimony on which it rested, did I not detect 
 the feature of a falsehood. In the absence of authentic materials for a 
 biography of Shakspeare, conjecture has been busy, with a licentiousness 
 of speculation which makes it necessary to take the stand of unbelief. 
 It is, of course, not my intention to spend more of your time on this 
 part of my subject, dismissing it as worthless : one or two specimens of 
 this gossip will abundantly serve the purpose. 
 
 The absurd story of Shakspeare having earned a livelihood by holding 
 horses at the theatre door was originally stated with an imposing array 
 of the oral tradition on which it rested. Its claims to belief may be 
 
 n 2
 
 100 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 best judged of simply bv quoting tliat authority. Sir William Davc- 
 nant told it Mr. Bettcrtou, who comrauiiicatod it to Mr. Rowe ; Mr. 
 Rowe told it to Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told it to Dr. Newton, and 
 Dr. Newi,on told it to a gentleman — probably Dr. Johnson — who told 
 it to a man who, some two hundred years after the alleged event, put 
 it iu print in a book, which, I may add, is remarkable for having no less 
 than two falsehoods incorporated in the few capital words of its title- 
 page. The tradition of Shakspeare's deer-stealing adventure and his 
 consequent flight from a criminal prosecution has a little better claim 
 to belief, but still with several improbabilities which make it safer to 
 leave it to the receptacle of the fabulous. 
 
 All that is known with certainty of Shakspeare is known to every 
 one. His bu-th, 25th of Aprd, iu the year 1564, at Stratford-upou-t he- 
 Avon ; his youthful marriage ; his removal to London, and theatrie;d 
 career, — an actor, a manager, and a dramatic poet ; his return to his 
 native towu a prosperous gentleman ; his death in the year 1616, on 
 the anniversary day of his birth, and on the selfsame day on which, in 
 a remote region of Europe, the great master of Spanish fiction, Cer- 
 vantes, breathed liis last. In the churcli in which the child Shakspeare 
 had, no doubt, been trained to worship, liis body was buried, beneath 
 an inscription strong with the powers of his pen, and with an active 
 energy to guard for centui'ics the sanctity of the grave ; for, amid aU 
 the vapid enthusiasm of Sti'atford jubdees, and such senseless adoration 
 as led one of his admirers to whitewash the antique bust upon his 
 monument, if ever rash mortal dreamed of transferring the mouldering 
 remains to a prouder mausoleum, there issued, as it were, from the veiy 
 sepulchre a calm but appalling voice : — 
 
 " Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeav 
 To dig the bones enclosed here. 
 Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
 And curst be he that moves my bones ! " 
 
 In the village churcli let tlie honoured dust sleep tiU its eternal 
 waking in quietness, the stream that sounded on his ear in chUdliood 
 for ever flowing near. "While the genius of Shakspeare has gone, like 
 the ashes of Wiclif's body, scattered first into the Avon, from Avon 
 into Severn, from Severn into the narrow seas, then into the main ocean, 
 and thus dispersed aU the world over, the fit place for his perishable 
 body is the grave that first received it ; better than a stately sepulclire 
 in the company of England's dead poets, beneath an abbey's roof. In 
 t he words of one who knew him in his bodOy presence, —
 
 SUAKSPEAEE S EBUCATIOTf. 101 
 
 " Under this curled marble of thine own, 
 Sleep, rare tragedian ! Shakspeare, sleep alone ! " 
 
 I have thus pin-posely disposed in a very cursory manner of the facts 
 of Shakspeare's life. But, while I would avoid the fruitless and illusive 
 process of conjecture founded upon imperfect testimony, — the fitful 
 flash of speculation, — I am not disposed to turn away from this portion 
 of my subject without endeavouring to cast upon it the meek light of 
 imagmation. The first twenty-three years of Shaksjieare's life — nearly 
 half of his mortal existence, and a precious part of it — were spent in 
 the place of his bii'th. A good deal of disquisition has been, it seems 
 to me, somewhat vainly expended on the question of his learning, and a 
 general impression has been the residt that he was an uneducated pro- 
 digy ; in support of which opinion is a weU-known phrase of Ben Jon- 
 son's, attributing to his illustrious contemporary " amall Latin and less 
 Greek." Ben Jonson was a scholar of profound classical erudition ; 
 and, if we were to take his standard and apply it to the educated com- 
 munity in general, I apprehend that many of us, under his Latin and 
 Greek measurement, might come out with a more diminutive result than 
 that which has been perverted to sanction the opinion of Shakspeare's 
 deficiency. From the respectable condition of his family, and still more 
 from the easy and natural tone of even his early productions, — that tone 
 of learning incorporated into the mind which it is so hard for an unedu- 
 cated man to affect, — I have no doubt that Shakspeare's acquirements, 
 so far from being below the standard of ordinary education, were such 
 as lo entitle him to rank among the well-educated, even though after- 
 wards, in his intercourse with the literature of other languages, — the 
 ancient and the foreign, — he had recourse to the secondary medium of 
 translation. But how utterly insignificant does such an inquiry become 
 when, turning from the matter of mere tuition, we strive after some 
 conception, imperfect as it must be, of the self-formative process of 
 Shakspeare's mind, — or, to express myself with more truth, the growth 
 of his genius under the various ripening influences given for its de- 
 velopment, not less than the implanting of its primal germ and ele- 
 ments ! When, reasoning of Shakspeare as of other men, we seek for 
 the ordinary causes which first suggest themselves, to account, for in- 
 stance, for his power over the language, for his description of the visi- 
 ble outward world, and for that which distinguislies him above all other 
 authors, — his knowledge of human nature, his familiarity with the 
 visionary region of the heart, — how inadequate arc such causes to ex- 
 plain the wondrous results ! To say, indeed, that in early life he was a 
 thoughtful and susceptible observer of all that could enter tlie avenues
 
 102 LF.CTUEK FIFTH. 
 
 of sense, all earthly and all skyey influences, — that he meditated on tbt" 
 hidden wealth of the English language, — that he was a student of the 
 emotions and manners of his feUoAA-men, — and, more than all, that he 
 held deep and unbroken communion with his own spirit, — would be to 
 assert no more than reason warrants. But reason at the same time; 
 tells us that more yet is needed to solve the mystery of the Stratford 
 boy. But it is in vaiu : nothing is equal to it ; there is a depth which 
 neither empiricism, nor experiment, nor observation, nor theory, can 
 fathom. Science is bailled, and all the elaboi-ate statistics of education 
 give no light, "\\lierc did Shakspfcare gather the stores that he poured 
 forth on an astonished world ? Was it at Stratford ? was it at Lolidon V 
 was it in school ? — in the throiig of the market or the highway ? Was 
 it in each or in all of these ? More, more is needed ; and, when an in- 
 quiry of this kind is instituted, we feel disposed to fall back to the 
 simple belief of the fine image of Shakspcare's childhood in Gray's 
 " Progress of Poesy : "— 
 
 " Far from the sun and summer gale, 
 In thy green hip, was nature's darling laid, 
 AVhat time where lucid Avon stray'd. 
 To him the mighty mother did unveil 
 Her awful face. The dauntless child 
 Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiled." 
 
 If the growth of Shakspcare's transcendent powers defies all 
 speculation, there is yet reason to believe that we may trace some 
 influences which gave liis genius a direction to the form of di-amatic 
 composition. That this is the species of authorship eminently conge- 
 nial to him is manifest to the least reflective on the unequalled facilily 
 with wliich he transfused himself, as it were, into the very character 
 and life of his inventions. The town of Stratford is know^l to have 
 been visited, durmg the opening yeai's of Shakspcare's manhood, by 
 several sets of players in the service of diiferent noblemen, especially 
 the Earl of Leicester, whose name suggests the mention of a fact of 
 some interest, from its probable connection with Shaks])eare's boyhood. 
 Between Kcnilworth Castle, the residence of that nobleman, and tin; 
 town of Stratford, the distance is that of but a few miles ; and, when the 
 noble residence was lighted with the sumptuous disjilay of the princely 
 festivities with which the visit of the Queen was welcomed by her un- 
 worthy and unprincij)lcd favourite, Shakspeare was a youth, in the full 
 flush of his twelfth year ; and, amid f he theories and conjectures to fill 
 tiu; blank of the unknown story of his life, I know of none more 
 plausible than his presence on that animated occasion. It was a scene
 
 HIS PATRIOTISM AND LOYALTY. 103 
 
 everyway calculated to enkindle the sparks of youthful enthusiasm and 
 ti^enius. There was the sovereign (and it was an age when aU took de- 
 light in the sentiment of personal loyalty to the monarch, — and that 
 monarch was a woman, — without pausing to question the wisdom of 
 that instinct of a dutiful and loving subject) ; there were the nobles 
 who accompanied her on those stately progresses with which, in various 
 quarters of the realm, she won the affections of the people by an almost 
 social intercourse. During the Queen's visit to Kenilworth there were 
 songs and ballads, recitations of the old romances, the chanting of the 
 minstrelsy, and, more than aU, the dramatic pageants elaborately pre- 
 pai'ed to crown the festivities. l\Tien we think of what was transpii'ing 
 at Kenilworth, a little space away from the home of the boy Shakspeare, 
 it might almost be said that we know that he was there. It is to be 
 regretted that, in the work of fiction in which the imagination of the 
 most successful novelist of modern times has revived the long-buried 
 splendour of Kenilworth, advantage was not taken of the probability I 
 have alluded to, instead of the anachronism of referring to the achieve- 
 ments of Shakspeare's mature years. Scott's memory of his own 
 childhood and youth was vivid ; and I know of no finer theme for his 
 imagination, strengthened by deep self-communion, than to have pre- 
 sented the youthful poet mingling with the throng at the castle of the 
 Earl of Leicester, — a thoughtful boy, firing his genius by the light that 
 blazed around the Virgin Queen. 
 
 The same year in which it is supposed Shakspeare left his native 
 place for a residence in London was a period in the national history of 
 England; for it was the thne when stout English hearts and the 
 tempestuous alliance of the elements had not only saved the soil from 
 the pollution of a foreign invasion, but had driven the scattered frag- 
 ments of the Ai'uiada, not back to the calm ports of Spain, but as far 
 north as the stormy latitude of the Hebrides. There must have been 
 then a high patriotic fervour kindling and filling each true and ample 
 heart. I speak of these things because I cannot for a moment hesitate 
 in believing that in this lofty emotion no heart more largely shared 
 than the large heart that beat in the breast of William Sliakspeare. I 
 should not question its influence upon his genius, even if I did not see 
 in his dramas signs enough of his intense nationality. He was too 
 right-minded — too right-hearted in his genius — to be other than a lover 
 of his own country and its men. Tliere was in him no morbid and 
 false-hearted disloyalty to the soil that wrapped the bones of his 
 fathers ; no fantastic cosmopolitism or devotion to foreign climes ; no 
 such thing as dallving with Italian skies or making court to the suowv
 
 10J< ' LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 pinnacles of the Alps ; but not the least manifestation of his genius 
 was his profound and single-hearted love for England. The intrepid 
 spirit that awaited the assault of Spain speaks in the lines in King 
 John : — Falconb ridge proclaiming, — 
 
 " This England never did, nor never shall, 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. 
 ***** 
 " Come the three comers of the world in arms, 
 And we shall shock them." 
 
 And in the whole range of prose and verse there is probably no passage 
 which comes so near to the inspired patriotism of the Bible-poetry — 
 setting forth the gloi-y and sublimity of Jerusalem — as the celebrated 
 panegyric on England in Richard the Second, fitly spoken by the dying 
 lips of " time-honoured Lancaster : " — 
 
 " This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle. 
 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 
 This other Eden, denii-paradise ; 
 
 This fortress, built by nature for herself, 
 
 Against infection and the hand of war ; 
 
 This happj- breed of men, this little world ; 
 
 This precious stone, set in the silver sea. 
 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house. 
 
 Against the cavy of less happier lands ; 
 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." 
 
 It might be expected that an intense nationality and loyalty to the 
 government, as represented in the person of the monarch, should, when 
 these sentiments were as fervid as in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
 vividly affect the spirit of literature, and especially the dramatic litera- 
 ture, as placed in close contact with popular emotions. It may accord- 
 ingly be observed not only in such passages as those just quoted ; but 
 the heart and the imagination of Shakspeare's most eminent contempo- 
 rary, Ben Jonson, are full of the same devotion to England and to Eng- 
 land's queen ; as in liis fine lines : — 
 
 " May still this island be call'd fortunate. 
 And rugged treason tremble at the sound 
 When fame shall speak it with an emphasis ; 
 Let foreign polity be dull as lead. 
 And pale invasion come with half a heart, 
 When he but looks upon her blessed soil ; 
 The throat of war be stopp'd within her land. 
 And turtle-footed peace dance fairy rings 
 About her court, where never may there come 
 Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety."
 
 SUBJECTIVENESS OF THE MODERN MIND. 105 
 
 I have deemed it one element, though a subordinate one, in tlie true 
 appreciation of Shakspeare's genius, — the idea of the relation suhsistiiif 
 between it and the particular period of his country's liistory. But he was 
 more than the representative of the mind of England at a certain time. 
 He may be contemplated as the representative of the European mind, — • 
 the type of modern intellect as contrasted with the intellect of antiquity. 
 In suggesting that Shakspeare is to be viewed not only in relation to 
 England and to his times, — the actual half-centory of his hfe passing 
 from the sixteenth into the seventeenth century, — but in relation to 
 the whole continent of Europe and to modern ages, I am indebted to 
 the philosophical thought of an accomplished English divine, who, in a 
 recent series of eloquent discourses in the University of Cambridge, al- 
 luding to the peculiar habit of thought which has marked the three last 
 centuries, and especially in Protestant countries, goes on to say : — " It 
 has often been observed that what peculiarly distinguishes the modern 
 European mind is its predominant mbjectlveness as contrasted with the 
 greater objectioeness of former ages. This pervades aU the forms of bfe, 
 all the regions of thought. There has been a far deeper self-conscious- 
 ness, which hasi often approached to a self-devouring disease ; there has 
 been a more minute self-analysis, a more piercing self-anatomy. Specu- 
 lation has turned its eye inward, — has become more and more reflective. 
 If we cast a look on the two main provinces of intellect in the great age 
 which followed the Reformation, we find that in philosophy the grand 
 achievement of that age was the purifying the method of investigation, 
 
 the gaining a deeper insight into tlie laws of thought On the other 
 
 hand, what distinguishes the great poet of the age subsequent to the 
 Reformation is—as has been repeated a thousand times— his knowledge 
 of human nature. That is to say, he is not contented, like earlier poets, 
 to represent men as acting and suffering at critical seasons under the 
 sway of passion : he leads us into their hearts and shows us the warfare 
 raging there ; not merely the calmness or the suffering of the surface, — 
 the rolling and rushing of the waves : he plunges down into the depths, 
 and enables us to discern what is bubbling up and boiling in the abyss. 
 Herein, too, as he is the master, so is he the representative, of modern 
 p6eti-y, of which the general character lias in like manner been reflective 
 instead of instinctive." There seems, to my mind, to be much of the 
 comprehensive grasp of a true philosophy in this attempt to define the 
 intellectual position of Bacon and of Shakspeare as the representatives 
 of modem European intellect in its two great departments, —science 
 and poetry. 
 
 In a few years after Shakspeare's removal to Loudon he published
 
 lOB LECTUKE FIFTir. 
 
 his earlier writincrs, which presented him as a poet before his appear- 
 ance as a dramatic poet. These were the short poems of " Venus and 
 Adonis " and " Lucrece." Tlie character of these productions is not 
 such as to make it necessary for me to pause upon them. Their in- 
 trinsic merit is no doubt considerable, but at the same time not sufficient 
 to have given their author a fame at all proportionate to his more ma- 
 ture works. Their chief interest is probably derived from the reflected 
 glory of his dramatic authorship ; and there is, therefore, the less occa- 
 sion to judge them independently than to consider whether they gave 
 promise of the great achievements of his genius. It may be questioned 
 whether any one— the most familiar with the spiiit of tlie Sliakspeariari 
 drama — could by internal evidence conjecture the authorship of the 
 early poems. Unquestionably there may be discerned his exuberance 
 of fancy, the imaginative energy, as manifested by the power of spread- 
 ing any ruling feeling or passion so as to give its own colour to all that 
 surrounds it, and of throwing himself into his creations. They are ex- 
 pressive of that untried period of genius when it has not yet acquired 
 that composed consciousness wliicli familiarity with its own action gives. 
 The strong figiu'c by which Coleridge criticized these poems was that in 
 them "the creative power and the iutellectmd energy wrestle as in a 
 war-embrace." There is indeed, with all the luxui'iance of imagery, the 
 condensation of thought wliicli always was one great element of his 
 strength. But what strikes me more than auglit else in these early ])ro- 
 ductions is the manifestation of that imperial command over tiie lan- 
 guage, which caused it to serve him as it never did other mortal speak- 
 ing English words. 
 
 Not unfrequently the tuni of fancy and of words recall, by a delicate 
 jiarallelism, some more familiar passages in the dramas, as when Venus 
 addresses Adonis : — 
 
 "Bid me discoiir.se : I will enchant thine car, 
 Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green. 
 Or, like a nymph with long dislievcll'd hair, 
 Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen. 
 Love is a spirit all compact of fire. 
 Not gross to sink, but light, and will a.spirc." 
 
 The imagery associates itself at once with the exquisite lines in Pros- 
 jxTo's address to his fairy ministers : — 
 
 " Ye elves of hills, hrooks, standing lakes, and groves, 
 And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 When he comes back."
 
 THE S0X5ETS. 107 
 
 These poems — the very firstlings bf his heart (to a])propri;ite to tliem 
 oue of his own phrases) — abound in that naturahiess and simplicity of 
 language for whicli Shakspeare's diction is eminent, and which, exempt- 
 ing it from limitation and obsoleteness, approj)riates it to all tune. It 
 is this quality which gives perpetuity to such a stanza as the following, 
 ou which it would be imjiossible to pronoimce whether it was composed 
 as early as the sixteenth century or as late as the nineteenth. It is 
 descriptive of Venus mourning over the lifeless body of Adonis : — 
 " She looks upon his lips, and they are pale ! 
 She takes him by the hand, and that is c(dd ! 
 She whispers in his ear a heavy tale ; 
 
 As if they heard the woeful words she told. 
 She lifts the cofFcr-lids that close his eyes, 
 When, lo ! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies." 
 
 Or, where he expresses — as so constantly in the plays — a moral re- 
 flection, in an apostrophe to Opportunity : — 
 
 " The patient dies while the physician sleeps ; 
 
 The orphan pin^s while the oppressor feeds ; 
 
 Justice is feasting while the widow weeps ; 
 
 Advice is sporting while infection breeds : 
 
 Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds." 
 Of the poems of Shakspeare, — taking that word in a very narrow^ 
 sense as contrasted with his plays, — the most remarkable are the son- 
 nets. It is a most mysterious collection ; and the mystery which enve- 
 lopes it seems to be impenetrable to all the ingenuity of the commenta- 
 tors. It is likely to continue a vexed question whom they are addressed 
 to. The address purports to be made to a male friend, — a certain 
 " Mr. W. H.," as he is enigmatically described on the title-page. It is 
 surely no easy task to decipher two initials employed two hundred years 
 ago, especially as there is such destitution of knowledge of the author's 
 personal history. By some it has been conjectured that the person ad- 
 dressed was the Earl of Southani]:)ton, Shakspeare's early patron, to 
 whom his first poems were dedicated; by others (the opinion most plau- 
 sible), William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. It is the suc-gestion of 
 another commentator that " Mr. W. H." was a woman ; and, by another, 
 not only a woman, but that "Mr. W. H.," being interpreted, typified 
 Queen EUzabeth. So that, amid this variety of vain conjectures, I do 
 not see that any better conclusion can be reached than the opinion ot" 
 one of the most intelligent of the Shakspearian commentators, deeply 
 versed in the early English drama. " After all," is his remark, " what 
 Lord Byron says of Junius is true concerning the object to whom Shak- 
 speare's sonnets are principally addressed:" —
 
 108 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 " I 've an hypothesis, — 'tis quite my own : 
 'T is that wliat Junius we are wont to cull 
 Was really, trulj', uohody at all ! " 
 
 But tlie chief mystery in the sonnets is that they arc conceived in a 
 rapturous, amatory strain, not at all concordant Mith the sober, sedate 
 tone of that rough sentiment, masculine friendship. Their poetical ex- 
 cellence is such as to make them not unworthy of their illustrious 
 authorship. The deep thought, the rich imagery, and the majestic 
 speech of Shakspeare are there. How exquisitivcly worthy of him who 
 told of Macbeth's " way of life, fallen into the sere and yellow leaf," is 
 such a sonnet as this !— 
 
 " That time of year thou may'st in me hehold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which stake against the cold 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang 
 In me thou sccst the twilight of such day 
 As after sunset fadoth in the west. 
 Which, by-and-by, black night doth take away, — 
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest ! 
 In me thou sccst the glowing of such fire 
 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie. 
 As the death-bed whereon it must expire. 
 Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by ! 
 This thou percciv'st, which makes thy love more strong 
 To love that well which thou must leave ere long." 
 
 How true to the heart which uttered from its own comprehensive 
 sympathy the devotion of the hapless lovers of Verona, and the super- 
 human atfection of Dcsdemona, is the couccption of love in tliese lines! — 
 
 " Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments. Love is not love 
 Which alters when it alteration finds, 
 Or bends, with the remover to remove. 
 Oh no ! It is an ever-fixed nfark, 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken. 
 It is the star to every wandering bark 
 Whose w^orth 's unknown, although his height be taken. 
 Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 Within his bending sickle's compass come. 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom ! " 
 
 But the form of poetic composition to which the genins of Shaks- 
 pcarc's imagination of necessity directed itself was the drama; and 
 such is Im j)owcr of creation, of inventing, not a character, a meie
 
 MYSTERIES AND MOEALITIES. 109 
 
 type of any particular passion or trait, but the representative of liumau 
 nature as it exists in individual reality, with the complexity and variety 
 of elements which make up personal existence, — so wonderfid was his 
 might in endoM'ing his creations with lifelike functions and qualities, 
 that, even if tragedy and comedy had not been handed down from 
 antiquity, I can conceive the possibility of Shakspeare's inventing the 
 drama itself to supply the necessities of his imagination ! The intrin- 
 sic demands of his own genius had far greater intiuence in controlling 
 his literary career than the mere incident of chance associations with 
 theatrical life on his coming to London. 
 
 It is proper, at this point, to look at the condition of English drama- 
 tic literature at the time wlien Shakspeare, with many others, entered 
 that intellectual arena. To trace the drama in England, from its origin 
 to its great Shakspearian consummation, would be a theme far transcend- 
 ing my bounds ; but, in a very sunmiary way, I may glance at it. At 
 an early and uncertain period theatrical representations had taken that 
 curious form which prevailed throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, — 
 the Mysteries, or ilf/rac/e-plays. These were scenical stories relating 
 to religious subjects, taken either from Scripture history or the legends 
 of the saints ; so that there were theatrical representations of the 
 Creation, of the massacre of the innocents, and the sufferings of various 
 martyrs. It is difficult to realize this phase of the European mind, 
 when the most sacred subjects were thus appropriated without any 
 accompanying sentiment of irreverence or profanity. Many of these 
 dramas I could not venture to describe to you mthout exposing myself 
 to the reproach of irreverent levity. Another form which the early 
 di-ama assumed was that of the Moralities. These were allegorical 
 dramas made up of abstract personifications, such as " Pride," " Glut- 
 tony," " Swift to Sin," " Charity ; " and what mig-ht be appropriate 
 personifications in our day, — " Learning without Money," and " Money 
 without Learning," and " All for Money." They were the persons of 
 the drama. In the great controversy of the Reformation these devices 
 for ecUfieation were freely employed by both divisions of tlie church to 
 promote their respective opinions. An act of Parliament, in the reign 
 of Hemy VIIL, for the promotion of true religion, forbade all inter- 
 ludes contradictory to established doctrines. 
 
 The " Mysteries " and " Moralities " gradually passed away ; but it 
 is not until so late a period as the beginning of the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth that the beginning of the drama proper can be dated. One 
 or two comedies belong to a somewhat earlier date ; but the fame cf the 
 first English tragedy belongs to him whose single poetical effort in
 
 110 LECTURE FIETH. 
 
 another department of poetry I bad occasion to refer to in a former 
 lecture with such high commendation, — Sackville, Lord Buckliurst. 
 
 J3ut even within the last twenty years of the sixteenth ccntui-y Sir 
 Philip Sydney could find little on the English stage to save it from his 
 disdainful censure. " It is strange," remarks Mr. llallam, " to I'etlect 
 that this reprehension comes from the pen of Sydney when Shakspeare 
 liad just arrived at manhood. Had he not been so prematurely cut off, 
 Avhat woidd have been the transport of that noble spirit, M'liich the 
 ballad of ' Chevy Chase ' could stir as with the sound of a trumpet, in 
 reading the ' Fairy Queen' or ' Othello ' ! " 
 
 Before the drama was touched by the wand of Shakspeare it had 
 been much advanced by several dramatists, who, though contemporane- 
 ous, were his predecessors in authorship. The most eminent of these 
 were Marlowe and Peele, and one to whom, as to his more illustrious 
 coeval, Stratford had given birth, — Greene. The great dramatic era in 
 English literatui-e began in the middle of Elizabeth's reign ; and, 
 though in some measure checked by the puritan feeling which then be- 
 gan to manifest itself in England, it continued during that of her 
 successor, James I., when it reached its highest eminence, and flourished 
 until the latter part of the turbulent reign which followed ; when, in 
 consequence of the tumults and calamities of the civil wars, the 
 theatres were closed. The period designated is very little more than 
 half a century, — from the middle of Elizabeth's to the end of Charles 
 the First's reign, — and yet may be said to comprehend almost all the 
 excellence of the English drama. I know of few things more remark- 
 able in literary history than the vast abundance of dramatic literature 
 (luring this comparatively brief era. A great amount of it has perished ; 
 a great amount is inaccessible in the rare original editions. The dr.v 
 matists were numerous, their productions voluminous. One of them — 
 Ile^'Avood — speaks of having had a share in the authorship of two 
 hundred and twenty plays, of which only twenty-five, some of consider- 
 able merit, have been preserved. What was remarkable, too, these 
 cfi'usions flowed from their minds with a recklessness as to their pre- 
 servation, a readiness to commit them to all the casualilies of theatrical 
 !MSS., with an indifference as to their future destiny, contrasting curi- 
 ously with that llnieal ])recision witli which the little literary men of a 
 later generation guard their small wares. I do not remember ever to 
 l)ave met any ])hiloso])hical attempt to account for tlie amazing dramatic 
 activity of the age of English literature under consideration. I should 
 probably satisfy neither your minds nor my o^vn were I to endeavour to 
 trace it to that trait of those times, — the admirable blending of action
 
 MINOR DRAMATISTS. Ill 
 
 and contemplalion discoverable in many of tlie illustrious men \A'ho then 
 flourished; for instance. Sir Philip Sydney devoting himself to the 
 effort of raising English poetry from the dust, kindling his heart with 
 the strains of the old ballads, or driving the imagination of the gentle 
 Spenser forth from the hermitage of his modesty, and at the same time 
 sliaring in affairs of state, in knightly deeds of arms, and meeting death 
 upon the field of battle ; or Raleigh, preserving the love of letters 
 throughout his whole varied career at court, in camp, or tempest-tost 
 in his adventures on the ocean. It seems to me that an age thus charac- 
 terized by the combination of thought and deed in its representative 
 n)en had its most congenial literature in that of the drama, — -poetri/ hi. 
 action. 
 
 As the most agreeable way of enumerating the most distinguished of 
 the English dramatists, I may quote a passage from one of Thomas 
 Heywood's plays, in which he complains, in jest and earnest, of the 
 liberties taken with his fellow-authors : — ■ 
 
 " Our modern poets to that pass are driven, 
 Those names are curtail'd which they first had given ; 
 And, as we wish'd to have their memories drown'd, 
 "We scarcely can afford them half their sound. 
 Greene, who had in both academies ta'en 
 Degree of Master, yet could never gain 
 To be call'd more than Robin, — who, had he 
 Profess'd aught save the muse, served, and been free 
 After seven yeai's' prenticeship, might have 
 (With credit, too) gone Robert to his grave ; 
 Marlowe, renown'd for his rare art and wit, 
 Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit, 
 Although his Hero and Leander did 
 !Merit addition rather ; famous Kid 
 Was call'd but Tom, — Tom Watson, though he wrote 
 Able to make Apollo's self to dote 
 Upon his muse, for all that he could strive, 
 Yet never could to his full name arrive ; 
 Tom Nash (in his time of no small esteem) 
 Could not a second syllable redeem ; 
 Excellent Beaumont, in the foremost rank 
 Of the rarest wits, was never more than Frank ; 
 Mellifluous Shakspeahe, whose enchanting quill 
 Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will ; 
 And famous Jonson, tho' his learned pen i 
 
 Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben ; 
 Fletcher and Webster, of that learned pack 
 None of the meanest, neither was but Jack ;
 
 112 LECTUKE FIFTH. 
 
 Decker, but Tom ; nor May nor Middhton ; 
 And ho 's now but Jack Ford that once were John. 
 Nor speak I this that any here exprest 
 Should think themselves less worthy than the rest 
 Whose names have their full syllables and sound ; 
 Or that Frank. Kit, or Jack are the least wound 
 Unto their fame and merit. I, for my part 
 ^4 (Think others what they please), accept that lieart 
 
 Which courts my love in most familiar phrase : 
 And that it takes not from my pains or praise 
 If any one to me so bluntly come ; 
 I hold he loves me best who calls me Tom," 
 
 Charles Lamb, to whose admirable " Specimens of the Early Dra- 
 matists" I am indebted for this passage, sensibly remarks that the 
 familiarity of common discourse would be apt to take greater liberties 
 with the dramatic poets, as being more upon a level with stage-actors ; 
 and that the familiarity did not reach to the other poets, for we hear 
 nothing of Sam Daniel or Ned Spenser. 
 
 I must confine these my cursory notices of the dramatists to the con- 
 templation of Shakspcare's relative attitude in the midst of them. A 
 living man, he mingled witli them on the social terms of a friendly 
 equality and intellectual independence. He was "the gentle Shal-speare ;" 
 and all reason bids us to believe that his spirit knew not the stain of 
 any mean envy or vulgar spite. In the sight of later generations, 
 equality -nath that dramatic legion, the host of his precursors, his com- 
 tcmporaries, and his successors, is not recognised. They were indeed 
 ])oets too, with high imaginations, Avith high intellects, some with high 
 learning ; but he is seen standing amid tlie long range; like Chimborazo 
 overtopping the Andes. The learned editor of several of the early dra- 
 matists remarks, " A careful perusal of every existing drama of the 
 I'cigns of Elizabeth and James has thoroughly convinced me of tlic im- 
 measurable superiorilyof Shakspeare to alltheplaywriglits of his lime." 
 I am not, I trust, insensible to the invention and power dis])layed by 
 Eletcher, Jonson, Ford, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, and the rest of 
 that illustrious brotherhood ; but I feel that over the worst of Shak- 
 spcare's dramas his genius has diffused a peculiar charm, of which their 
 best productions are entirely destitute ; and to insinuate tliat any of his 
 contemporaries ever produced a play worthy of being ranked with his 
 ]iaj)piest efforts — with. "Othello," for instance, "]\Iae)K'th," "Lear," or 
 "Handct," — seems to mc an absurdity impardonable in any critic. 
 
 Again : that largc-miudcd and open-hearted critic, Charles Lamb, an-
 
 PIUMITIVE TIIEATKES. 113 
 
 nounced as one design, of his " Specimens of the Early Drama" to show 
 how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, 
 and how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all 
 mankind. 
 
 Accustomed as we are to such elevated conceptions of Shakspeare's 
 powers, it makes a strange impression on the mind when we first read 
 a description of the theatrical representations for which his writings 
 were originally intended. The rude fashion of the buildings, and the 
 still ruder fashion of the audience, seem singularly incongruous. " The 
 arausemeuts," we are told, " of the audience, previous to the commence- 
 ment of the play, were reading, playing at cards, smoking tobacco, 
 di'inking ale, and eating nuts and apples. Even during the perform- 
 ance, it was customary for wits and critics, and young gallants who 
 were desirious of attracting attention, to station themselves on the 
 stage, either lying on the rushes or seated on hired stools, while their 
 pages furnished them with pipes and tobacco." To these animals 
 Shakspeare cast the pearls of his philosophy ! To think that to such 
 as these were first spoken the deep-souled melancholy, the heart-stricken 
 meditations, of Hamlet ! In one particular, it has been well remarked 
 the destitute condition of the early theatre was propitious to the poetry 
 of the drama, — the absence of all moveable scenery or scenic prepara- 
 tions rendering it necessary to appeal solely and strongly to the imaghi- 
 ation of thfe hearer; for had there been any ambitious imitation by 
 painted canvas, we might not have stood with Lear on the cliffs of 
 Dover, or amid the palaces of Venice with Shy lock and Antonio. 
 
 The theatrical inadequacy in Shakspeare's own times suggests the 
 inquiry whether the stage at any period is competent to the representa- 
 tion of his wonderful productions. Not questioning that occasionally 
 a single part may be enacted with ability, I do not hesitate to believe 
 that, for integrity of impression, the stage is utterly and universally 
 incompetent ; and, still more, that it intrudes into the imagination low, 
 mean, and false associations, — notions which it is hard to purge the 
 mind of. And therefore I rejoice that every year the representation of 
 Shakspeare's plays is becoming less and less frequent. The satisfaction 
 of witnessing the masterly representation of a chief part by a great 
 actor is purchased at too liigh a cost. 
 
 How, for instance, can flesh and blood, of the lightest texture, deal 
 with the representation of such a creature as Ariel, so ethereal that he 
 speeds on Prospero's mandate, — 
 
 " I drink the air before me, ami return 
 Or e'er your pulse twice beat," — 
 I
 
 114 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 and, while doing his spiriting gently in his earthly master's service, ana 
 yet sing ahird-like song, a fairy's lyric, such as oidy Shakspeare's sweet 
 Uncy could have framed : — 
 
 " Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 
 In a cowslip s bell I lie ; 
 There I couth when owls do cry ; 
 On the bat's back I do fly, 
 After summer, merrily ; 
 Merrily, merrily shall I live now, 
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 
 
 What has the stage ever done for the weird sisters in "Macbeth"? 
 The curtain rises, and there stand three figures, tattered and grotesque- 
 looking, — very like those wretched vagrants to be seen in our streets 
 picking rags and scraps from out the gutters ; and the first sounds they 
 utter reveal that the parts are filled by the comic actors of the company, 
 — the very tones of whose voices come associated with vulgar buii'ooncry 
 and ribaldry. And these are the chosen representations of those 
 terrific creations ! and thus that mighty work of genius, crimson-dyed 
 in the blood of tragedy, is ushered in like a farce ! No ; the myriad 
 mind of Shakspcare is a region too lofty and too pure for scenic art to 
 reach. The genius of Garrick sank beneatli tlie elTort. The best act- 
 ing plays are the works of far inferior dramatists ; but for Shakspeare 
 let no one put his niteUect in pledge to receive his idea from the players. 
 Indeed, several of his chief dramas have been vilely mutilated for the 
 very purpose of adapting them to the stage. In " Ricliard tlie Third," 
 passages have been interpolated which the heart of the poet would 
 liave repudiated with disgust. In the " Tempest " there was not love 
 enough ; and actually a second pair of lovers has been thrust in, mar- 
 ring the lovely impression of tliosc sweet interviews of Ferdinand and 
 Miranda. "Romeo and Juliet " was not tragic enough; and a little 
 more grief is {latchcd on the catastrophe. " King Lear " was too tragic, 
 and the catastrophe must be abated. 
 
 The inadequacy of the stage— not only for Shakspeare's supernatural 
 creations, but even his human characters — has been admirably discussed 
 by Charles Lamb, in one of his peculiar and inimitable essays. " The 
 Lear of Shakspeare," he remarks, " cannot be acted. It is essentially 
 impossible to be represented on a stage : the contemptible machinery by 
 which they mimic the storm he goes out in is not more inadequate to 
 represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to 
 represent Lear ; they might more c;»iiily propose to personate the Satan 
 of Milton upon a stage, or one of Micluicl Angclo's terrible tlgiires.
 
 LEAR. 115 
 
 The greatness of Lear is not in corporeal dimension, but in intellectual : 
 the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano ; they are storms, 
 tiLTuing up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its 
 vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and 
 blood seems too insignificant to be thought on, even as he himself neg- 
 lects it. On the stage we see notliing but corporeal infirmities and 
 weakness, the impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see not Lear, 
 but we are Lear ; we are in his mind ; we are sustained by a grandeur 
 
 wliich baffles the malice of daughters and storms What have 
 
 looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that 
 of the heavens themselcps, when, in his reproaches to them for conniving 
 at the injustice of his cliildren, he reminds them that ' they themselves 
 are old ' ? What gesture shall we appropriate to this ? what has the 
 voice or the eye to do with such things ? But the play is beyond all 
 art, as the tamperings with it show. It is too hard and stony ; it must 
 have love-scenes and a happy ending. It is not enough that Cordelia 
 
 is a daughter; she must shine as a lover too A happy ending! 
 
 — As if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through, the flaying 
 of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of 
 life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy 
 after, — if he could sustain this world's burden after, — why aU. this 
 pudder and preparation? why torment us with all this unnecessaiy 
 sympathy ? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes anil 
 sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station ! — 
 as if, at his years and with his experience, anything was left but to die." 
 The knowledge of the drama of Shakspeare is to be gained by dee]) 
 and careful study, — study thoughtful and imaginative ; that is, not only 
 by reflection and meditation on the wisdom of his oracular poetry, but 
 by sympathetic action of the imagination, so as to realize what he cre- 
 ates. Just in proportion to the intensity of this imaginative effort will 
 be the completeness of conception formed of any of these inventions. 
 Thus only do they leave an integrity of impression. Eor instance, it is 
 essential to the true appreciation of " Macbeth " to realize the super- 
 natural atmosphere which envelopes the action of that tragedy with all 
 its rapidity of movement. It is set in a shadowy, spectral region of 
 witches and dreams and nightmare ; of visions to the open eye of the 
 wakeful and the sealed eye of the sleeping ; of invisible and mysterious 
 powers in the elements, and the prophetic sight of distant dynasties of 
 kings ; of incantations ; of voiceless gliosts arising froni bloody graves, — 
 blood-bolstered visitants from charnel-houses ; of the gloomy presenti- 
 ments of the innocent and tiie more fearful haunt ings of a bloodstahied 
 
 I 2
 
 IIG LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 conscience. The brief scene the drama opens with stamps its whole 
 character. It is a wild and instant appeal to the imagination, espe- 
 cially l)y the absence of all definite designation. The scene, " an open 
 place:" amid thunder and lightning ; the turmoil and carnage of war 
 close at hand; the three witches, kiuless, nameless, — sexless too, I 
 may say ; the weird women with beards, scenting the blood of a battle- 
 field, meet, to meet again, to seal the deep damnation of their victim. 
 Their fatal intent thus darkly intimated, they answer to mysterious 
 calls of you know not what, — "Paddock" and " Graymalkin ; " and, 
 ere you have well known their presence, they vanish, with wild utter- 
 ance of the confusion and murkiness of a demou's heart : — 
 
 " Fair is foul, and foul is fair ; 
 Hover througli the fog and filthy air." 
 
 In short space they come again, — these posters of the sea and land, — 
 hastening from -witchcraft mischief, gloating over the treasure of — 
 
 "A pilot's thumb, 
 Wrcck'd as homeward he did come." 
 
 And then, catching somewhat of sublimity from the greatness of the 
 malice, they rise suddenly to the full stature of their supernatural 
 strength, and, on the blasted heath, proclaim their prophetic salutation 
 to Macbeth and Banquo. The sun sliines out a little while on that 
 sweet landscape in which Duncan is moving on with sacrificial meek- 
 ness to his slaughter. As the guilt deepens, the supernatural atmosphere 
 thickens with it, — visions and dreams and spiritual voices : — 
 
 " Lamentings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death ; 
 And prophesying, with accents terrible. 
 Of dire combustion and confused events, 
 New hatch'd to the woeful time." 
 
 There arc Banquo's dreams of the weird sisters, and the bosom-weight 
 of his gloomy presentiment ; the fatal \asion of " the aii*-drawn dagger," 
 with its "gouts of blood;" the l)roken sleep of the surfeited grooms, 
 their laught cr, their ten*or, and their prayers ; and the wild curse in 
 the air of eternal wakefulness: and all this magnified and distorted 
 tlirough the medium of a murderous, burning brain : — 
 
 "There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, nmrdef ! 
 That they did wake each other ; I stooil and heard them : 
 But they did saj' their prayers, and address'd them 
 Again to sleep.
 
 MACBETH. 117 
 
 " One cried, God bless us ! and, Amen, the other ; 
 As they had seen me, Avith these hangman's hands. 
 Listening their fear ; I could not say, Amen, 
 When they did say, God bless us. 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep ; 
 Sleep, that knits up the ravelVd sleace of care. 
 The death of each dai/s life, sore labour's bath. 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course. 
 Chief ■>iouris?ier in life's feast. 
 
 '' Still it cried, Sleep no more ! to all the house ; 
 Glamis hath murder d sleep ; and therefore Catodor 
 Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more .'" 
 
 The storm without is raging; and who can doubt that the witches 
 were riding on the blast and untying the winds on that unruly night V 
 The whole domain of Maebeth's castle is impregnated with the super- 
 natural atmosphere : — the raven croaking over the battlements, the owl 
 screaming, the obscene bird clamouring the livelong night, — - 
 
 " Duncan's horses, .... 
 Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, 
 Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out. 
 Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make 
 War with mankind." 
 
 At a more advanced part of the tragedy the supernatural begins to 
 fade away ; "the dark and midnight hags " — whom the tyrant tampers 
 with while their toils are winding closer and closer round Mm — vanisli 
 with Maebeth's curse upon them : — 
 
 " Infected be the air whereon they ride. 
 And damn'd all those that trust them." 
 
 And when we draw near the catastrojjhe of the drama we almost 
 forget the witchery of the weird sisters. Their mighty and superhuman 
 malice has been acliieved, and then all is left to human vice, human 
 passion, human misery. The higli-wrought spirituality of the tragedy 
 has its sublime close in the slumbering agitation of Lady Macbeth, — 
 that terrific, open-eyed, sleep-walking, sleep-talking, — and the never- 
 ending misery of the blood-stained hand, — the appalling iucoherencies 
 of the hauntings of guilt : — 
 
 " Out, damned spot ! out, I say ! . . . . Wlio woidd have thought 
 the old man to have had so much blood in him? .... I tell you yet 
 again, Banqiio 's buried ; he cannot come out of his grave
 
 lis LECTURE riFTlI. 
 
 Here 's the smell of the blood still ; all the perfumes of Arabia will not 
 sweeten this little hand." 
 
 At the last the supernatural has passed wholly away ; the witelies, 
 the ghosts, the ineantations, and the dreams, — all are gone ; and Mae- 
 beth, forsaken by the suicide of his fiend-like queen, is left alone, — the 
 sea of blood sweeping him onward, helpless, hopeless ; for its red tide 
 has washed out, one by one, the promises that witchcraft had written 
 iipou sand, and, with wild misgivings of all realities, he stands, " a- 
 weary of the sun," upon a desert spot of this bank and shoal of time ; 
 — behind him the furies of a murderous memory, before him the black- 
 ness of an accursed darkness, and, in its centre. Death. 
 
 Taking the thought from this tragedy, the remai'k may be generalized 
 on the whole Shakpearian drama, that all the sympathies it gives are 
 with goodness, all its hatred of vice. Disfigured though it be in spots 
 by the grossness of his times, or, still more, of theatrical interpolations, 
 it is miuistrant in the cause of virtue ; and the commentator on Shaks- 
 ])eare has no more important office than to illustrate the sanity of his 
 genius, — his intellectual and moral healthfulness. The large sympathy 
 he communicates is comprehensive not only of afflict cd virtue, but also 
 when human frailty has brought down calamities on its owni head. The 
 tragedies abound with this forgiving temper, this Christian spirit of 
 pity, this teaching of brotherly kindness and fervent charity, not tramp- 
 ling on a feUow-being, rejoicing in his sorrows because he deserved 
 them, but restoring him in the spirit of meekness. What, for instance, 
 at the outset, is Lear, but a weak, petulant, doting, headstrong, selfish, 
 toolish old man ? But how are we not taught to forget and forgive all 
 this when his woes throng round him ! His intellectual power rising 
 with his misery, and his sublime madness giving him unwonted dignity, 
 we have at last but one feeling for the child-eliangcd father. 
 
 Observe, too, this trait in the historical drama of "Richard the 
 Second." You look on him at first as at once arbitrary and imbecile, — 
 heartless, vain, and violent ; but, when affliction comes, his sense of 
 royalty rises in as majestic a sti'ain as ever proclaimed the divine right 
 of kings : — • 
 
 " Whon the searchinij eye of hciivcn is hid 
 
 Behind the globe, iind lights the lower world, 
 
 Then thieves and robliers range abroad unseen, 
 
 In murders and in outrage, bloody here ; 
 
 liut when, from under this terrestrial ball, 
 
 He fires the ])roud to])s of the eastern pinCK, 
 
 And darts his light through every guilty hole, — 
 
 Then murders, treasons, and detested .sins,
 
 THE SPIRIT or siiaksi'eahe's tragedies. 119 
 
 The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs, 
 
 Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves. 
 
 So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, — 
 
 Who all the while hath revell'd in the night, 
 
 Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes, — 
 
 Shall see us rising in our throne the east, 
 
 His treasons will sit blushing in his face, 
 
 Not able to endure the sight of day, 
 
 But, self- affrighted, tremble at his sin. 
 
 Not all the xoater in the rough rude sea 
 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed kiiig ; 
 
 The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
 
 The deputy elected by the Lord : 
 
 For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd 
 
 To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, 
 
 God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 
 
 A glorious angel : then, if angels fight. 
 
 Weak men must fall ; for Heaven still guards the right." 
 
 And how exquisitely is our sympathy couciliated by the description of 
 Richard's majesty waning in the presence of the rising popularity of 
 Bolingbroke !— 
 
 " Men's eyes 
 
 Did scowl on Richard ; no man cried, God save him ! 
 
 No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home ; 
 
 But dust was thrown upon his sacred head ; 
 
 AVhich with such gentle sorrow he shook oft', — 
 
 His face still combating with tears and smiles, 
 
 The badges of his grief and patience, — 
 
 That, had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd 
 
 The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, 
 
 And barbarism itself have pitied him." 
 
 I trust that no one has been so uncharitable as to impute to me the 
 absurdity of fancying that one lecture could embrace more than a very 
 inadequate proportion of what is due to the vast theme. I dare not 
 trust myself even to name the various unnoticed considerations respect - 
 ing the genius of Shakspeare, for they rise up to my mind in throngs. 
 When I was obliged to close my incomplete examination of Spenser's 
 " Fairy Queen," I presumed distantly to intimate the hope that some 
 future occasion might give me ampler space for otir converse with thai 
 wondrous allegory. May I venture now to add the expression of a 
 feeling — of course, merely my own — that, so far as I am concerned, I 
 can promise myself no better pleasure than, at some future time, with 
 the light of the same kind and intelligent faces upon me, to enter upon
 
 120 LECTUEE EIFTU. 
 
 the studious aud rcvereutial consideration of the ■whole series of the 
 dramas of Shakspeare ? 
 
 In conclusion : a few words of Shakspeare himself. It is said that 
 the last of his poems was the " Tempest ; " and certainly the close is 
 finely typical of the close of his career of authorship. The most touch- 
 ing of the series of his sonnets are the confessional ones, in which he 
 mourns over the contamination of his pui'c and gentle spii'it by the un- 
 congenial courses of a player's trade : — - 
 
 '•■ Alas ! 'tis true I have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to the view, 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, 
 Made old offences of affections new. 
 
 ♦ « » * « 
 
 Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide, 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide. 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 
 
 When, in the maturity of his powers, Shakspeare turned away from 
 London and souglit the sweet places of his innocent childhood, we can 
 almost hear him, in the words of Prospero, abjuring his magic, dismiss- 
 ing the spiritual creations of his imagination, and looking to the tran- 
 quil village he was born in, where 
 
 " Every third thought shall be my grave." 
 
 The highest glory of Shakspeare's poetry is its spirituality. With all 
 its quick sympathies with things of sight, it is full of tiu; life by faitk 
 Kindred at once to earth aud heaven, it realizes what Wordswoith, 
 with a noble image, grandly tells : — - 
 
 " Truth shows a glorious face 
 While, on that isthmus which commands 
 The councils of both worlds, she stands." 
 
 There is many a trace to show how deep was Shakspeare's sense of 
 the perishable nature of the things of time. How deeper still was hi.s 
 sense of eternity and its glories ! Reflect on tliat fine passage in " An- 
 tony and Cleopatra," when tlie Roman feels tliat his own fortunes and 
 ancient Egypt's power are lost for ever : — 
 
 " Sometime we see a cloud that 's dragonish ; 
 A vapour, sometime, like a bear, or lion, 
 A towcr'd citadel, u jiendant rock, 
 A forked mountain, or blue promontory
 
 HIS TREATMENT OF HOLY SUBJECTS. ]21 
 
 With trees upon 't, thiit nod unto the world 
 
 And mock our eyes with air ; thou hast seen these signs ; 
 
 They are black vesper's pageants." 
 
 « « * « * 
 
 " That which is now a horse, even with a thought 
 The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, 
 As water is in water." 
 
 • * * « * 
 
 " Eros, now thy captain is 
 Even such a body ; here I am Antony ; 
 Yet cannot hold this visible shape." 
 
 Now, with tliis compare the hopeful, faithful spirit in a passage which 
 has been considered, perhaps, the most sublime in Shakspeare : — 
 
 " Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 
 There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st. 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 
 
 It is worthy of reflection, that wherever a holy subject is touched by 
 Shakspeare it is with a deep sentiment of unaffected reverence. The 
 parting thought I have of his genius is, that not vainly were spent in 
 the comparative loneliness of the Avon village those last silent years of 
 him who could place on the tongue of his saintly Isabella such fit and 
 feeling words on the most sacred of all sacred themes : — 
 
 " Alas ! — alas ! 
 "Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once, 
 And He that might the vantage best have took 
 Found out the remedy. How would you be 
 If he, which is the top of judgment, should 
 But judge you as you are ? Oh, think on that ; 
 And mercy then will breathe within your lips, 
 Like man new made."
 
 LECTUEE VI. 
 
 VKUN DANCE OF BIOGKArHlCAL MATEBIALS5-DK. JOHKSONS LIFE-MILTON AMONO 
 THE GllEAT PROSE "WRITERS— MILTON'S CONCEPTION OF HIS CALLING AS A POET 
 —POETRY THE HIGHEST AIM OF HUMAN INTELLECT— MILTON'S VOUTHFUL GE- 
 NIUS—STUDY OF HEBREW POETRY— LATIN POEM TO HIS FATHER—THE RURAL 
 HOME— POETIC GENIUS IMPROVED BY STUDY— VISITS TO THE LONDON THEATRES 
 —THOUGHTFUL CULTURE OF HIS POWERS— ALLEGRO AND PENSEROSO-LYCIDAS 
 —DR. JOHNSON'S JUDGMENTS ON THIS POEM— MASQUE OF COMUS— FAITH AND 
 HOPE AND CHASTITY— THE HY'MN ON THE NATIVITY— POWER AND MELODY OF 
 THE MILTONIC VERSIFICATION— VISIT TO GALILEO-MILTON IN ROME-STORY OF 
 TASSOS LIFE- INFLUENCE OVER MILTON-THE REBELLION— THE CONDITION OF 
 THE ENGLISH MONARCHY— THE POET'S DOMESTIC TROUBLES— SONTS'ETS— JOHN- 
 SON'S CRITICISMS ON THEM— MILTON'S LATIN DESPATCHES — SONNET ON THE 
 PIEDMONT PERSECUTION— COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH ON THE MORAL SUB 
 LIMITY OF THE POET'S LIFE-THE PARADISE LOST-THE CHARACTER OF SATAN 
 —COLERIDGE'S CRITICISM— THE GRANDEUR OF THE EPIC-THE PARADISE RE- 
 aAINED— THE SAMSON AGONISTES— POETRY A RELIEF TO THE POET'S OVER- 
 rH.VRGED HE.'LRT. 
 
 n'^HE birth of Milton, in the year 1608, dates about eight years be- 
 ■ lore the death of Shakspcare, thus preserving the tie of time be- 
 1wi!en the three most glorious of England's poets, — Edmund Si)enser, 
 William Sliakspeare, and John Milton. In the last lecture I had oeca- 
 sion to remark on tlie well-known dearth of personal information re- 
 specting our great dramatic poet. As to our great epic poet, the 
 contrast in this particular is as striking as possible. Of Shakspearc we 
 know almost nothing ; of Milton v,e know almost everything. The 
 entire collection of his poems, the equally complete collection of his 
 prose works, his official ■wTitings, his private correspondence, the inci- 
 dental mention by his contemporaries, his autobiographical notices, — all 
 are preserved. Stimulated by this abundance of biographical materials, 
 aud also by the consideration that Milton's character was Ulustralivc of 
 great priiiciples in various departments of human thought, an unparal- 
 leh^d number of biographers— from his own nephc;w down to not a few 
 autiiors within the last few years — have made his memoir their (chosen 
 tlicme. More biographies have been written of him than, jjerliaps, of 
 any man who ever lived. I liave had the curiosity to enumeraie them, 
 and could mention no fewer than twenty-five. Of all these, unhappily, 
 the one most read is the one most uncongenial and, in many points, iu-
 
 Milton's conception or iiis calling. 123 
 
 jui-ious,— that by Dr. Johnson. With every variety of opinion — poeti- 
 cal, political, moral, and theological,— are these biographies tinctui-od. 
 They have issued from the pens of poets, of antiquaries, of divines, of 
 scholars, of painters, from Churchmen and Dissenters, from infidels, 
 from the high-toned aristocrat, the Whig, and tlie Chartist. 
 
 MUton is a vast and varied theme. He may be viewed in his chief 
 gloiy as a poet. Again, so eventful was his life, that a worthy subject 
 of study is his character as a man. And if, Lu the endeavour to pro- 
 mote the cause of English literature, I should ever be led to enter upon 
 the series of great prose writers in our language, high among them, 
 along with Bacon and Clarendon, Hooker and Jeremy Taylor and Burke, 
 as among the poets, would be found the name of MUton. Closely as 
 these three representations of the character of Milton are connected, — 
 each giving its illustration to the other,— the subject to which our 
 thoughts are now to be directed is the genius of his poetry. 
 
 Important as were many of the other labours of Milton's, it can be 
 shown that at no period — in the buoyancy of youth, in the bitterness of 
 controversy, in the toil of state services, whether vindicating his private 
 good name or standing forth to defend the English people, in favour, or 
 in poverty and persecution— did he forget that the great business of 
 his existence was to give utterance to the promptings of imagination. 
 Poetry was his imperial theme, — the controlling and harmonizing ide:» 
 of his life ; and the aspirations of his inmost nature may be traced 
 throughout all his writings, no matter how unpromising their topic. 
 The art enters into his scheme of education, " not as," he protests, " the 
 prosody of a verse among the rudiments of grammar, but that sublime; 
 art which would soon show what despicable ci'eatures our common 
 rhymers and play-wi'iters be ; and what religioiis— what glorious and 
 magnificent— use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human 
 things." It is impressive to hear the boy Milton, in his early verses, 
 pleading with his father that poetry is a holy thing ; and, again, to hear 
 him in the prime of manhood, amid the stern words of one of his con- 
 troversial publications, announcing that "the great achievements of 
 poetry must rest on devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can en- 
 rich 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." So sublime was Milton's conception of his chief calling, that 
 no- occasion of public moment is suffered to transcend it in his thoughts. 
 When he addresses the Parliament, — that noted Parliament composed 
 of such stern stuff as filled the breasts of Cromwell and Pym, and Hol- 
 lis and Haslerig,— he is true to the laureate fraternity, and cites as
 
 124 LECTUEE SIXTH. 
 
 authority to that tribunal the imaginative lore of '• our sage and serious 
 poet Spenser." And when, nearly tliirty years before its consumma- 
 tion, the idea of his " adventurous song " broke the bonds of silence, in 
 anticipation that, at some distant day, " he might take up the harp and 
 sir!g an elaborate song to generations," — and when he spoke of being 
 led by the genial power of nature to another task than his polemics, 
 and of the inward promptings that, by labour and intense study, joined 
 with the strong propensity of nature, he might, perhaps, leave some- 
 thing so written to after-times as " they should not willingly let die," — 
 all, not less than his immortal epic, show his deep belief that the high- 
 est aim of human intellect is poetry ;— that the thmgs " of highest hope 
 and hardest attempting proposed by the mind in the spacious circuit of 
 her musings " are to be wrought out by the imagination. 
 
 So far back as we are able to penetrate into Milton's early life, there 
 may be discovered in his very boyhood traces of a consciousness that 
 he was endowed with an imagination for which mighty works were in 
 prospect ; — an endowment recognised as a trust committed to him by 
 his Creator, and therefore to be cherished sedulously, and held sacred 
 from the pressure of outward circumstances changing the direction of 
 his intellectual destiny. His whole existence was a preparation for the 
 stupendous achievement of the " Paradise Lost." Tliere was no pre- 
 cipitancy, — no i-ash forwardness of a youthful, misjudging ambition ; 
 but a reserve and dignity, in which the voice of his genius seemed to 
 be whispering that his hour was not yet come. In studying this sub- 
 ject, I have been deeply impressed with a sense of the magnanimity to 
 be traced in Milton's childhood, — the largeness of soul belonging to the 
 little boy. And how does this ai)pearj' In various passages of his 
 prose writings, as well as of his poetry, he has told the history of his 
 mind almost as far back as his memory could travel, disclosing how the 
 foundations of his genius were laid; and it is clear that, in those early 
 years, the heaven-inspired endowment of a poet's spirit was there, with 
 all the cravings of an imagination outstripping its own creative j)Owers. 
 There was in Milton's young bosom a poet's heart, with aspirations 
 aft,er ideal grandeur and goodness and beauty, transcending its early 
 strength, and therefore seeking its nourishment, not in crude and forced 
 fruits of his own imagination, but in the majestic growth of the high 
 poetry of all ages. The proof of the might of Milton's youthful genius 
 was his silence ; — (he high-minded reserve of one who, keeping the hope 
 of af'hievement in a distant day, knew that it ill became him to thrust 
 forward the rash and unformed aml)itions of boyhood. The vast idea 
 of the functions of poetry which early took possession of him lorbade
 
 MTLTOX'S YOUTHFUL GENIUS. 125 
 
 the thoue:lit that anything he could then produce could even approacli 
 the standard ol' his own conception. He felt that he must await hi.s 
 time, and was far too strong-minded to spend his efforts in juvenile 
 effusions, and then to hang over them with the weak and self-enamoured 
 delusion of an author's vanity. The glory of Milton's youth is not pre- 
 cocious poetry, but the self-sacrificing devotion of a student. Before 
 the twelfth year of his life, the child's tender eyesight had received, from 
 intense and midnight study, the first fatal injury which brought in its 
 train the dark calamity of hopeless blindness. There is no period of 
 Milton's long career more finely characteristic of his genius than when, 
 in youth and early manhood, he may be imagined seated in silence at 
 the feet of the great masters of song who had gone before him. It was 
 their voices alone, and not the tender notes of his own, that could fill 
 the large spaces of his heart. The noblest sounds of all poetry — whether 
 of a remote antiqiuty or of a nearer day and of his own land — were per- 
 petually sweeping over his spirit, not mingling with any utterance of 
 his young imagination, but passing on into futurity on the wings of 
 hope, to meet strains of equal glory, that wefe yet, in the far distance, 
 to rise up in the poetry of the " Paradise Lost." It was in the sacred 
 stream of Hebrew poetry that the youthful genius of Milton was bap- 
 tized : it was the divine imagery of the Psalmist, the prophets, and of 
 him who saw the Apocalypse, which deep-dyed the colour of his imagin- 
 ation. Nor did his mind, in the amazing activity of his youth, stop 
 there, but, wingmg its flight over profane as well as sacred soil, held 
 communion with all the remnant glory of classical poetry ; and then, 
 after having thus travelled into the ancient inspirations of Palestine, of 
 Greece, and Rome, it dwelt, too, in spirit with the poets of modern 
 Italy, and still more fervently with the great ones of his own England. 
 The poetry of every age and of every land was breathing upon his soul, 
 feeding and fanning the inward fire that was deeply burning there. 
 
 Of Milton's juvenile poems — which are composed mostly in Latin — 
 the one which, perhaps, has chief interest is that addressed to his father; 
 not so much because of any extraordinary poetic merit, as for its 
 thoughtful strain of filial gratitude. Parental care over the course of a 
 child's intellect was never more feelingly, more honourably acknow- 
 ledged. Some few misgivings appear to have crossed the mind of 
 Milton's father, that the bent of his genius might divert him from the 
 useful pursuits of active life ; but the uncaloulating enthusiasm of the 
 youth's larger spirit was solicitous, not so nmch to plead with his 
 parent against such opinions, as to vindicate him from them — to per- 
 suade him that such thoughts did not in truth belong to one who had
 
 12G LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 SO congenially cherished his child's imaginative studies. CoM^cr's 
 translation of the poem may furnish one hrief passage : — 
 
 " No ! howsoc'er the semblance thou assume 
 Of hate, thou hatest not the gentle Muse, 
 My father ! for thou never badcst me tread 
 The beaten path and broad that leads right on 
 To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son 
 To the insipid clamours of the bar, — 
 To laws voluminous and ill-observed, — 
 But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill 
 My mind with treasure, led'st me far away 
 From city din to deep retreats, — to banks 
 And streams Aonian,— and with free consent 
 Didst place me happy at Apollo's side." 
 
 After Milton's childhood in London and his collegiate career of 
 several years, in the discipline of which there appears to have been some- 
 thing at variance with his temperament, he came hack in the prime of 
 manliood to the home of his father's house. That home was now trans- 
 ferred from the thronged thoroughfares of the metropolis to the tran- 
 quil repose of a country residence. The seven cloistered years in the 
 calm retreats of one of the ancient British universities were followed 
 by five equally studious and happier years spent beneath his fathers 
 rural roof at Horton. This Avas probably the happiest ))eriod of his 
 life ; and when, in aixtici])ation, I reflect how, at an advanced stage of 
 his existence, his imagination gatliered the vast accumulations of his 
 erudition and made them all subservient to the purposes of poetry, I 
 cannot but consider these rural years as among the most influential on 
 his genius. There was shining upon him the light of the happy faces oY 
 both parents,— a father whose strong passion for music was inherited 
 by the poet, a mother full of that goodness which, like the charitable 
 deeds of the pious George Herbert, gave thoughts which proved music 
 at midnight. The bright vision of an English landscape was ever be- 
 fore liim ; and still, year after year, was his mind travelling fartlier and 
 farflicr into the limitless regions of poetic invention, imbuing his imagin- 
 ation with the spirit of all that was beautiful and suljlinie iu Hebrew 
 song and in chissical and chivalrous poetry. 
 
 Amid all his ac([iiirements, the one volume for ever foremost and 
 uppermost in his thoughts was the Bible. In what I may call unin- 
 spired inspiration, his favourites were Homer and Pindar ; and perha]>s 
 more than cither was the drama of Euripides, " sad Electra's poet," and 
 Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso, and the three illustrious predecessors in 
 his own language, witli whom he was soon to take rank, — Chaucer,
 
 POETIC GENIUS IMPROTED BY STUDY. 127 
 
 Spenser, and Shakspeare. His studies ruamcd, too, through the shady 
 spaces of Philosophy, catching from the divine vohunes of the best of 
 the Athenian schools that Platonic spirit which may be traced in much 
 of the early English poetry, and stored his memory M'ith all that history 
 recorded, and not less with the lofty fables and romances which recount 
 the deeds of knighthood. It was to those five tranquil happy years at 
 Ilorton, beneath the unanxious shelter whicli the paternal roof alone 
 can give, that the vast opulence of Milton's intellect was chiefly owing, 
 — the rich amalgamation of poetry, sacred and profane, of theology, 
 pliilosophy, history, fable, of science, in the severe and exact knowledge 
 of abstractions, and in the fit harmonies of music. The important moral 
 to be ckawn from this part of MQton's life is, not that education can 
 ever originate the natural endowment of a poet's genius, but how that 
 gift of imagination, by study and meditative conm union outward and 
 inward, may be strengthened, emnelied, and expanded ; and how false is 
 the notion that, when a poet speaks, he speaks as it were from soTiie 
 lawless, thoughtless, nngovernable frenzy. 
 
 The intensity of Milton's studies at his rural retreat appears to have 
 been relieved by occasional visits to the metropolis, where he refreshed 
 his spent spirits by witnessing the theatrical representations of the 
 English drama, then so copiously supplied by the fresh and abundant 
 growth m the times of Queen Elizabeth's and the first of the Stuarts' 
 reigns. For two of the great English dramatic poets Milton's admira- 
 tion is recorded in a well-known passage in one of his shorter poems, 
 referring to Jonson's learned sock and the " native wood-notes wild " 
 of Shakspeare. His visits to London and its theatres are mentiomsd in 
 one of his Latin poems, in a few lines. I may quote to you from Cow- 
 per's English version, with the remark that it will be no forced fancy 
 to apply the allusions at the close to the tragic fate of Romeo, and to 
 Uanquo's appalUng presence in the banquet-scene in Macbeth : — 
 
 " If impassion'd Tragedy wield high 
 The bloody sceptre, give her locks to fly 
 Wild as the winds, and roll her haggard eye, 
 I gaze, and grieve, still cherishing my grief. 
 At times even bitter tears yield sweet relief; 
 As when, fi-om bliss untustcd torn away, 
 Some youth dies, hapless, on his bridal day ; 
 Or when the ghost, sent back from shades below, 
 Fills the assassin's heart with vengeful woe." 
 
 During the period of the history of ^Tilton's genius when dwelling ."it 
 Horton, its silent unseen roots were sinking deeper and spreading wider.
 
 128 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 to draw nourisliment from the richest soil of ancient and modern litera- 
 ture. The mighty growth so stoutly rooted was at last beginning to 
 utter sounds from its waving branches, and from the light leaves of its 
 topmost boughs ; the life which had been coursing invisibly in its chan- 
 nels burst forth in surpassing luxuriance of blossom and of flower. 
 While Milton had practised such admirable reserve in early authorship, 
 because he had " not completed to his mind the full circle of his private 
 studies," still, he tells us himself that he felt, " by every instinct and 
 l)resage of nature, which is not wont to be false, that what had embold- 
 ened other poets to their achievements might with the same diligence 
 as they used embolden him." With all the early silence of his muse, 
 his spirit was sustained in its high hopes by what he calls " his honest 
 haughtiness and self-esteem of what he was or what he might be." The 
 whole life of Milton was a life of principle, and not of impulse, or, 
 rather, of principle controlling impulse. He was silent from a strong 
 sense of duty, — the pious conviction that the talent committed to liini 
 was to be neither rashly squandered nor basely hid. The remonstrances 
 of an affectionate friend caused, on one occasion, some misgivings as to 
 the tardy movings of his genius, — "a certain belatcdncss," as he called 
 it, — a self-suspicion that he was suffering himself to dream away his 
 years " in studious retirement, like Endymiun with the moon ; " but 
 these misgivings and apprehensions vanished away with the reflection— 
 the precept of his conscience — that the great power which God had in- 
 trusted to him — a poet's creative imagination— was to be kept with a 
 sacred reverence and religious advisement. It is in this thoughtful 
 sense of responsibility that one of the earliest of his severely meditative 
 sonnets is conceived: — 
 
 " How soon hath Time, tho subtle thief of youtli, 
 Stolen on his wing my threc-and-twentieth year! 
 My hasting days Hy on with full career, 
 But my late spring no bud or blossom showcth. 
 Perhaps my .semblance might deceive the truth 
 That I to manhood am arrived so near, 
 And inward ripeness doth much le.ss appear, 
 That some more timely-happy spirits endueth. 
 Yet, be it less or more, or .soon or slow, 
 It shall be still in strictest measure, even 
 To that same lot, however mean or high. 
 Toward which Time leads me and the will of Heaven ; 
 All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
 As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." 
 
 The fruits of what I may call the rural period of Milton's life were
 
 LYCIDA3. 129 
 
 those two descriptive lyrics, " L' Allegro " and " Penseroso," which are, 
 perhaps, better known than the rest of his short poems, and which I 
 shall not pause on longer than to say that their charm consists in a 
 great measure in their true picturing of actual landscape, dappled at 
 the same time with the sunshine of a poet's fancy, — presenting, by the 
 harmonizing light of imagination, the ploughman in tlie furrowed field, 
 the blithely-singing milkmaid, the mower whetting his scythe, the shep- 
 herd seated under the hawthorn, and such familiar rural objects, together 
 with creatures of the fancy, — the cherub Contemplation soaring on golden 
 wing, the mountain-nymplis and the wood-nymi)]is in their hallowed 
 haunts, and all 
 
 " Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 On summer eves by haunted stream." 
 
 Another poem of the same period is the monody " Lycidas," composed, 
 it will be remembered, on the death by shipwreck of one of the poet's 
 dearest fi'iends, and on which was pronounced one of the most extraor- 
 dinary of all the perverse, unimaginative, wrong-hearted, and wrong- 
 minded critical judgments wliich Dr. Johnson apparently delighted in 
 when dealing with Milton's poetry. It would consume more space than 
 I can command to scrutinize that criticism ; and, therefore, I must it- 
 frain from characterizing it as I think of it, because I might seem to 
 express myself more strongly than I could make good against such author- 
 ity. It is a poem which has not only won the hearty admiration of many 
 a thoughtful, imaginative reader of poetry, but it has even been consider- 
 ed by more than one trustworthy critic (among them Ht^lam) as a good 
 test of a real feeling for what is peculiarly called poetry. Yet Johnson had 
 the hardihood to say of it, — after condemning its diction as harsh, its 
 rhymes as uncertain, the numbers unpleasing, and its -want of feeling, — 
 " In ' Lycidas ' there is no nature, for there is no truth ; there is no art, 
 for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and 
 therefore disgusting, with a yet grosser fault, — its approach to imjjicty by 
 the indecent mingling of trifling tictions with the most awful and sacred 
 truths." Who could have dreamed that so bitter a rebuke was levelled 
 at the sublime passage in which, after sundry mythological personages, 
 by an effort of imagination appealing to the sympathetic activity of the 
 reader's imagination, the august form of St. Peter is introduced ?— 
 
 " Last come, and last did go. 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake : 
 Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain 
 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). 
 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake." 
 K
 
 130 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 It would not, I think, be without interest to examine minutely Dr. 
 Johnson\s judgments upon this poem, and to trace them to a prejudiced 
 and blind misapprehension of the higher aims of imagination, — a dog- 
 matic obtuseness to the most magical spells of poetry. But too many 
 of the poet's great works remain before me ; and I can say no more on 
 this point than that any one who desires to take home to his heart and 
 to his intellect a just sense of the spirit of Milton's poetry, must look at 
 it with other vision than the bleared eyes of that emment writer who 
 compiled the " English Dictionary." 
 
 The prime of Milton's manhood produced also the exquisite masque 
 of " Comus." This form of dramatic composition, originally introduced 
 from Italy, was long a favourite in England, and, being less restrained 
 than the regular drama by rules, gave wider scope to poetical fancy. 
 The severity of Milton's well-disciplined judgment was well fitted to 
 check its tendency to fantastic extravagance ; and there is probably no 
 poem in the language better calculated to delight readers of almost all 
 moods of poetic taste. It combines, in a very remarkable degree, a 
 vivid energy of imagination, and an exuberance of all that is fanciful 
 and beautiful in imagery and language, with a majesty of meditative 
 philosophy diademed with the radient glory of poetry. " Comus " pre- 
 sents not a few beautifully-reflected lights of Milton's poetic studies. 
 You may discover, at times, echoes, as it were, of tlie sweet modidations 
 of Shakspeare's sentences, — combinations of words we are half tempted 
 to appropriate to some of his di'amas ; and, again, traces of the match- 
 less spirituality of Spenser. In the lines, — 
 
 " Virtue could see to do what Virtue would 
 By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
 Were in the fiat sea sunk ; and Wisdom's self 
 Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude ; 
 Where, with her hest nurse, Contemplation, 
 She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, 
 That, in the various hustle of resort, 
 Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd. 
 He that has light within his own clear hrcast 
 May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day." — 
 
 We arc here reminded of the Tlcd-Cross Knight in the " Fairy Queen," — 
 his glittering armour making a little gleaming light in the den of Error, 
 or of that image of surpassing beauty, surpassing Una's angel-face 
 sliining bright and making a sunshine in the shady place. One of the 
 most beautiful passages in the j)oem of " Comus " — beautiful for the 
 imaginative blending of spiritual and bodily emotions — is that in which 
 the lady, wandering in the darkness of the forest and in the darkness
 
 FAITH AND HOPE AND CHASTITY. 131 
 
 of her own hcuiirhtod loneliness, beholds, in spirit, gleams from her ini- 
 cnibodied guardians, Fiiiih. and Hope and Chastity, hovering round her 
 footsteps, and at the same time, with her l/odil^ sight, the dark eloud 
 which had dimmed the sky brightening with sudden moonlight : — 
 
 " A thousand fantasies 
 Begin to throng into my memory, 
 Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, 
 And aery tongues that syllable men's names 
 On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 
 These thoughts may startle well, hut not astound 
 The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
 By a strong-siding champiim. Conscience. 
 Oh, welcome, pure-eyed Faith ; white-handed Hope, 
 Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings ! 
 And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity ! 
 I see ye visibly, and now believe 
 That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
 Are but as slavish officers of vengeance. 
 Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, 
 To keep my life and honour unassail'd. 
 Was I deceived ? or did a sable cloud 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? 
 I did not err : there does a sable cloud 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night, 
 And casts a gleam over this tufted grove." 
 
 The virtue of that passage should so have its home in every heart 
 that the recollection of it may rise up and make the brightness of any 
 dark but moon-touched cloud brighter to the eye, and brighter still to 
 the imagination, as it floats along the sky, the image of that light 
 which beams from heaven upon the heart of innocence. 
 
 Much that is prophetic of the great poem of his later years may be 
 seen in the spiritual invention of this early poem, — the vision of bad 
 and good angels, Comus and his brutish rabble, and the attendant spirit 
 described in the opening lines, — one of 
 
 " Those immortal shapes 
 Of bright aerial sjjirits .... iusphered 
 In regions mild of calm and serene ;ur, 
 Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
 Which men call earth." 
 
 I ought not to quit this exquisite poem without remarking how per- 
 fectly it illustrates the magic power of poetry to shed a glory on things 
 which are lying in life's daily prospect. Here is a poem of a thousand 
 lines, radiant with fancy, full of spirits of the air, and faii-y spells, and 
 
 K 2
 
 132 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 the meditations of an imaginative philosophy. And what was the occa- 
 sion of it ? A simple accident in the family of the Earl of Bridgewater 
 when keeping his court at Ludlow Castle. His daughter, the Lady 
 Alice Egerton, and her two brothers, were benighted and lost their 
 way in Haywood Eorest ; and the brothers, in attempting to explore 
 their path, left their sister alone in a tract of country inliabitcd by a 
 boorish peasantry. When the fair one's heart was throblnng in the 
 lonely wood, how Kttle could she have dreamed that a poet's words 
 were to win for her brighter and more endui-ing honour than aught that 
 wealth or heraldry could give ! 
 
 But the most distinct foreshadowing of the immortal epic poem is 
 given in a poem shorter and earlier than " Comus," — the " Hymn on 
 the Nativity." It has very much the sound of " Paradise Lost " set 
 to a lyrical measure. "\Tlien listening to the line closing one of the 
 stanzas, — 
 
 " The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep," — 
 
 I fancy I can hear it in the "Paradise Lost," composed some forty 
 years after, reverberating after that lapse of years in a passage which 
 is the very echo of it : — 
 
 " The thunder, 
 Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage. 
 Perhaps has spent his shafts, and ceases now 
 To bellow through the vast and boundless deep." 
 
 The tranquil hours at Horton were drawing to a close. The happy 
 household was broken by the death of the poet's mother. It is a trait 
 of tenderness in the character of one whose character we are too apt to 
 regard as all severity, that it was not until, to borrow the viords of the 
 Psalmist, " he went heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother," that 
 the wish for foreign travel was indulged by MUton. Having, by the 
 poems already mentioned, acquired reputation as a poet, in his thirtieth 
 year he left England to travel to lands whose ancient glory was still 
 hanging over the south of Europe. It would be interesting to follow 
 him in imagination as he roamed through classic lands, a young enthusi- 
 ast in the full flush of fresh poetic genius, the strength of admirable 
 scholarship, and in the prime of manly beauty, with not a wrinkle by 
 the cares which after a few years seamed his brows, — to stand with him 
 in the presence of Grotius, then an ambassador to the court of France, 
 — and, with still deeper interest, to accompany him at Elorence, visiting 
 Galileo old, a prisoner of the Inquisition, and fast sinking under his 
 burdens into the grave. How must the young poet's heart, full as it 
 ever was to overflowing with the passion for freedom, — the single-
 
 MILTON IX HOME. 133 
 
 spirited love of intellectual freedom and truth, — have tlirobbed in the 
 visible presence of the victim of spiritual despotism ! The moral dig- 
 nity of this sad spectacle sank deep into Milton's imagination, to rise 
 up again at another distant day to furnish a fit allusion in the descrip- 
 tion of the broad circumference of Satan's sliield, — 
 
 " Like the moon, whose orb 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 At evening, from the top of Fesole, 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands. 
 Rivers or mountains, in her spotty globe," — 
 
 or to describe the seraph llaphacl beholding from afar the earth, — - 
 
 " As when by night the glass 
 Of Galileo, less assured, observes 
 Imagined lands and regions in the moon. ' 
 
 We follow him to Venice, and to Rome, — the city of more than 
 twenty centuries, — and fancy him -wrapt with classical associations, 
 feeding his genius by gazing on sculptures and paintings of Michael 
 Angelo and all the works of Italian Ai't. And with what feeling must 
 tliat spirit of his, which seems to have chafed under any ecclesiastical 
 discipline, have been stirred within the precincts of the papal metropo- 
 lis ! Standing in the shadow of the Vatican, by the side of that vast 
 dominion stretching its thin spectral arms over the whole earth, how 
 must this young Briton, this Protestant, this Independent, have scaujied 
 the visage of what one of his contemporaries,* with an image of 
 Miltonie energy, describe as " the ghost of the lioman empire seated on 
 the ruins thereof ! " 
 
 It was at Rome that Milton is supposed to have met and contracted 
 a lifelong friendship with one of his fellow-countrymen, like himself a 
 young traveller, a poet, and a republican, — the high-spirited and in- 
 corruptible Andrew Marvell. It has been well said that not even in the 
 proudest days of her republic had Rome to boast two nobler youths 
 than Milton and Marvell. The young poet proceeded onward to the 
 south of Italy, and was welcomed beneath the hospitable roof of Manso, 
 Marquis of Villa, the friend and biographer of Tasso. It was the very 
 spot where the great Italian poet, a few years before, completed the 
 " Jerusalem Delivered ; " and it has been conjectured that there first 
 dawned upon the thought of Milton the ambition of composing an epic 
 poem in the English language. It seems to me inore probable that this 
 must have been among his more youtlii'al aspirations. But, be that ;is 
 it may, it was first announced in the Latin poem addressed to his 
 * Hobbcs.
 
 134 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 venerable host on taking leave of him. I doubt not, that standing in 
 the gardens overlooking the famed prospect of the bright Bay of 
 Naples, a spot but lately honoured by the footsteps of Italy's last best 
 poet, Milton heard the story of Tasso's romantic life— his imprison- 
 ment, his sorrows, and his madness — from the lips of Tasso's aged 
 fi'iend ; and, though there was not in reserve for the British bard the 
 dark destiny of the dungeon such as the Italian had been immured in, 
 yet the story of the calamitous career of his fellow-poet must, have been 
 so impressed upon his feelings as to rise up in his thoughts in after- 
 years, teaching the lesson of endurance beneath sorrows as heavy if 
 not so intense. 
 
 Milton's intention of visiting Sicily and Greece was abandoned on 
 learning that aiflictions were gathering upon England ; and he turned 
 his steps homeward, stopping to visit the kinsfolk of one of the friends 
 of his youth, at their mansion on the Alpine bank of the Lake of 
 Geneva. He hastened back from the continent, because, said he, " I 
 thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad while my fellow- 
 citizens were fighting for liberty at home." T\lien he set foot again on 
 15ritish ground, the banner of civil war had been flung out to the 
 breeze ; for the grand Rebellion was begun. 
 
 I am dealing, let it be remembered, with ihepor/ Milton. When Ire- 
 fleet how mighty and how many were his achievements in poetry, — 
 how they are all complete, — none, like the " Canterbury Tales " and tlie 
 "Faiiy Queen," splendid fragments, — it seems almost incrc^dible that 
 nearly thirty years of his life were almost wholly turned aside from the 
 great highway of liis genius. And why was this ? Was it because, wit h 
 the growth of intellectual pride, he was learning to disparage his early 
 aspirations ? Was it that poetry had ceased to be that divine thing the 
 love of which had once shone on aU his paths ? No ! such heartless dis- 
 loyalty never had place in his thoughts. He never forgot that he had 
 an endowment the voice of which wa.s meant to reach to distant ages 
 and to other lands. But the age and the country in which his lot was 
 east had instant need of his powers. He beheld the people struggling 
 for freedom ; and his heart, with all its high-wrought enthusiasm, was 
 with them. The monarchy had lost much that might make a subject 
 proud. The high-minded nobility, which Milton might have honoured as 
 Spenser had, was no longer in the same strong sympathy witl\ the throne, 
 at once gracing and fgrtifying it. The Buckhursts and the Cecils and 
 the Egertons had gradually been thrust aside, and their ]jlaces filled 
 by worthless and profligate favourites, — minions like Carr and Villiers. 
 The low and maliirnant influences wliieh overshadowed the court of the
 
 Milton's polkmic powers. 135 
 
 first of the Stuarts sealed the bloody fate of the second of that hapless 
 dynasty. The civil war began with court corruption ; and, in such a 
 contest, where could the soul of Milton be but with the people ? He 
 tui-ued aside from poetry reluctantly, but dutifully : he felt himself pos- 
 sessed of a power which fitted him to be the intellectual champion of 
 the cause. For about a quarter of a century his muse was almost for- 
 saken ; and during this period his pen produced a succession of contro- 
 versial writings on various subjects as powerful as ever were produced. 
 Wlieu he first entered on this stern duty, it was with the avowed sense 
 of inferiority to a strength already proved in poetry, — the better task 
 which the genial power of nature prompted, having, as he said, the use, 
 as it were, of only the left hand. I am inclined, however, to think that, 
 as he prosecuted one controversy after another, the spirit of controversy 
 got more largely possession of him, — polemic pride growing on him, — 
 exultation at finding that he could deal blows so vigorous with his left 
 hand. 
 
 Domestic troubles embittered his life. It is one of the miseries of 
 civil war that it sows the seeds of household animosities. " It was a 
 time," says Milton, in one of his prose works, " when man and wife 
 were often the most inveterate foes ; when the man often stayed at home 
 to tend the children, wbUe the mother of the family was busy in the 
 camp of the enemy, threatening death and destruction to her husband." 
 It was Milton's bad fortune to marry in such times, — a speedy match and 
 a sorry marriage; for it mated a republican husband with a royalist spouse. 
 
 During these agitated years of Milton's life he never faltered in the 
 duty he had marked out for himself; but still you could sometimes dis- 
 cover the longings of the poet's heart, — something showing that he 
 knew how much more congenial than bandying vulgar and abusive epi- 
 thets with Salmasius, or toiling in the secretaryship of the Council of 
 the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, would it be for him (to borrow 
 one of his own glowing phrases) to be " soaring in the high region of 
 his fancies, with his garland and singing-robes about him." Now and 
 then the pent-up fire of his imagination bursts out in a strain of prose 
 which is poetry in all but poetry's metrical music ; in that sublime sen- 
 tence, for instance, which tells how high were the expectations his en- 
 thusiasm had conceived of Iicpu])lican England : — " Methinks I see in 
 my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself, like a strong man 
 after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an 
 eagle renewing her mighty youtli, and kindling her undazzlcd eyes at the 
 full mid-day beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the 
 fountain itself of heavenly radiance."
 
 136 T-ECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 During this middle period of Milton's life, when absorbed with poli- 
 tical and theological polemics and slate-affairs, the only sign given to 
 show that poetry was not wholly suppressed in his thoughts is to be 
 found in the few sonnets dated in those years, and which are distin- 
 guished for a sternness of conception and a compressed energy of style 
 that we may fancy them written at Cromwell's council-board, and with the 
 same pen which engrossed some stem despatch from the Protector to 
 his fellow-sovereigns on the continent. The sonnets of Milton are few ; 
 but they rendered this important service : — that they enlarged the sphere 
 of that form of verse, showing that it was not confined to amatory 
 poetry ; that it was fitted not only for the expression of tender emotions, 
 but for the utterance of a statesmanly philosophy, dignified rebuke, the 
 deep. Christian meditation, and whatever else belongs to poetry's grand- 
 est and most majestic tones. The strain which before had scarcely 
 served more than a lover's uses was made the fit form for the stern 
 Republican to address Cromwell and Fairfax and Sir Harry Vane. 
 There is a contrast as wide as between the temperaments of the two 
 poets between the sonnet of Spenser and the somiet of Milton : — 
 
 " A tjlowworm Lamp, 
 It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land 
 To struggle through dark ways ; and, when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The thing became a Trumpet, whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains, — alas ! too few ! " 
 
 There is recorded in Boswell's Johnson one of the most ludicrous 
 literary conversations touching Milton's sonnets — ludicrous from its 
 solenm absurdity — to be met with amid all the absurdities of criticism. 
 " Pray, sir," said Miss Hannah More to Dr. Johnson, " how could a 
 poet who wrote ' Paradise Lost ' write such poor sonnets ?" " Madam," 
 replied the critical autocrat, " Milton was a genius that could cut a 
 colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." 
 Miss Hannah More was a sensible as well as a very pious woman, but 
 on this occasion, I very much fear, she asked a foolish question; and 
 Dr. Johrison was a wise and a learned man, but I fear the folly of the 
 question was contagious to the answer. If Hannah More had searched 
 Johnson's Dictionary through, she could not have selected a more inap- 
 propriate epithet than in s])eaking of such poor sonnets as Milton's ; and, 
 fis to his figure of the carved cherry-stones, let us look at one of these 
 condemned productions. At the time when Milton wius acting as the 
 Latin Secretary of the government of Cromwell, tlicre was given one 
 of the highest proofs of the gigantic foreign policy for which the proud
 
 SQ-NXET OK THE PIEDMONT PERSECTJTIOTS-. 137 
 
 Protector was most illustrious. The persecuted Protestants iu the 
 valleys of Piedmont appealed to him for succour ; and the stern voice 
 of Cromwell went forth to every potentate of Europe, bidding him 
 know that he meant to make the cause of these suffering Christians his 
 own:— 
 
 " When Alpine vales threw forth a suppliant cry, 
 
 The majesty of England interposed, 
 
 And the sword stopp'd ; the bleeding wounds were closed. 
 
 And faith preserved her ancient purity." 
 
 The spokesman of Oliver Cromwell's will was John Milton; and 
 there seems to be a tone of imaghiatiou in the very address of some of 
 these despatches ; — aMiltonic aggregation of vague geographical names ; 
 — " Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, to the Emperor 
 of all Russia and all the Northern climes ; " or to " the King of the 
 Swedes, Goths, and Vandals;" calling to their remembrance how the 
 valleys of Piedmont were besmeared with the blood and slaughter of 
 the miserable victims, and the mountains filled with the houseless 
 wanderers, — women and children perishing with hunger and cold and 
 the sword of the persecutor. The spirit of Milton was so stirred by 
 the sufferings of the Waldenses that he felt the need of more even than 
 high-toned mandates to earthly monarchs ; and therefore there went up 
 from the depths of his poet's heart, in one of his mighty sonnets, the 
 fervid imprecation : — 
 
 " Avenge, O Lord, thy slaiightcr'd saints, whose bones 
 Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ; — 
 E'en them who kept thy truth so pure of old. 
 When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones. 
 Forget not : iu thy book record their groans 
 Who were thy sheep, and iu their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roU'd 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
 A hundredfold, who, having learn'd thy way, 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 
 
 After rehearsing this high and solemn strain of poetry, I can scarcely 
 bring myself to remind you of the pitiful comparison of Dr. Johnson's 
 which I hoped to refute by it. 
 
 All the visionary enthusiasm of Milton in the cause of political 
 liberty was, as is wcU known, wholly defeated. We come now to the
 
 138 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 last— the darkest and yet most glorious— portion of his life, divided as 
 it may be into tliree chief eras : —as a student, as a statesman, and a 
 solitary. 
 
 There are few finer themes for contemplation than tlie licrmit old age 
 of John Milton. " My mind," said Coleridge, " is not capable of form- 
 ing a more august conception than arises from the contemplation of 
 this great man in his latter days. Poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, 
 persecuted,— in an age in which he was as little understood by the 
 party for whom, as by that against whom he had contended, — and 
 among men before whom he strode so far as to dwarf himself by the 
 distance, — yet still listening to the music of his own thoughts, or, if 
 additionally cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic faith of two or 
 three solitary individuals, he did nevertheless 
 
 " Argue not 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heai't or hope ; but still bore up, and steer'd 
 Right onward." 
 
 Wordsworth, too, has told of its moral sublimity : — 
 
 " One there is who builds immortal lays, 
 Though doom'd to tread in solitary ways. 
 Darkness before, and Danger's voice behind ! 
 Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel 
 Sad thoughts ; for, from above the starry sphere 
 Come secrets whispcr'd nightly to his ear ; 
 And the pure spirit of celestial light 
 Shines through his soul, that he may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight." 
 
 I have followed the progress of Milton's genius, dwelling on some of 
 his neglected pieces, lill but scant space is left for tliought on liis great 
 poem. The gradual ascent to the highest point of his fame being ac- 
 complished, no more can now be done than to take a brief prospect 
 from the pinnacle of this holy mount. The " Paradise Lost " was given 
 to the world in 1G67, the author being then on the verge of sixty years. 
 1 cannot bring myself to believe for one moment that he had ever re- 
 linquished his early ambition of an English epic poem ; but it is pro- 
 bable that the work was not begun till the restoration of the monarchy 
 threw the Republican back into meditative solitude, and closed the 
 anxieties of his long and embittered disputations. 1 shall not be so 
 prf;sumptuous as to enter now on any ev(m gencjral criticism of so ela- 
 borate a poem. The hurried comment 1 might at j)r(!S(nit make would 
 be but a ])oor substitute for the airi])le criticism which should be de- 
 voted to such a theme : its sublimity, its beauty, arc familiar to ail.
 
 THE PARADISE LOST. 139 
 
 But grievous injustice is done to the poem by reading detached portions 
 of it ; for perhaps a1)0ve all other epic poems it is admirable for the 
 composition of it : — I mean its entire structure, and the order and suc- 
 cession of its parts. It combines in this respect the dramatic with the 
 epic spirit ; and I find myself always impressed by it as by the perusal 
 of a tragedy, which, indeed, was the form originally contemplated by 
 Milton. It is a poem demanding from its reader the most strenuous 
 activity of a reader's imagination ; otherwise he wiU find himself left 
 immeasurably below the range of its inventions. For instance : in the 
 wondrous imaginations of Satan's voyage, — first exploring his way on 
 swift wings, one while sinking into the deep, and then rising to the fiery 
 concave, — still within his own vast realms of Pandemonium ; — after he 
 has passed hell's gates, standing with awe and looking into the wild 
 abyss before venturing to pass the dark pavilion of Chaos; — then, 
 sprmging upward like a pyramid of fire and reaching the utmost orb of 
 the regions of light, the fiend weighs his spread wings to behold afar off 
 the empyreal heaven : — 
 
 " And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, 
 This pendent world, in bigness as a star 
 Of smallest magnitude close by the moon." 
 
 Now, in this the imagination is apt to falter and supply the thought 
 that by " this pendent world " is meant this one little planet of ours,— 
 the earth. But Milton's imagination knew no such circumscription ; 
 and his conception was — not the earth, not even the space filled by the 
 sun, with all its planets and their satellites, but — the vast orb of myri- 
 ads of suns, the measureless space of countless solar systems ; and all 
 ■this was meant when the arch fiend was gazing at 
 " This pendent world, in bigness as a star 
 Of smallest magnitude close by the moon." 
 
 Again : what a transcendent efi'ort is that by which, in recounting 
 the hosts of Pandemonium, the poet's imagination, grasping the whole 
 mythology of classical antiquity, tlirusts it with all its glory down into 
 hell, and ranges the gods of Greece — Olympic Jove himself — with the 
 inferior powers of the apostate angels ! In an early lecture of this 
 course, when attempting to portray the faculty of imagination, I claimed 
 for it the power of either giving dignity and beauty to life's daily and 
 common events, or, rising higher, of beholding, as an angel might, this 
 earth, with its dark sea, with all tiiat is vile upon its surface, and with 
 the nations of the dead mouldering beneath, yet a star glittering in the 
 firmament and peopled with beings redeemed for immortality. I recur 
 to the thought because the poetic inventions of Milton are authoritative
 
 140 LKCTURE SIXTH. 
 
 — to show that I was indulging iu no irrational rhapsody. Behold, for 
 instance, how he has enveloped in a radiant glory the connnon incident 
 which was the groundwork of " Comus." And, in " Paradise Lost," 
 how the angels speak as if their words came indeed from an angel's 
 heart !— they tell of tilings as if seen with an angel's vision. When 
 Raphael, the sociable spirit, rises from his conference with Adam, it is 
 because to bis eye 
 
 " The parting sun, 
 
 Beyond the earth's grce-n cape and verdant isles 
 
 Hesperian, sets,— my signal to depart." 
 
 And when he cautions our first parents to be lowly wise, observe how 
 he speaks of the earth as if he had beheld it lookmg from some other 
 sphere, when he bids Adam not to seek to know 
 
 " Whether the sun, predominant in heaven, 
 Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun ; — 
 He from the east his flaming road begin, 
 Or she from west her silent course advance 
 "With inoflensivc pace, that, spinning, sleeps 
 On her soft axle, while she paces even 
 And bears thee soft with the smooth air along." 
 
 But no product of the Miltonic iinagiuation needs deeper study than 
 the cliaracier of Satan, the chief fiend, wrapt in the twilight of original 
 brightness in dim eclipse, a lurid glory giving him a grandeur such as 
 poetry had never created before ; for it was the inuigc of no less than 
 " archangel ruined," whose " fi\ce deep scars of thunder had intrenched." 
 It was an embodiment of poetic sublimity — a might of endurance, of 
 boldness, and of pride — which awes the imagination, and, at times, 
 wildly stirs, not a sympathy, but some sort of feeling for the ruined an- 
 gelic splendour. How can we repress some such emotion at that passage 
 where, standing on the beach of the inflamed sea, and rising to his full 
 height with monarchal pride, Satan summons the entranced legions ? — a 
 passage demonstrating, too, the wondrous o])ulence of Milton's im;igina- 
 tion, pouring out one illustration after aiu)thcr as they rise u}) in his 
 mind witli tin; recollection of his Italian travels and of his cla'^sical and 
 IJihlieal learning, a profusion of thick-sown similitudes, — the leaf-strewn 
 brooks of Vallombrosa, the scattered sedge of the Red Sea vexed by the 
 stormy Orion and the floating carcasses of Pharaoh's horsemen : — 
 
 " On the beach 
 Of that inflamed sea he .';tood, and eall'd 
 His legions, — angel-forms, wlio lay entranced, 
 Tliick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa. where the Etrurian shades
 
 Coleridge's criticism. 141 
 
 High overarch'd embower ; or scatter'd Sedge 
 
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 
 
 Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'crthrew 
 
 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
 
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
 
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
 
 From the safe shore their floating carcasses 
 
 And broken chariot-wheels ; so thick bestrown. 
 
 Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 
 
 Under amazement of their hideous change. 
 
 He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep 
 
 Of Hell resounded." 
 
 This burst of wliat may be called the material sublime— arising from 
 the grandeur of space and sound, things of sense — is followed soon by 
 a burst of the moral sublime ; for, when the myriads of immortal spirits 
 thronged around their chief, and the peerage of Pandemonium stood 
 mute in expectation of Satan's voice, — 
 
 " Thrice he assay'd, and thrice, in spite of scorn, 
 Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth." 
 
 It is an observation of Coleridge's that it is very remarkable that in 
 no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters 
 of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art ; while every other page 
 breathes his love and taste for music ; and that, in the "Paradise Lost," 
 Adam bending over the sleeping Eve was t he only proper iiidure he re- 
 membered. This criticism was made in forgetfulness of one of the most 
 picturesque passages in that or any poem, — Adam hearing the first report 
 of Eve's transgression. It will be remembered that 
 
 " Adam the while, 
 Waiting desirous her return, had wove 
 Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn 
 Her tresses, and her rural labours erown, 
 As reapers oft are wont their harvest-queen. 
 Groat joy he promised to his thoughts, and new 
 Solace in her return, so long delay'd ; 
 Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill. 
 Misgave him ; he the faltering measui'C felt. 
 And forth to meet her went, the way she took 
 That morn when flrst they parted." 
 
 The tragic talc of the unresisted temptation is soon told : — 
 " Adam, soon as he heard 
 The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed, 
 Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill 
 Ran through his veins and all his joints relax'd
 
 142 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 From his slack hand the garland wreath'd for Eve 
 Down dropp'd, and all the faded roses shed. 
 Speechless he stood, and pale." 
 
 It should uot be overlooked how far the subject of our English epic 
 traasconds that of all otliers. In comparison, how does the Trojan war, 
 the wanderings of Ulysses, of J^neas, or the argument of either of the 
 great Cliristian epics of modem Italy, dwindle by the side ! The " Para- 
 dise Lost " is the story of the deepest tragedy this earth has ever known, 
 — the tragedy which has caused all other tragedies. While there have 
 been flashing over it the sullen lires from the dark abodes of the rebel 
 angels and from the presence of Satan, there is shed on the catastrophe 
 a soft, pathetic light, giving to the poem that sweet and gentle ending 
 v/hich, familiar though it be, rather would I pass by, as 1 am doing, a 
 thousand other things than it. The angry contentions of this unliappy 
 pair had passed away ; love, which had fled with their innocence, came 
 l)ack with their submissive rei)entauce. God in his mercy sent an angel 
 1o speak hope to the crushed spirit of Adam. He sent a happy dream 
 to give hope to the heart of Eve. The two whom sympat hy of happiness 
 had united were now one in the sympathy of sorrow. Mercifully they 
 were led forth at the eaxkrn gate ; so that when hand in hand they 
 wandered solitary, no longer blessed with the visible presence of God or 
 his angels, their tear-dimmcd eyes might tuna to the Orient, wliere the 
 far-off light of the promised redemption was rising on their darkened 
 hearts : — when, the cherubim descending to their station, and the brand- 
 ished sword of God blazing fierce as a comet, — 
 
 " In either hand the hastening angel caught 
 Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate 
 Led them direct, and down the cliff as first 
 To the suhjected plain ; then disappear'd. 
 They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld 
 Of Paradise, so late their happy seat. 
 Waved over by that flaming brand ; the gate 
 With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms. 
 Some natural tears they dro])p'd, but wiped them soon. 
 The world was all before them where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide : 
 They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow. 
 Through Eden took their solitary way." 
 
 Of ATilton's later poem— the "Pamdise Regained"— I have space 
 but for one remark. It has never atfained its just fame, because it is 
 for ever forced into irrational comparison with the '' Paradise Lost." 
 It is essentially dill'ercut in its whole ehanietcr, for the siitijilcst of all,
 
 THE PARADISE REGAINED. 143 
 
 reasons, — its adaptation to the nature of its subject ; a difference atia- 
 logous, as has been remarked, to that between the style of the Old and 
 New Testaments. The poem is entitled to a judgment by a positive 
 standard, and thus only can justice be rendered to its admirable medita- 
 tive imagination. There is a tradition that the poet himself always 
 denied its inferiority to the "Paradise Lost." I am strongly inclined 
 to think that this meant that he resented what he knew was a senseless 
 comparison of two poems intrinsically ditferent. The "Paradise Re- 
 gained " gives no sanction to the opinion that it betrays a failure of the 
 author's genius. It was an appropriation of his powei's to a new !ind 
 different kind of poetic creation. 
 
 The last of his poems was the " Samson Agonistes," — an English 
 drama in the severest classical form of the Greek tragedy. The student 
 of Milton's poetry will read it with enthusiasm, were it only for its 
 shadowing forth the author's own fortunes, — his dearest hopes betrayed, 
 and left, old and blind, among enemies. The poet was a man to bow 
 without repining to his Maker's will, dark as that will might be ; and I 
 cannot help thinking that this tragic drama was an invention for him to 
 relieve his overcharged heart, — to utter complaints, — to say more bitter 
 things with the tongue of Samson than with his own. We can fancy 
 it the voice of John Milton when the once indomitable but now captive 
 Israelite breaks forth in that piteous and withal majestic utterance of 
 a blind man's agony : — - 
 
 " Oh, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, 
 Without all hope of day ! 
 ' Let there be light, and light was over all.' 
 AVhy am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ? 
 The sun to me is dark 
 And silent as the moon, 
 When she deserts the night, 
 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave." 
 
 In the early part of this lecture I spoke of what had stnick me ;is 
 the magnanimity of Milton's boyhood. That magnanimity had grown 
 with the labours and afflictions of his eventful life ; and the parting 
 thought I have of this great poet finds expression in the last words of 
 his last poem : — that he was one whom God 
 
 " With peace and consolation hath dismiss'd, 
 And calm of mind, all passion spent "
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Pinor ^octrg of i\it ^tbtvAnxd)^ Ccnturg. 
 
 CUAKACTER OF THE TRANSITION FROM MILTON TO DRYDEN— THE RANK OF DRV- 
 DEN AMONG THE POETS— ENGLISH IMAGINATION IN HIS AGE— INFLUENCE OF 
 MILTON'S GENIUS UPON HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS — WORDS- 
 WORTHS APOSTROPHE TO MILTON— DECLINE OF IMAGINATIVE ENERGY— META- 
 PHYSICAL POETRY— D.AlNIEL AND DRAYTON— DRAYTON'S POLYOLlilON- LAMH'S 
 NOTICE OF THIS POEM— DONNE AND COWLEY— THE SIN OF THIS SCHOOL OF 
 POETRY— POETRY A SUBJECT FOR STUDIOUS THOUGH'H'ULNESS— DONNE'S " LEC- 
 TURE "—CHARACTER OF COWLEY'S GENIUS— HIS PROSE ESSAYS— " THE COM- 
 PLAINT"— THE CONCEITS OF THE POETRY OF THIS PERIOD— HERBERT'S LINES 
 ON\TRTUE; LIFE; PEACE— HERBERT'S SELF-CRITICISM— SACRED POETRY OF THE 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-ROBERT HERRICK— HIS LITANY TO THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 —THE MUSIC OF HIS VERSE-LITERARY INTEREST OF THE CIVIL WAR— LORD 
 CHATHAM ON THE CHARAafER OF THIS STRUGGLE— THE PURITAN SYSTEM AD- 
 VERSE TO POETIC CULTURE— RICH^S.RD LOVEI ACE— •' TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON" 
 —GEORGE WITHER— HIS CHARACTER— HIS ADDRESS TO HIS MUSE— A TRIBUTE 
 TO WITHERS MEMORY'. 
 
 IN tracing the progress of English Poetry tlius far, there has been 
 no occasiou for doubt in selecting the poets who may justly be 
 deemed its representatives in different eras. The light of poetic in- 
 spiration first held on high by old Chaucer was given in succession to 
 tlie giant hands of Spenser, of Shaksi)care, and of ISIilton, — men of 
 such might tliat no one ventures to question the supremacy of any of 
 them in his own age. We have moved on, turning over the annals of 
 a dynasty of noble poets, — the noblest of their kind. Preserving the 
 historical character of these lectures, I pass from the name of Milton 
 to that of Dryden. But this is a transition not to be made without 
 pausing to reflect on the changes that at that period Avere beginning to 
 f)ass over the spirit of the English Muse. The transition is a transition 
 of descent : it will bring us down into a lower region. We have been 
 dwelling among the mountains, and have caught the voice of poetry 
 carried on from one lofty peak to another ; and, after listening to the 
 solemn strains of the "Paradise Lo.st " echoing in the upper air, we 
 hear the next sound, far away, rising u]) in the lowlands. Is it then at 
 all sur])risiiig that I am apju-oacliiiig tliis ])eriod of English ])octry with 
 reluctance ? T tind I am making <'xcuses to myself for lingering a while 
 longer in the liigli and pure atmosphere, — a sunny region full of life,—
 
 THE POETICAL RANK Of DKVDEX. 145 
 
 ■*hen the path I must follow leads precipitately down into a valley not 
 wholly free from unwholesome shades and fogs obscuring the placid 
 canopy of the blue sky. 
 
 The most indulgent criticism appropriates to Drydcn no higher sta- 
 tion than the first rank among the secondary English poets. His period 
 is the last tliirty years of the seventeenth century. The character of 
 the literature was undergoing a great change. The spirit of the nation, 
 too, was changing ; and its poetry especially betrayed sympathy and 
 suffering with the change, for it was losing much of its distinctive cha- 
 racter. PubUc opinion and feeling were, by the operation of causes re- 
 maining to be noticed, abased and corrupted ; and poetry did not escape 
 the contagion. The high moral tone of the Muse of the great earlier 
 poets was lowered ; and English imagination, parting with a portion of 
 its native strength and simplicity, became at once a meaner and more 
 mechanical thing. The change was not a sudden one ; at least there 
 had been indications of it at a much earlier period; and I propose, 
 therefore, before closing the examination of the poetry of the seven- 
 teenth century with Dryden, to glance over the previous portions of 
 that century, for the purpose of ascertaining what were the various 
 manifestations of its literature, and especially those tending to form its 
 fashion, at the close of that age. In this it will be necessary to notice 
 some of the poets whom I passed by when I entered on the subject of 
 my last lecture. It wiU be perceived that I am taking the liberty of 
 deviating a Httle from the original prospectus of the course, in devoting 
 one lecture (the present) to the minor poetry of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury ; it being my intention to appropriate the next lecture to the 
 poetry of both Dryden and Pope, the times of the Restoration and of 
 Queen Anne. 
 
 In taking a retrospect of the literary character and influence of any 
 age, it is necessary to guard against falling into the error of supposing 
 that an author whose fame has been realized by posterity possessed 
 equal repute and authority in his own day. I selected, for instance, 
 without hesitation, Milton, as the great poet of the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century; and yet the poetry of Milton was far from being tlie influ- 
 ential — the dominant — poetry of those times. Smaller stars were in 
 the ascendant. When we come, therefore, to the transition from Milton 
 to Dryden, the poetry of the latter differs so essentially from the 
 former that one would be at faiJt in comprehending the change in so 
 short a space of time, unless we turn to other poetry to discover in it 
 some intimations of the poetic style with which the century closed. If 
 
 L
 
 14G LTICTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 the genius of Milton h;icl early gained the same hold it has since ac- 
 quired over the thouglilful admiration of later times, English poetry 
 never eould have assumed so readily the guise it wore in the years 
 immediately subsequent to the " Paradise Lost." It seems strange, but, 
 I believe, correct, when I say that I can discover no influence exerted 
 by the great productions of Milton upon the character of his poetical 
 contemporaries or immediate successors. Indeed, he lived and died 
 with as little congeniality manifested by the world as ever served to 
 sustain the heart of genius. Happily for the world of all ages, that 
 heart had a better-sustaining power, in the sense of its own ma- 
 jesty, and its trust upon heavenly guardianship. Excepting a few true 
 friends, such as the Republican poet Marvell and the kind-liearted EU- 
 wood (a name which may be dear not oidy to his own Society of Friends, 
 l)ut to all that speak the English tongue, were it only for the happy 
 prompting of the idea of " Paradise Regained "), — with the exception of 
 a few Like these, Milton earned no sympathies for the Muse of his later 
 years,— the great years of his poetic career. His spirit was aloof from 
 all their modes of thought and feeling ; and, thus contemplating him, has 
 Wordsworth finely apostrophized his illustrious predecessor, Milton : — 
 
 ' Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ; 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea ; 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free : 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way 
 In cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart 
 The lowliest duties on herself did laj'." 
 
 The literary period of Dryden and those amidst whom he was pre- 
 eminent was in no respect, that I can perceive, affected by the best 
 poetry which had gone before. The current of poetry the public taste 
 was floating on was like the slow — the regulated and artificial — stream 
 of a canal ; while at the same time, close beside it, the mighty river of 
 Milton's genius was flowing at his own sweet will, copiously, impetu- 
 ously, majestically, in its native channel and with its native tides. 
 What were the poetic authorities wliere Milton's influence was unavail- 
 ing —I shall endeavour to ascertain in this and the next lecture. 
 
 Rcfore doing so, it will be necessary to discover the agencies which 
 in 1h(! earlier part of the century had begun to give a direction to Eng- 
 lish poetry. The poetry which we have been contemplating in the pre- 
 vious lectures was eminently and gloriously imaginative. In all that 
 proceeded from Spenser and Shakspeare and Milton, it was obvious 
 that the controlling faculty was imagination; it was pui-e and high
 
 SAMUEL da:niel. 14.7 
 
 poetry, — the product of (he great characteristic of poetic genius, — tliat 
 conibinatiou of fancy, judgment, meditation, and invention, which to- 
 gether constitute imagination in its most comprehensive form, and 
 whose prime glory is its perpetual truth to nature. The great change 
 that came over English poetry was the departure from nature, and the 
 decline of imaginative energy. 
 
 The English nation, under the stirring influences of the Reformation, 
 had become a deeply-thinking, reflective, and learned people. A philo- 
 sophical condition of opinion prevailed ; and, while those who combined 
 with it an imaginative east of mind would find aU their hearts could 
 desire on the pages of the great poets, — food for meditation and food 
 f(jr imagination in the storehouses of Spenser and Shakspeare, — there 
 was another order of minds, to whom was supplied a poetry more con- 
 genial, for it showed an increased activity of the reasonint/ faculties 
 and a diminished vigour of imagination. Erom this condition of public 
 taste arose two schools of poetry. The first and best of these the 
 philosophical poetry, as it has been styled, because it brought within the 
 territory of poetry subjects usually left to the analytical processes of 
 the understanding ; such, for instance, as the immortality of the soul 
 and its various functions. Tlie second of these schools is that which 
 lias obtained inappropriately the title of the metapjhi/.sical jioef/y ; — inap- 
 propriately, because no one has yet discovered why it should be so 
 called, and also because the epithet would aptly belong to the other 
 species of poetry, called, somewhat ambiguously, the philosophical. In 
 both of these, those qualities which are deemed the essential elements 
 of poetical composition are either placed on a level with or made subor- 
 dinate to other qualities of the mind. I have no wish to adopt so strict 
 a creed as wholly to exclude argumentative poetry ; but it is proper to 
 appreciate that it can never be elevated to the high order of inspiration, 
 because it is addressed not to the imagination, or even to the fancy or 
 the heart, but to the understanding. 
 
 There are two poets of the early part of the seventeenth century 
 whom I cannot find in my heart to pass by in absolute silence— con- 
 temporaries of Spenser and Shakspeare, — Daniel and Drayton. The 
 poems of the former are distinguished both for a purity and naturalness 
 of diction and a tenderness of feeling and elevated thought which give 
 them a high value. In the whole catalogue of English poets there is 
 no one more right-minded, more right-hearted, than Samuel Daniel. 
 The moral tone of his genius may be illustrated in such a passage 
 as this description of wliat he calls "the concord of a weU-tuued 
 mind:"- 
 
 L 2
 
 148 LKCTURE SKYKNTir. 
 
 " He that of such a height hath built his mind. 
 And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, 
 As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame 
 Of his resolved powers, nor all the wind 
 Of vanity or malice piece to wrong 
 His settled peace, or to disturb the same, — 
 What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may 
 The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey ! 
 
 " And with how free an eye doth he look down 
 Upon these lower regions of turmoil ! 
 Where all the storms of passion mainly beat 
 On flesh and blood ; where honour, power, renown, 
 Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ; 
 Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet 
 As frailtj- doth, and only great doth seem 
 To little minds who do it so esteem. 
 « * » * 
 
 " And while distraught ambition compasses 
 And is cncompass'd, — whilst as craft deceives 
 And is deceived, — whilst man doth ransuchen * man, 
 And builds on blood, and rises by distress. 
 And the inheritance of desolation leaves 
 To great-exjjecting hopes, — he looks thereon, 
 As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, 
 And bears no venture in impiety ; 
 
 " Knowing the heart of man is set to be 
 The centre of this world, about the which 
 These revolutions of disturbances 
 Still roll ; where all the aspects of misery 
 Predominate ; whose strong effects are such 
 As he must bear, being powerless to redress ; 
 And that unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, — how poor a thing is man ! " 
 
 L can stop to notice only one other passage, having a double interest, 
 as expressing his thoughtful pride in the power of the English lan- 
 guage, and as prophetic of the spread of that language over the vast 
 regions of America : — 
 
 " Should we, careless, come behind the rest 
 In power of words, that go before in worth. 
 When as our accents, equal to the best, 
 Is able greater wonders to bring forth ? 
 When all that ever hotter spirits express'd 
 Comes better'd by the patience of the North ? 
 
 • Ransack.
 
 MICHAEL DRATTON. l^O 
 
 And who (in timo) knows whither we may vent 
 
 The treasure of our tongue ? — to wliat strange shores 
 
 This gain of our best gloiy shall be sent, 
 
 T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? — 
 
 What worlds in the yet unformed Occident 
 
 May come refined with the accents that are ours ? " 
 
 The other poet I have alluded to — Michael Drayton — deserves a bet- 
 ter fame than the world has giveu him, were it to rest only on his most 
 elaborate work,— the " Polyolbion," — the most extraordinary produc- 
 tion, in some respects, that ever issued from poetic imagination. It 
 was the fli'st, and probably will be the last, topographical poem on the 
 records of poetry. He is the panegyrist of his native country, the main 
 subject of his poem being the rivers of England ; and, as Charles Lamb 
 lias said of him, " he has gone over the soil with the fidelity of a herald 
 and the paint"ul love of a son ; he has not left a rivulet, so narrow that 
 it may be stepped over, without honourable mention, and has animated 
 hills and streams with life and passion above the dreams of old myiho- 
 logy." The poem, which is one of the longest in the language, is com- 
 posed in the rarely -used verse of twelve syllables known by the name of 
 " Alexandrine," and, while combining a most elaborate accumulation of 
 historic, legendary, and fabulous tradition, is distinguished for a higher 
 strain of imagination than might at first be expected from a theme so 
 unpromising for the purposes of poetry as topography. But it should 
 be remembered that with the rivers of a country a thousand associa- 
 tions—actual and mythical— are for ever flowing. At the mere mention 
 of such names as the Jordan, the Nile, the Tiber, the Rhine, the 
 Thames, the Tweed, or the mournful Yarrow, or the history-honoured, 
 blood-stained waters of our own land, how do thoughts and feelings rise 
 up in our minds as unceasing as their springs ! Among these early 
 poets there are few to whose neglected memory the student will feel, 
 on acquaintance, more disposed to render affectiouate and dutiful hom- 
 age than ^Michael Drayton ; and let lis part with liim, holding in our 
 recollections one of his smaller pieces, which would bear comparison 
 M-ith the best of that species of poetry in which there has been so much 
 of worthless effusion; — I mean amatory poetry ;— for, from Anacreon 
 down to Moore, I know of no lines on the old subject of lovers' quarrels, 
 distinguished for equal tenderness of sentiment and richness of fancy. 
 Especially may be observed the exquisite gracefulness in the transition 
 from the familiar tone in the first part of the sonnet to the deeper feel- 
 ing and the higher strain of imagination at the close : —
 
 150 LECTUKK SEVENTn. 
 
 " Since there 's no help, come, let us kiss and part. 
 
 Nay, I have done : you get no more of me ; 
 And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart. 
 
 That thus so cleanly I myself can free ! 
 Shake hands for ever ; cancel all our vows ; 
 
 And, when we meet at any time again, 
 « Be it not seen in either of our brows 
 
 That we one jot of former love retain. 
 Note at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, 
 
 When, his pulse failing , Passion speechless lies, 
 IVheit Faith is kneeling hij his bed of death 
 
 And Innocence is closing up his eyes, 
 Xow, if thou wouldst, token all have given him over. 
 From death to life thou mighVst him yet recover." 
 
 While Daniel and Drayton preserved in their poetry —if not in high ele- 
 ^'ation, at least in jnst proportions — the various elements of thought and 
 feeling and fancy, the early and middle parts of the seventeenth century 
 ])roduced two other poets whose influence was wider and more abiding. 
 It is usual to regard Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's, as tlie first, a-.id 
 Cowley as the chief, of the metaphysical poets, as they have been styled. 
 The irredeemable sin of this scliool of poetry was its sacrifice of luiturc, 
 and, consequently, of poetic truth. The rule of its inspiration was 
 abandonment of simplicity. Natural imagery, natural feeling, and jias- 
 sion, — natural expression, — all were insufficient to reach the standarii- 
 mark of its extravagance. It was deemed the perfection of poetry so 
 to entangle every poetic image or impulse in a maze of scholastic al- 
 lusions, in forced and arbitrary turns of thought, paradoxes, antitheses, 
 quaintnesses, subtleties, tliat the reader's chief pleasure must liave been 
 the exercise of a correspondent and inappropriate ingenuity in discover- 
 ing the path of the labyrinth. It could have been no more than the ne- 
 gative satisfaction in unravelling a riddle. Still, to readers of acutely- 
 intellectual habits of mind, the exercise of reading this poetry, we can 
 readily understand, brought a certain kind and a considerable amount 
 of mental satisfaction, which became a substitute for the imaginative 
 delight imparted by true poetry, and perliaps mistaken for it. The feel- 
 ing was much more akin to a mathematician's pleasure in some achieve- 
 ment in his severe abstractions, or to tliat of an adroit chess-player. 
 Let me not for one moment be understood as condemning this poetry 
 because it demands thought ; for, if there be any one; principle I am 
 more anxious to inculcate than another in this course of lectures, it is 
 that all the highest and purest poetry can be a])prcciated oidy by studi-
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE AND COWLET. 151 
 
 ous and imaginative thoughtfnlness. It is this error which greatly is the 
 cause of false and low tastes in poetry. I have not treated, in the pre- 
 vious lectures, of any one poet whose genius cau be approached other- 
 wise than with due meditation. But the poetry I am now speaking of 
 demands not so much thought as shrewdness, acuteuess, ingenuity, iu- 
 tellectual dexterity; or perhaps it woidd describe it more justly, as well 
 as more favourably, to say that it demands thought and nothing but 
 thought, — no imagination, no passion, which are the life of real poetry. 
 I might, for instance, select many pieces of this poetry, and before I 
 had reached a dozen lines I should have perplexed and bewildered both 
 you and myself. It may safely be said to be a poetry which makes it 
 necessary for the reader to have, to use the familiar phrase, his wits 
 about him. A short piece of Donne's, entitled " A Lecture," is as fa- 
 vourable a specimen as I can cite to characterize both his merits and 
 his faults. This species of poetry prevailed for so considei'able a time, 
 and had such iuiiuence, that, in a course ou English poetry, it cannot 
 well be passed by. It is, however, only a very small amount of it I 
 shall ask your endurance of : — 
 
 " Stand still, and I will read to thee 
 A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy. 
 These three hours that we have spent 
 Walking here, two shadows went 
 Along with us, which we ourselves produced. 
 But, now the sun is just above our head, 
 We do those shadows tread. 
 And to brave clearness all things are reduced. 
 So, whilst our infant loves did grow, 
 Disguises did, and shadows, flow 
 From us, and from our cares : now, 'tis not so 
 That love hath not attain'd the highest degree 
 Which is still diligent lest others see ; 
 Except our loves at this noon stay, 
 We shall new shadows make the other way. 
 The morning shadows wear away ; 
 But these grow larger all the day." 
 
 On this quaint piece of poetry I have no other comment to make than 
 to say that a courtship must have been an exceedingly formidable busi- 
 ness when the wooing was done in this style. It was the remark of 
 one of the philosophical poets of the seventeenth century, in allusion to 
 the copiousness of his fancy, that he was forced to cut his way through 
 a crowd of thoughts as through a wood. The remark applies to all of 
 them. That school of poetiy laboured under a very unusual difficulty,— 
 an excess of intellectual activity ; for the more frequent peril of poetry
 
 152 LECTUEE SEVENTH, 
 
 is that its metrical music is too often made to conceal an emptiness 
 of tliought ; and so it is that rhyme is sometimes taken as the antithesis 
 of reason. These poets under consideration arrayed not only the thoughts 
 which their strong intellect and large scholarship natui-ally suggested, 
 but ingenuity was tortured to gather from all quarters all possible de- 
 vices. Their poems abound with conceits wonderfully far-fetched, often 
 worth little after all. In short, the poetry was fantastic instead of 
 imaginative. It is instructive, however, sometimes to find nature 
 breaking through the throng of these inventions ; some strong passion 
 bursting the bonds of a false taste, — false both in conception and ex- 
 pression, — and finding utterance in hearty simplicity of speech. 
 
 Of the ability of so fantastic a poet as Domie to express a simple 
 thought in simple words, I cannot give better proof than the two ad- 
 mirable lines quoted in a former lecture, of his epitaph on Shakspeare : — 
 " Under this curled marble of thine own. 
 Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakspeare, sleep alone ! " 
 
 The chief representative of this poetry was Cowley, — a man^ however, 
 of poetic genius, with a poet's mind and a poet's sensibility, sadly as 
 he was shackled by the influence of a false, and of course temporary, 
 fashion. He was the contemporary of ]\lilton, and far more prosperous 
 in a speedy popularity, — the poet of the Royalists, as Milton was of the 
 Republicans. That quick success was gained at the cost of an enduring 
 and higher fame ; and it is impossible to read the poetry of Cowley 
 without mourning over the sacrifice. No eidtivation, it is true, could 
 have made him one of the greatest poets ; but it might have made him 
 much greater than he was. From childhood he had a poet's heart. In 
 one of his admirable prose essays,— admirable for a native simplicity 
 greatly contrasted with the ovei'wrought fancy of his verse,— he says, 
 " I remember, Avhen I began to read and to take some pleasure in it, 
 there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what ac- 
 cident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) ; 
 — but there was wont to lie Spenser's works. This I happened to faU 
 upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights and 
 giants and monsters and brave houses which I found everywhere there 
 (though my understanding had little to do with all this), and, by de- 
 grees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers ; so 
 that, I think, I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, 
 and was thus made a poet in childhood." It would have been well for 
 Cowley if his loidi'rstanduig had not had quite so much to do with his 
 own poetry, and his imagimition and native feeling more. He was in- 
 volved in the turmoil of the civil war, not to come out of it, like his
 
 THE COMPLAINT. 153 
 
 mighty contemporary, Milton, with powers invigorated by the strife, 
 and ready to gather them for the composition of an immortal poem, hnt 
 rather to lament over the loss of congenial pursuits, and self-sacrifice in 
 a thankless cause. His loyalty was rewarded by a heartless monarch's 
 ingratitude ; and one of the best of Cowley's poems is that entitled 
 " The Complaint," composed when shades were gathering over the 
 evening of his days : — 
 
 " In a deep vision's intellectual scene, 
 Beneath a bower for sorrows made, — 
 
 The uncomfortable shade 
 
 Of the black yew's unlucky green 
 Mix'd with the mourning willow's careful gray 
 AVhere reverend Cam cuts out his famous way, 
 
 The melancholy Cowley lay ; 
 And lo ! a Muse appear'd to 's closed sight 
 (The Muses oft in lands of vision play). 
 Bodied, array'd, and seen by aii internal light. 
 A golden harp with silver strings she bore ; 
 A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore, 
 In which all colours and all figures were 
 That nature or that fancy can create. 
 
 That art can never imitate. 
 
 She touch'd him with her harp and raised him from the ground. 
 The shaken strings melodiously resound. 
 
 ' Art though return'd at last,' said she, 
 
 ' To this forsaken place and me ? 
 Thou prodigal, who flidst so loosely waste 
 Of all thy youthful years the good estate ; 
 Art thou return'd here, to repent too late. 
 And gather husks of learning up at last. 
 Now the rich harvest-time of life is past, 
 
 And winter marches on so fast .' 
 
 When I resolved to exalt thy anointed name 
 
 Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fune. 
 
 Thou changeling ! thou, bewitch'd with noise and show, 
 
 Wouldst into courts and cities from me go ; 
 
 Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share 
 
 In all the follies and the tumults there. 
 
 Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a state ; 
 
 And business thou wouldst find and wouldst create. 
 
 ' Go, renegado, cast up thy account ; 
 
 And see to what amount 
 
 Thy foolish gains by quitting me : — 
 The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
 
 154 LECTUEF- SEVENTH. 
 
 The fruits of thy unlearn'd apostasy. 
 
 Thou thought'st, if once the public storm were past, 
 
 All thy remaining life should sunshine be : 
 
 Behold ! the public storm is spent at last ; 
 
 The sovereign 's toss'd at sea no more ; 
 
 And thou, with all the noble company, 
 
 Art got at last to shore. 
 But, whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see 
 All march'd up to possess the promised land, 
 Thou, still alone, alas ! dost gaping stand 
 Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.' 
 
 " Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile 
 That secm'd at once to pity and revile. 
 And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head. 
 
 The melancholy Cowley said, 
 
 ' Ah, wanton foe ! dost thou upbraid 
 
 The ills which thou thyself hast made ? 
 When in the cradle innocent 1 lay, 
 Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away, 
 
 And my abused soul didst bear 
 Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where, — 
 
 Thy golden Indies in the air. 
 
 And ever since I strive in vain 
 
 My ravi.sh'd freedom to regain ; 
 Still I rebel, still thou dost reign ; 
 Lo ! still in verse against thee 1 complain. 
 
 There is a sort of stubborn weeds 
 Which, if the earth but once, it ever, breeds ; 
 
 No wholesome herb can near them thrive, 
 
 No useful plant can keep alive. 
 The foolish sports I did on thee bestow 
 Make all raj- art and labour fruitless now ; 
 Where once such fairies dcuice, 7io grass doth ever grow." 
 
 In estimatin;; the poetry of this period, it is very common to condeinii 
 it for the coiieeits it abounds with. This is a censure in whicli it is 
 necessaiy to exercise some caution. It is true that simplicity of 
 thought is a precious element of poetry as distinguished from compli- 
 cations and involutions and entanglements of thought. The fault iu 
 many of these poets was, that, not content with a thought or feeling in 
 its first simple fomi, they wandered far away from it in search of all 
 fantastic allusions; and when they bring you back to the original 
 thouglit or feeling, its life is gone ;— it is dead and spiritless. These; 
 arc what arc called cold conceih. But it has been well said that a con- 
 ceit is not necessarily cold. The mind, in certain states of passion. 
 Cuds comfort in playing with occult or casual resemblances, and dallies
 
 HERBEKT's lines on " VIRTUE." 155 
 
 with the echo of a sound. What is not a conceit to those who read it 
 in a temper different from that in which the writer composed it ? The 
 most patlietic parts of poetry to cold tempers seem and are nonsense, 
 us divinity was to the Greeks foolishness. When Eichard the Second, 
 meditating on his own utter annihilation as to royalty, cries out, — 
 
 " Oh that I were a mockery -king of snow, 
 Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 
 To melt myself away in water-drops ! " — 
 
 If we have been going on pace for pace with the passion before, this 
 sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor into something to be 
 actually realized in nature, hke that of Jeremiah, — " Oh that my head 
 were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears ! " — is strictly and 
 strikingly natui'al. But come unprepared upou it, and it is a conceit ; 
 and so is a "head " turned into "waters." 
 
 It is necessary to understand that real feeling may be compatible wit!» 
 a great deal of eccentricity of thought and quaintncss of imagery in 
 poetry, in order to appreciate those singular strains which, fancy- 
 wrought as they are, were uttered from the very bottom of the heart 
 of that sweet singer, George Herbert. It is poetry with many of the; 
 characteristics of the serious poetry of the seventeenth century, but 
 with feeling, fancy, and thought blended together in proportions unlike 
 the combination on any other pages. It is essentially devotional, — de- 
 votion, with Fancy serving it with the speed and wildness of a fairy's 
 movements, taking any shape that poetic ingenuity could give, with the 
 
 hope, that 
 
 " A verse may catch a wandering soul that flies 
 Profounder tracts, and, by a blest surprise, 
 Convert delight into a sacrifice." 
 
 IMiat, in its way, can be more pleasing than the sweet moralizing in 
 what are perhaps his best-known lines, — on virtue ?— 
 " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 The bridal of the earth and sky. 
 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; 
 For thou must die. 
 " Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave. 
 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, 
 Thy root is ever in its grave ; 
 And thou must die. 
 " Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, — 
 A box where sweets compacted lie, — 
 My music show ye have your closes ; 
 And all must die.
 
 15(> LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 '■ Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
 Like season'd timber, never gives. 
 But, though the whole world turn to coal. 
 Then chiefly lives." 
 
 His lines on " Life " have somewhat a more solemn strain, but so 
 irentle a warning to mortality that even the young, liglit heart of beauty, 
 lia})py with its innocent tribute of flowers, may not unwillingly receive 
 a salutary pensiveness : — ■ 
 
 " I made a posy while the day ran by : 
 Here will I .smell my remnant out, and tie 
 
 My life within this band. 
 But time did beckon to the flowers, and they 
 By noon most cunningly did steal away. 
 And wither'd in my hand. 
 
 " My hand was next to them, and then my heart ; 
 I took, without more thinking, in good part 
 
 Time's gentle admonition, 
 Who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey. 
 Making my mind to smell my fatal day. 
 Yet sugaring the suspicion. 
 
 " Farewell, dear flowers ! sweetly your time ye spent ! 
 Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament, 
 
 And, after death, for cures; 
 I follow straight, without complaints or grief. 
 Since, if my scent be good, I care not if 
 
 It be as short as yours ! " 
 
 As a specimen of Herbert's more fantasiic mood in dealing witli his 
 lioly themes, I may cite the little poem entitled "Peace:" — 
 
 " Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell ? I humbly crave 
 Let mc once know. 
 I sought thee in a secret cave, 
 
 And ask'd if Peace were there. 
 A hollow wind did seem to answer, ' No ; 
 Go seek elsewhere.' 
 
 " I did; and, going, did a rainbow note : 
 ' Surely,' thought I, 
 ' This is the lace of Peace's coat : 
 I will search out the matter' 
 But, while I look'd, the clouds immediately 
 Did break and scatter. 
 
 " Then went I to a garden, and did spy 
 A gallant flower, — 
 The crown imperial. ' Sure,' said I,
 
 heebekt's self-cktticism. 157 
 
 ' Peace at the root must dwell.' 
 But, when I digg'd, I saw a worm devour 
 What show'd so well. 
 *' At length I met a reverend, good old man, 
 Whom, when for Peace 
 I did demand, he thus began : — 
 
 ' There was a prince of old 
 At Salem dwelt, who lived with good increase 
 Of flock and fold. 
 " ' He sweetly lived ; yet sweetness did not save 
 His life from foes. 
 But, after death, out of his grave 
 
 There sprang twelve stalks of wheat, 
 Which, many wondering at, got some of tlio^o 
 To plant and set. 
 " ' It prosper'd strangely, and did soon disperse 
 Through all the earth ; 
 For they that taste it do rehearse 
 
 That virtue lies therein, — 
 A secret virtue, bringing peace and mirtli 
 By flight of sin. 
 " ' Take of this grain which in my garden grows. 
 And grow for yon. 
 Make bread of it ; and that repose 
 And peace, which everywhere 
 With so much earnestness you do pursue. 
 Is only there.' " 
 
 That Herbert's poetry has many of the characteristics of the meta- 
 pliysical poetry of Donne and Cowley cannot be denied, but redeemed 
 by the fervent spirit of devotion breathing in every line. It is not the 
 expression of a well-disciplined imagination, but is rather instinct with 
 fancy. With all its peculiarities, — to use a kinder term than faults, — 
 I had rather take it as it is, as one of the many tones of Englisli poetry, 
 than that its distinctive features should have been done away by stricter 
 poetic discipline. It is curious to observe that Herbert has himself 
 alluded to his participation in the over-wrought fashion of poetry, in a 
 few lines which indicate its faults better, I think, than criticism has 
 ever done, and close, too, with a statement of the best and universal 
 theory of poetic art, — loyalty to nature in her own simplicity : — 
 
 When first my lines of heavenly joys made mention, 
 
 Such was their lustre, — they did so excel, — 
 
 That I sought out quaint words and trim invention. 
 
 My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell. 
 
 Curling with metaphors a plain intention. 
 
 Decking the sense as if it were to sell.
 
 158 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 " Thousands of notions in my brain did run, 
 
 Offering their service if I were not sped, 
 
 I often blotted what I had begun : 
 
 This was not quick enough, and that was dciid, 
 
 Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sun, 
 
 Much less those jojs which tramjde on his head. 
 " As flames do work and wind, when they ascend, 
 
 So did I weave myself into the sense ; 
 
 But, while I bustled, I might hear a friend 
 
 Whisper, ' How wide is all this long pretence ? 
 
 There is in love a sweetness ready penn'd ; 
 
 Copy out only that, and save expense.' " 
 
 Herbert is one of the many minor poets to whom we are indebted for 
 the sacred poetry of the seventeenth centm-y, which is so vohnninous 
 ihat it has been truly said a history of it might be regarded as an 
 elaborate preface to the " Paradise Lost." 
 
 Passing from the serious to the light poetry of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, we meet with strains as light in their movement as fancy ever 
 danced to. Even in the songs, however, of that period there is a vein 
 of reflection showing thoughtfulncss in the midst of sportiveness, as in 
 the first stanzas of that light lyric of Herrick's : — 
 
 " Gather the rose-buds while ye maj- ; 
 Old Time is still a-flying ; 
 And this same flower that smiles to-day 
 To-morrow may be dying. 
 " The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
 The higher he 's a-getting 
 The sooner will his race be run. 
 And nearer he 's to setting." 
 
 It was to this poet, Robert Herrick, that English verse owes some 
 of its most graceful and musical metrical arrangements. The music of 
 the sweetest of Moore's melodies does not, it sounds to me, surpass tlic 
 modulation of the verses entitled "The Night Piece:" — 
 
 " Her eyes the glowworm lend thee ; 
 The shooting stars attend thee ; 
 
 And the elves also. 
 
 Whose little eyes glow 
 Like the sparks of fires, befriend thee. 
 " No will-of-thc wisp mislight thee ; 
 Nor snake or slow- worm bite thee ; 
 
 But on thy way 
 
 Not making a stay, 
 Since ghost there is none to affright thee.
 
 ROBERT HERRICK. 159 
 
 " Let not the dark thee cumber ; 
 What though the moon doth slumber ? 
 The stars of the night 
 Will lend thee their light, 
 Like tapers clear without number. 
 
 " Then, Julia, let me woo thee, 
 Thus, thus to come unto me ; 
 
 And, when I shall meet 
 
 Thy silvery feet. 
 My soul I '11 pour into thee." 
 
 It seems to have been Herrick's pleasure to try the sound of a great 
 variety of rhythms, to find what music the language was capable of. 
 The musical close of the following Imes is the result of one of these 
 experiments : — 
 
 " Am I despised because you say. 
 And I dare swear, that I am grey ? 
 Know, lady, you have but your day ; 
 And time shall come when you shall wear 
 Such frost and snow upon your hair. 
 And when (though long it comes to pas.>) 
 You question with your looking-glass, 
 And in that sincere crystal seek 
 But find no rose-bud in your cheek, 
 Nor any bed to give the show 
 Where such a rare carnation grew, -^ 
 Ah ! then, too late, close in your chamber keeping, 
 
 It will be told 
 
 That you are old. 
 By those true tears you 're weeping I ' ' 
 
 Of Herrick's sacred poems the most ^admired is his "Litany to the 
 Holy Spirit," of which the best stanzas are perhaps these : — 
 
 " In the hour of my distresse. 
 When temptations me oppresse, 
 And when I my sins confcsse, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 When I lie within my bed, 
 Sick in heart and sick in head. 
 And with doubts discomforted. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 * * * * 
 
 When the house doth sigh and weep, 
 And the world is drown'd in sleep. 
 Yet mine eyes the watch do keep. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me !
 
 160 LKCTURE SEVENTU. 
 
 When the passing bell doth toll, 
 And the furies, in a shoal. 
 Come to frifjht a parting soul, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 When the tapers now burn blue 
 And the comforters are few. 
 And that number more than true, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 * # • . # 
 
 When the judgment is reveal'd. 
 And that open'd which was seal'd ; 
 When to Thee I have appeal'd. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! " 
 
 In tracing the progress of English poetry and endeavouring to pre 
 serve some general reference to the course of English national history, 
 though of necessity in a very loose way, I cannot pass by an era so 
 memorable as the great civU. war in the seventeenth century. The 
 cliaracter of that period, its men and its events, is a theme of moment- 
 ous interest if treated with reference to political and ecclesiastical 
 considerations. Its literary interest is but small. The times were too 
 troublous : the elements of society in wild commotion,^thc feverish 
 anxiety of domestic war, with its protracted miseries, — all were adverse 
 to activity in the cause of letters. There was not repose enough for 
 the meditation which is needful for all good writing. Now, I have no 
 wish to mingle views of politics with views of poetry, when they have 
 little, if anything, to do with each other. But there is a prevalent 
 error touching the literature of those times, which ought to be noticed. 
 I mean the habit of speaking of the Republican party in the civil war 
 as the less poetical party. This is one of those prescriptive forms of 
 speech which are handed from one author to another, -so habitually 
 repeated that its truth is not questioned ; and I have observed that it 
 has blinded the most acute and accurate of the iiistorians. When you 
 come to reflect upon it, why, there is one single Republican name that 
 will outweigh the Royalist poets of the whole century. You may place 
 in one scale the poetry of Milton, and in the other that of Cowley, the 
 best poet of the other side, \vith all the effusions of every poet of 
 kindred politics,— you may pile thereon all the antipathies and prejudices 
 of Dr. Johnson, — and the beam of the l)alancc will still scarcely ))e 
 moved to recover its equipoise. But, while I notice sucli an opinion 
 for the purpose of denying its trutli, I feel, at the same time, that there 
 is sometliing low and unwortliy in bringing poetry witliin the range of 
 political partisanship. What has it to do with such things? And has
 
 EFFECTS OF PURITANISM ON POETKY. IGl 
 
 it not, on the other hand, to do with a lofty enthusiasm in all its forms? 
 If ever there was a strife in which high and pure principles and noble 
 emotions were arrayed on both sides, it Avas that civO war. The general 
 character of the struggle was, I believe, truly given in the words of 
 one of the greatest British statesmen and orators, when Lord Chatham 
 said of it, " There was ambit ion ; there was sedition ; there was violence : 
 hut no man shall persuade me it was not the cause of liberty on one 
 side and of tyranny on the other." Ou each side tliere were vices : on 
 the one, fanaticism and hypocrisy, on the other, profligacy and voluptuous- 
 ness ; and, on both sides, violence and tyranny. But what gives that 
 contest its glorious interest is that the ranks of each great party of the 
 nation contained noble spirits, in whom where embodied, on the one side, 
 the high-minded enthusiasm of a generous loyalty, and, on the other, 
 the equally fervid enthusiasm of the love of freedom, — happy in its 
 hopes and its short-lived enjoyment of republicanism. 
 
 " No sea 
 Swells like the bosom of a man set fi'ee ! " 
 
 In contemplating that period, it should be with the large-hearted 
 candour which can recognise and admire the strength and purity of 
 these opposing principles, reverencing both the spotless integrity of a 
 faithful cavalier like Derby, sealing his loyalty with his blood ; and, ou 
 the other hand, the magnanimity of those who aspii'cd to political free- 
 dom in the spirit of moral freedom, 
 
 " The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington, 
 Young Vane, and others, who call'd Milton friend." 
 
 Now, when I come to the study of the poetry of that generation, I 
 seek to know whether it may not be found in connection with those 
 strong and generous passions which belonged to the best representatives 
 of the times. I need not stop to observe that the Puritan system and 
 discipline were adverse — avowedly so — to poetic culture. It was vanity 
 to their strict intellect, — a toy for the malignants. Nor need I more 
 than state that, in the ephemeral poetry (if the political songs and sa- 
 tires deserved the title of poetry), the polished Cavaliers knew how to 
 play the game ])etter than their stern opponents, the Roundheads. I 
 would fiud some poetry more enduring than those occasional things, and 
 in sympathy witli the better heart which animated the wortliy j)ortion 
 of each party. The search, pursued in this spirit, is not in vain; for it 
 enables me to cite, in a few noble lines of Marvell, an admirable tribute 
 to the serenity with which the king met his fate when liis undaunted 
 enemies struck the crown from his brow, and then deliberately doomed 
 
 M
 
 162 LECTURE SETENTII. 
 
 tlie discrowned head of Charles Stuart to the block, — a nloody atone- 
 ment, which should bring a charity for his errors and an admiration for 
 the meek resignation of his last moments, such as inspires these lines, 
 the composition of a staunch friend of the people, — the friend, too, of 
 Milton, — telling how the royal actor was brought 
 
 " The tragic scaffold to adorn, 
 While round the armed bands 
 
 Did clap their bloody hands. 
 He nothing common did, or mean, 
 Upon that memorable scene, 
 
 But with his keener eye 
 
 The axe's edge did try ; 
 Nor call'd the gods, with vulgar spite, 
 To vindicate his helpless right, 
 
 But bow'd his comely head 
 
 Downe as upon a bed ! " 
 
 There are two scarcely-known poets of this period, who, being equally 
 zealous on opposite political sides, and encountering similar misfortunes 
 in conseqnence of party reverses, present cxcelleut types of the influence 
 on poetic character of their various modes of thought and feeling, 
 lliehard Ijovelace was a fine specimen of a gallant cavalier, — a soldier 
 with a scholar's accomplishments. He risked his life and spent his 
 whole patrimony in the hapless cause of his king. Among his poems 
 are two songs, perhaps as happy efforts of the kind as any in the lan- 
 guage. I can well credit the tradition of his virtue, his modesty, his 
 chivalrous courtesy and courage, when I reflect on the sentiment at the 
 close of the lines I am about to repeat ; for there is in it a world of the 
 morality of love's philosophy, — two or three words of wisdom which 
 every lover should make his maxim. It was composed when he was 
 going to the wars, and reconciles, with equal truth and grace of feeling, 
 the soldier's and the lover's duty : — 
 
 " Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, 
 That, from the nunnery 
 Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, 
 To war and arms I fly. 
 " True, a now mistress now I chase, — 
 The first foe in the field ; 
 And with a stronger faith embrace 
 A sword, a horse, a shield. 
 " Yet this inconstancy is such 
 As you too shall adore : 
 / could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more."
 
 TO ALTIIEA, FROM PRISON. 163 
 
 Tliis soldier's services in the cause of the mouarchy cost him not only 
 his fortune, but his hberty. He was cast by the parliamentary party 
 into prison ; but his unbroken spiiit found utterance in his most famous 
 song : — " To Althea, from prison," — a strain perfectly characteristic of 
 the cavalier-feeling, — a high-toned loyalty and gallantry and gayety : — 
 
 " When Love, with unconfinud wmgs, 
 
 Hovers within my gates, 
 And my divine Althea brings 
 
 To whisper at the grates, — • 
 When I lie tangled in her hair 
 
 And fetter'd to her eye, — 
 The birds that wanton in the air 
 
 Know no such liberty. 
 
 " When flowing cups run swiftly round, 
 
 With no allaying Thames, — - 
 Our careless heads with roses bound, 
 
 Our hearts with loyal flames, — 
 When thirsty grief in wine we steep, — ■ 
 
 When health and draughts go free, — 
 Fishes that tipple in the deep 
 
 Know no such liberty. 
 
 " When, like committed linnets, I, 
 
 With shriller throat, shall sing 
 The sweetness, mercy, majesty, 
 
 And glories of my king, — 
 When I shall voice aloud how good 
 
 He is, — how great should be, — 
 Enlarged winds, that curl the flood. 
 
 Know no such liberty. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for a hermitage. 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free. 
 Angels alone, that soar above. 
 
 Enjoy such liberty." 
 
 By the side of the memory of Lovelace let me briefly place that of a 
 poet with as stout a heart, but pledged to the opposite side in the civil 
 wars, — "honest George Wither," the author of so many pieces that liter- 
 ary antiquaries have scarce been able to gather them from their obscurity. 
 The homeliness of his versification places his poetry often below the 
 smooth flow of Lovelace's lyrics ; but the gallantry of the cavalier could 
 not produce strains Ol" more fervid chivalry in praise of female lovcli- 
 
 M 2
 
 104 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 ness. The seiitiincut was never more feelingly and fancifully expressed 
 than when, for iastance, in part of a long-sustained strain, he exclaims,- - 
 " Stars, indued, fair creatures be ; 
 
 Yet, amongst as, where is he 
 
 Joys not more the while he lies 
 
 Sunning in his mistress' eyes, 
 
 Than in all the glimmering light 
 
 Of a starry winter night ? " 
 
 His long life was spent in a peq)etual mood of poetical exaltation. 
 He was for ever writing his verses, always after a fashion of his own 
 and under most unpropitious cii'cumstances. His days were fuU al- 
 ternately of action and suffering : one while commanding a troop of 
 horse in the service of the Parliament ; again, twice deliberately abiding 
 in London to witness the terrors of the plague, or braving the penalties 
 of the law ; fined and imprisoned over and over again in the Tower, the 
 Marshalsea, and Newgate; and yet keeping his heart whole to the 
 last. It has been well said of him that he was for ever anticipating 
 persecution and martyrdom, fingering the flames, as it were, to try how 
 he could bear them. He was a man of strong and serviceable piety. In 
 all tlie ecclesiastical fevcrislmcss of the times, he ever called himself a Ca- 
 tholic Christian, declaring his religion is not mumbling over thrice a day 
 " A set oi' Are-j\[a)-i(is, or of creeds. 
 Or many hours formally to pray, 
 When from a dull devotiim it proceeds ; 
 Nor is it up and down the land to seek 
 To find those well-breathed lecturers that can 
 Preach thrice a Sabbath and six times a week, 
 *Yet be as fresh as when they first began." 
 
 At the age of seventy-three he was cast into prison. I liave shown 
 how the encaged spirit of a cavalier could sing. It wiU now be seen 
 that Wither's Muse could utter, if not as melodious, a more thouglit- 
 
 ful, strain : — 
 
 " And is this Newgate, whereof so afraid 
 Ofl'enders are ? Is this the dismal place 
 Wherein, before T came, I heard it said 
 There 's nothing but grief, horror, and disgrace ? 
 I find it otherwise : and doubtless either 
 It is belycd, or they who are sent hither 
 Within themselves, when to this house they come, 
 Bring that which makes it seem so troublesome. 
 
 " I no worse here than where I was before 
 Accommodated am ; for, though confined 
 From some things, which concern my body more 
 Thau formcrlj', it hath enlarged my mind."
 
 GEOKQE WITIIKTl. 165 
 
 The same indomitable spirit — a inagnanimous self-sufficiency— is ex- 
 pressed iu the lilies, — 
 
 " My mind 's my kingdom ; and I will permit 
 No other's will to have the rule of it ; 
 For I am free, and no man's power I know 
 Did make me thus, nor shall unmake me now ; 
 But, through a spirit none can quench in me, 
 This mind I got, and this my mind shall be." 
 
 Wlien beggared by his calamities, he consoles himself on the loss of 
 property with a reflection which he expresses with a fine poetic simile: — 
 
 " I with my losses [am] so well content 
 As is a Christian, when, by Turks pui-sucd. 
 Who overpower him by their multitude. 
 He wrecks his vessel on a friendly shore. 
 Where he hath life and freedom, though no more," 
 
 The voyage of George Wither's life was indeed on a stormy sea. 
 According to the sailor's superstition, the winds were for ever coming 
 at his whistling. But in the worst of the storm it was always in his 
 ])ower to bring his tempest-tost bark to ride at anchor, — the anchorage 
 of Christian hopefulness. His poetic studies, too, were an unceasing 
 delight to him ; — not a sentimental luxury, weakening his energy or his 
 fortitude, but giving renewed strength to his stout heart. Earnestly 
 lias he told how his spirit was ever thus invigorated, in lines containing 
 a simple but as strong a statement of a student's intellectual and 
 moral resources — the sunshine of an imaginative heart — as ever was 
 j)enncd : — 
 
 " They cause me to be feai-less of my foes ; 
 
 When 1 am vex'd, my spirits they compose ; 
 
 When I am poor, they are in stead of wealth ; 
 
 When I am sick, they help repair my health ; 
 
 When I am well, they are my recreation. 
 
 When tempted to despair, hope's reparation: 
 
 Thereby, when sadness comes, to mirth I turn it ; 
 
 When I am slighted, they do make me scorn it. 
 
 In prisons when my body is confined. 
 
 They do so many ways enlarge my mind, 
 
 That, doubting whether will for me prove best, — 
 
 The freedom lost or that which is possest, - 
 
 I use the means of both ; but wholly leave 
 
 The choice to God ; and what he gives, receive. 
 
 They are companions when 1 'm left aloue . 
 
 They find me work to do when I have none ; 
 
 By day me from ill company they keep. 
 
 Make nights less tedious when 1 cannot sleep.
 
 106 LECTUllE SKVENTH. 
 
 They ease me when I am opprcst with wrongs; 
 When I want music, they do make mc songs." 
 
 Tliis liteniry gratcfulucss rises on a higher strain in his address to liis 
 Muse : — 
 
 " She 's my mind's companion still, 
 
 Spite of Envy's evil will; 
 
 She doth tell me where to borrow 
 
 Comfort in the midst of sorrow ; 
 
 Makes the desolatest place 
 
 To her presence be a grace, 
 
 And the blackest discontents 
 
 To be pleasing ornaments. 
 
 In my former days of bliss, 
 
 Her divine skill taught me this : — 
 
 That from everything I saw 
 
 I could some invention di'aw, 
 
 And raise pleasure to her height, 
 
 Through the meanest object's sight ; 
 
 By the murmur of a spring, 
 
 Or the least bough rustleing, — 
 
 By a daisy whose leaves spread 
 
 Shut when Titan goes to bed, — 
 
 Or a shady bush or tiee, — 
 
 She could more infuse iu mc 
 
 Than all nature's beauties can 
 
 In some other wiser man." 
 
 It is passages like these, reeognisiiig the resources of a chastened 
 imagination and the influence of true poetry upon individual liappiness, 
 that have won for George Wither, neglected as his memory has heen, a 
 Ihie tribute, which, in closing this lecture, I dt!sire to leave in your 
 thoughts : — " The praises of poetry have been often sung in ancient 
 and modern times ; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence 
 over animate and inanimate auditors ; its force over fascinated crowds 
 has been acknowledged ; but before Wither no one ever celebrated its 
 power at home, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift con- 
 fers upon its possessor. Paine — and tliat, too, after death — was all 
 which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art. It 
 seems to have been left to (George) Wither to discover that poc^try was 
 a present possession as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse had 
 promise of both lives,— of tliis and of that which is to come."
 
 LECTURE YIII. 
 S^Ijc ^ge flf t^t |l£Storatio« : Jlrnbnt. 
 
 AMBIGUITIES IN THE GENERAL TITLES ADOPTED TO DESIGNATE PAKTICULAR 
 LITERARY ERAS— THE LAST QUARTER OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THi: 
 AGE OF DRYDEN— THE DEGRADED TASTES OF HIS TIMES— THE ALLIANCE OF 
 HIGH POETRY WITH VIRTUE— THE TRUE STANDARD OF POETIC MERIT— DRY 
 DEN'S POETRY A REFLECTION OF THE TIMES OF CHARLES II.— PROFLIGACY OF 
 THAT AGE-CHARACTER OF CHARLES STUART— THE SPIRIT OF POETRY IS A SPI- 
 RIT OF ENTHUSIASM— THE DEBASING EFFECTS OF THE CIVIL WARS— SHAFTES- 
 HURY AS LORD- CHANCELLOR— RECEPTION OF THE PARADISE LOST— WINSTAN- 
 LEY'S LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS— MILTON'S EXPOSITION OF KINGLY DUTY— 
 THE DRAMA DURING THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION— DRYDEN'S PLAYS— DE- 
 FECTS OF RHYMING TRAGEDIES—" THE FALL OF INNOCENCE "—DRYDEN'S ALTER- 
 ATION OF "THE TEMPEST" — "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL " — BUCKINGHAM — 
 LITERARY LARCENY- SIR EGERTON BRYDGES'S LINES ON MILTON— " THE HIND 
 AND THE PANTHER"— "ALEXANDERS FEAST "—" ODE FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY" 
 —DRYDEN'S LATER POETRY. 
 
 IN studying the literature of a nation it is necessary to bear in mind 
 that general titles adopted to designate particular eras will almost 
 inevitably be liable to ambiguities, which are calculated to suggest, 
 imperceptibly, erroneous impressions. The employment of the title of 
 the sovereign, as is usual, in marking the periods of English literature, 
 is manifestly attended with this confusion : — that the reign may not be 
 found to correspond, as to time, with the age in which the writers 
 ilourislied. For instance, the literary age of Queen Elizabeth is not 
 tlie political reign of Queen Elizabeth ; for half of the reigu was spent 
 before the glory of its poetry was developed. Again : if we employ the 
 name of the most illustrious author to indicate a period of literary his- 
 tory, the mind unconsciously adopts an opinion which may be greatly 
 erroneous : — that his fame had gained in his own times the influence 
 and authority it has received only from posterity. In this respect there 
 would be an absurdity were we to speak of " the age of Milton," or 
 even of Shakspeai'e ; for many years rolled over the graves of each of 
 those poets before the might of their genius was realized. Especially 
 may this be said with regard to Milton, between whom and the spirit of 
 tlie times in which his great poem was published there was so great an 
 unoongcniality that, to refer tlie favourite poets of those days, with all 
 their poetical heresies, their low morality, and their sins against the
 
 IGS LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 laws of pure and discipliued imagination, to the age of jMilton, would 
 be an incongruity as flagrant as tlie Roman usage of dating the age of 
 their casks of wine by a reference to the date of the magistracy of a 
 consul, — a cask of Falernian stamped with a name, perhaps, as stern as 
 Caius Marius. 
 
 The period I am about entering upon in this lecture forms a striking 
 exception to these remarks ; for, if we seek a title to designate the last 
 quarter of the seventeenth century, tlicrc need not be a moment's hesi- 
 tation in appropriating to it the name of Dryden. From the year 1674, 
 when the death of Milton took place, down to the year 1700, — the date 
 of Drydeu's death, — Uryden held in English poetry an al)solute and 
 exclusive supremacy. He and the age were suited to each other. He 
 was the fit representative of the times of Charles II. With talents 
 which might, by moral chastening and intellectual discipline, have se- 
 cured to him a pure fame, he prostituted the poet's sacred endowment 
 to unholy and base purposes. Now, this is lamentable. It would be 
 so in the annals of the poetry of any people ; but in those of English 
 poetry it is doubly, deeply deplorable. Think for a moment of the 
 mighty minds I have been contemplating in the previous lectures, — 
 miglity, I mean, in their purity as well as in their power, — indeed, their 
 purity was part of their power ; think of Spenser's spotless spirit, 
 knovidng no debasement in years either of prosperity or adversity ; of 
 Shakspeare's gentle and gigantic genius, uncontaminatcd even by the 
 courses into which his life was cast ; and of Milton, with all his parti- 
 sanship in a fierce warfare, still keeping his imagination iusphered in 
 regions of serene air, — 
 
 " Above the smoke and stir of tliis ilim spot 
 Which men call earth." 
 
 What mortal monarch seated on earl lily throne, though, like Satan's 
 throne in Pandemonium, it 
 
 " Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
 Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, 
 Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold," — 
 
 ^Vhat king, I say, could, either by kingly power or by kingly frown, 
 liave extorted from John Milton a single Hue profaning the sacred trust 
 of his precious talent, held " ever in liis great Taskmaster's eye " ? 
 Jicmember how, as we have been considering one great name after an- 
 other on the register of England's mighty poets, we have thus far found 
 the genius of all of them enlisted in the cause of virtue, militant on the 
 side of truth, nobly fulfilling their destiny, and leaving behind them
 
 CHAKACTER OF DETDEN S rOETRT. IGO 
 
 undying words which wing llieir flight over each generation as it rises 
 and passes away ; so that we, I hope, may have caught some enthusiasm 
 from their sound, centuries after those words were first uttered : — 
 " Blessmgs be with them, and eternal praise, 
 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, — 
 The poets who, on earth, have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 This benediction is not due to all, however rightfully they may claim 
 the title of poet. There is one principle I sliall cling to at every part of 
 these lectures, because I am deeply convinced of its truth, and because, 
 too, the anuals of English poetry will sustain me in it : — that one insepar- 
 able attribute of all the highest poetry is alliance with virtue ; that its 
 tendency, mute though it be to the sensual and the dark, is to make 
 the wise and the good still wiser, still better, still happier. Has it not 
 been so, even after making full allowance for all violations of propriety 
 in less refined states of society, with every one of the great poets we 
 have been considering? Let their pure, imaginative n^orality be re- 
 membered, both because I do not wish to lead you unadvised into a 
 different poetic atmosphere, and because, before this course is closed, 
 I must apply this principle to other eminent names besides that of 
 Dry den. 
 
 I am anxious to render justice to Dryden's powers, and shall strive 
 to do so. Neither do I wish to limit literary resrarch or taste to the 
 productions of the great masters ; for English poetry abounds with 
 poems of unnumbered degrees of merit : its secondary poeti-y is rich ; 
 so is its minor poetry ; and even from the poetry of writers whose 
 names are unknovm to fame, as fragrant an anthology could be cidled 
 as in the literature of any language. But when I hear people talk of 
 the poets carelessly or ignorantly, or, it may be, iiitenticmally, coupling 
 in an indiscriminate series Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, every 
 principle of judgment and feeling and taste revolts, ^^lien taking 
 Milton's standard, and acknowledging for the greatest poetry only that 
 which is full of religious, of glorious and magnificent uses, and then 
 looking at the uses to which Dryden debased liis imagination, the ques- 
 tion as to his poetic rank becomes simply a question how can tliis cor- 
 ruption put on the incorruption of a great poet's glory. In the course 
 of these lectures I have had occasion to remark the influence exercised 
 on the genius of the poets by the spirit of the times they lived in, but 
 never finding that influence acquiring an ascendency over their innate 
 powers. Passing events seemed to float over their lives, as on a sunny 
 day the shadow of a float ijig cloud is seen to speed over the surface of
 
 170 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 the fields, giving, indeed, different hues and tints, but not changing 
 native and unalterable colours. Whatever adaptation the great poets 
 made to their respective times, they ever kept that independence which 
 gives to genius its home amid many generations. With Dryden a dif- 
 ferent relation began ; for he sought a habitation steaming with a thou- 
 sand vices, and there he dwelt till his garland and singing-robes were 
 polluted by the contagion. Throughout Dryden's poems may be traced, 
 in a distinct reflection, the character of the times of Charles II. ; and 
 each should, therefore, be examined by the literary or historical student, 
 for they are reciprocally illustrative. The temper of that time is 
 stamped upon its literature. The poets, instead of their high ofEce of 
 " allaying the pertui'bations of the mind and setting the affections in 
 right tune," had no worthier charge than to pamper the low passions of 
 a worthless and adulterate generation. There probably never was a 
 ])eriod of literature wlicn it was more affected by extrinsic agencies than 
 that now under review,— the age of the second Charles. Let us look, 
 therefore, for a moment or two, at its characteristics. 
 
 Memory may run over the whole period of more than two thousand 
 years, — the life of our British ancestry,— and not find any portion of it 
 so loathsome as those twenty years during which Charles Stuart the 
 younger was restored to the throne of his fathers. 
 
 Happier would it have been for any one having a man's heart within 
 his breast to live in the barbaric age of British paganism, with all its 
 ferocity, and the terrors of a hidfeous superstition, — when, in Cowper's 
 fine lines, — 
 
 "The Druids struck the well-strung harps thej- bore, 
 With fingers deeply dyed in human gore ; 
 And, while the victim slowly bled to death, 
 Upon the tolling chords rung out his dying breath ; " — 
 Better to have lived amid the wild consternation of the fiercest of Eng 
 land's invasions or the bloodiest of its civil wars, — better in the dismay 
 of Mary's martyrdoms, or beneath the iron rod of Cromwell's military 
 usurpation,— than to have ])ined lieart-sick at the sight of all the de- 
 basing profligacy whicli burst upon England at the time of the K(!stora- 
 tion. When Cowley, with the fervour of royalty upon him, gave vent 
 to his indignation at the Protector's dynasty, it was in a strain which 
 would have better fitted the lips of a generous Briton chafing under the 
 abominations of his country, — its hereditary monarch restored : — 
 
 " Come the eleventh plague rather this should be ; 
 Come sink us rather in the sea : 
 Come rather pestilence and reap us down ; 
 Come God's sword, rather than our own.
 
 CHARACTEK OF CHARLES STUART. 1/1 
 
 Let rather Roman come again, 
 Or Sax(m, Norman, or the Dane. 
 In all the bonds we ever bore, , 
 We grieved, we sigh'd, we wept; lee never blush'd before." 
 
 Upon Charles Stuart the lesson of adversity was wasted. After a 
 oliildhood and youth pampered with the perilous luxury that attends 
 the footsteps of au heir to royalty, the full cup of his confident hopes 
 was dashed from his lips, when calamities undreamed of were poured 
 down upon the royal household. The only occasion when he showed ii 
 manly spirit — when, backed by Scottish courage, he stalled his for- 
 tunes on the field of battle to gain the throne of his fathers — had been 
 preceded by an act of perjured hypocrisy; for, kneeling on the spot 
 where his royal Scottish ancestors had sworn their coronation-oath, he 
 called God to witness his plighted faith to a covenant he both detested 
 and despised. The mailed hand of Cro)nwell was still the hand of vi(!- 
 tory ; and the defeat at Worcester left the young king an outcast and a 
 I'ugitive, sheltered only by the indomitable loyalty of his adherents, 
 whose devotion he had no heart to be grateful for, for he prized it at no 
 dearer rate than the trunk of the oak which once hid him from his pur- 
 suers. He fled to France, abandoning himself to effeminate, vulgar, and 
 vicious pleasures. Unhappily, the British blood that flowed in his veins 
 Avas mingled Avith the blood of one of those licentious monarchs who 
 had soiled the purity of the Trench monarchy : it will be remembered 
 he was the grandson of Henry IV. 
 
 Let it not be thought that I am wandering from my subject. I seek 
 to show that if the spirit of a nation goes doA\-n, its poetry, if suffered 
 to sympathize with the causes of its degradatiou, will go down with it. 
 In the spirit of those times, and of Charles II. as representing it, I can 
 lind ample explanation of the sinking of English poetry. Every pure 
 and noble sentiment, every generous emotion, every lofty thought, be- 
 came a jest. Now, these are the life of poetry, which in its best forms 
 can breathe only in an atmosphere of purity ; and whenever siich cannot 
 be found, it is the chief duty of poetry to create it, — to ventilate, as it 
 were, a stagnant and corrupted air. The spirit of poetry — and, let me 
 add, too, the love of it — is a spirit of enthusiasm. Amid the wide-spread 
 corruption, the wi'itings of a few poets and not a few of the clergy show 
 that all hearts were not defiled ; and that brazen age was well described 
 by one of its divines, when he said, " To figlit against religion by scoffing 
 is the game the devil seems to be playing in the present age. He hath 
 tryed the power and rage of the mighty and the wit and knowledge of 
 the learned, but these have not succeeded for the destruction of religion ;
 
 172 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 and therefore now he is making an experiment by another sort of ene- 
 mies, and sets the apes and droUers upon it. And certainly there was 
 never any other age in which sacred things have been so i-udely and 
 impudently assaulted by the profane abuses of jesters and buffoons, who 
 have been the contempt of all wise times, but are the darlings and wits of 
 these." The severe discipline of Puritan morality once removed, tliere 
 came quickly in its stead a lawh'ssness whose pride was its freedom 
 from all restraint. Immorality was a tiling men boasted of ; t hey took 
 a party-pride in vice. The civil wars had also demoralized the people, 
 by breaking up the habits and regularity of domestic life. Households 
 were destroyed, and their proprietors found a residence in taverns ; and, 
 when the causes of such disordered life had passed away, the low habits 
 it had engendered were left behind. Often, beggared by the wars, the 
 sufferers were driven, in the words of as gallant a cavalier as Lovelace, 
 " to steep their thirsty grief in wine." Daring the Middle Ages, the 
 miseries that followed in the train of Avar had been famine and pesti- 
 lence ; but after the civil wars in England came debauchery, licentious- 
 ness, riot, and blasphemy. To such a condition of public feeling the 
 only poetry that could be welcome was that prostituted form of it which 
 delights in loose lays or bacchanalian orgies. The intellectual tastes of 
 Charles II. have been historically recorded, and are typical of his times. 
 Mcmtally, he was by no means deficient, but, on the contrary, possessed 
 of much quickness of mind. Quotations from Hudibras, with all the 
 indecencies of its wit, were often on his lips ; the bomba.stie tragedies 
 and the obscene comedies of the Restoration were congenial to him, and 
 doubtless, too, the songs of Sedley and Kochester. There was another 
 taste of the monarch, illustrative also of the downward course of the 
 s])irit of the age, — a sort of zeal for material science, prosecuted to the 
 exclusion of all spirituality. The king had his private laboratory, where 
 he carried on experiments as far removed from a true love of science as 
 the filthy chemistry in the cauldrons of the witches in "Macbeth." 
 Charles II. was a materialist in the grossest sense of the word : — 
 " One all eyes 
 
 Philosopher ! a fingering slave ; 
 One that would puep and botanize 
 
 Upon his mother's grave ! 
 
 It has been his good luck, however, to gain the epithet of the " merrii 
 monarch ;" and thus has many a one been led to think that good-nature 
 and a sportive temper, au amiable playfulness, were his attributes. The 
 sport he made was with things he ought to have held iu r(;vcrence ; 
 and he played with honour and justice, with womanly virtue and all
 
 SUAFTESBfUr AS LOKD-CHAXCELLOR. 1 / -5 
 
 noble emotions. We often forget, in laughiug at tlie frolics of the king 
 or his courtiers, how dangerous were their jests. When one of the 
 most profligate of his adherents was raised most unworthily to a high 
 station, judicial dignity was made sport with, and the people taught to 
 ridicule what they should have stood in awe of. A contemporary his- 
 torian thus tells of one of these adventures. When Lord-Chancellor 
 Shaftesbury ordered his procession to Westminster Hall on the first day 
 of term, " his lordship had an early fancy or freak, the day (when all 
 tlic officers of the law, king's counsel, and judges used to wait upon 
 the great seal to Westminster Hallj, to make this procession on horse- 
 back, as in old time the way was, when coaches were not so rife ; and 
 accordingly the judges, &c. Avere spoken to, to get horses, as they and 
 all the rest did, by borrowing and hiring, and so equipped' themselves 
 with black foot-cloths in the best manner they could : and divers of the 
 nobility, as usual, in compliance and honour to a new Lord-Chancellor, 
 attended also in their equipments. Upon notice in town of this caval- 
 cade, all the show-company took their places at windows and balconies, 
 with the foot-guard in the streets, to partake of the fine sight ; and, 
 being once well settled for the march, it moved, as the design was, 
 statelib/ along. But Avhen they came to straits and interruptions, for 
 want of gravity in the beasts, and too much in the riders, there hap- 
 pened some curvetting which made no little disorder. Judge Twisden, 
 to his great aiTright and the consternation of his grave brethren, was 
 laid along in the dirt ; but all at length arrived safe, without loss of 
 life or limb in the service. This accident was enough to divert the like 
 frolic for the future ; and the very next term they fell to their coaches 
 as before." 
 
 This certainly must have been a comical spectacle. The grave dig- 
 nitaries of the bench, deprived of their long-enjoyed security of rolling 
 along in their huge, lumbering coaches of state, and unexpectedly or- 
 dered on this cavalry-service ; the steeds, fretted by the timid and 
 awkward horsemanship of men whose skill lay in otlicr subjects, and 
 judicial authority, of but little avail in their procession, and soon con- 
 verted into judicial consternation w^hen poor Judge Twisden was un- 
 horsed at full length in the mire of a London street. But, setting 
 aside the ludicrousness of the mishap of this judicial cavalcade, it was 
 a frolic which could hardly have been ventured on except by a chancel- 
 lor of such a monarch. It was a piece of reckless frivolity worthy 
 alike of Shaftesbury and of Charles,— men to whose unbridled humours 
 profligacy was a jest. " Shaftesl)ury," said the king, on one occasion, 
 " thou art the wickedest dog in Eiiglund." " May it please your Ma-
 
 174 LECTUllE EIGHTH. 
 
 jesty," replied the sl<atesman, dutifully yielding the post of honour, " of 
 a subject, I believe I am." 
 
 Let me ask, What hope could there be for poetry to escape the gibe 
 and the jest in an age when authority in high places could thus make 
 the ermine " a motley to the view " ? The temper more adverse than 
 any other to poetry is the predominance of unchasteued ridicule ; for 
 the simple reason that it is a temper at variance M'itli all that is sub- 
 lime or graceful in humanity. If the poet cannot wing his flight above 
 the reach of parodies and satirical jests and all the light archery of 
 ridicule, his region must be a low and impiu-e one, in which the fire of 
 the best poetry cannot be sustained. 
 
 A literary question, affecting the character of the times I am now 
 speaking of, has been discussed by several writers, by whom different 
 opinions are entertained respecting the reception of Milton's " Paradise 
 Lost." The fact of thii'teen hundred copies having been sold in two 
 years (entitUng the author, I may mention in passing, to a second pay- 
 ment of five pounds), and of three thousand copies being sold in eleven 
 years, has oeen much relied on to prove that the slowness of Milton's 
 advance to the glory of his earthly fame has been exaggerated. This is 
 no proof of his contemporaries having done justice to the poem, nor 
 does it sanction the conclusion of the poet's having attained anytliing 
 like what may be called popularity, which was then under a dominion, 
 in the jurisdiction of taste, which could not by any possibility have re- 
 cognised the high and chaste splendour of Milton's imagination. It 
 has been well asked and answered. Who were the readers and the buy- 
 ers of the " Paradise Lost" ? They were the small number of Milton's 
 fi'iends and the liberal lovers of true poetry, who are man)/, though not 
 the manj/ : — young men eager to admire, wlio found a new power cre- 
 ated within them by the influence of that mighty orb of song ; and old 
 ni('n that felt their youth restored in all its energy, but with none of its 
 turbulence, by that divine harmony. But these were readers whose 
 influence on public opinion must have been inapprecia])ly small in their 
 generation. The dissolute monarcli and some eq>ially dissolute nobles 
 were for a time the literary dictators. As to influence from other 
 quarters, it has been well thougli strongly said tliat the classical 
 J{c])ublicans were few and inefiicient; the Puritans would not read 
 poetry ; the High-Church bigots would read nothing but what emanated 
 from their own party ; the commonplace, roystering lloyalists were 
 seldom sober enough to read, and the mob-fanatics did not kufiw their 
 letters. 
 
 But I desire no better proof to show how unheeded were Milton's
 
 Milton's exposition of kingly duty. 175 
 
 inspirations by the common mind of those limes than a fine piissage 
 closinii; one of the books of " Paradise Regained." A literary censor- 
 ship was part of the machinery of the monarchy ; and, when in some 
 tragedy or other there was a plot which chanced to be typical of Charles 
 II.'s profligacy, the hand of the censor was placed upon it, not because 
 there was danger that the representation might, like Hamlet's play, 
 catch the conscience of the king, or, in Shakspeare's phrase, " make mad 
 the guilty and appal the free," but because the people, in their familiar 
 intercourse with the drama, might have quickly and ofl'ensively applied 
 the play to their own sovereign. Now, the passage I am about to 
 cite from Milton could have passed uncensured only because overlooked 
 as innocent from the anticipated neglect of the poem in an unworthy 
 age. It is a noble exposition of kingly duty, — the ofBce of a king set 
 forth with a sublime morality by a republican, — a placid admonition, 
 full at the same time of the deepest hnplied rebuke to one like hun 
 under whose sway it was written : — • 
 
 " A crown, 
 
 Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns ; 
 
 Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights 
 
 To him who wears the regal diadem. 
 
 When on his shoulders each man's burden lies. 
 
 For therein stands the office of a king, 
 
 His honour, ■virtue, merit, and chief pi'aise, 
 
 That for the public all this weight he bears. 
 
 Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules 
 
 Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king ; 
 
 Which every wise and virtuous man attains ; 
 
 And who attains not, ill aspires to rule 
 
 Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes. 
 
 Subject himself to anarchy within, 
 
 Or lawless passions in him, which he serves. 
 
 But to guide nations in the way of truth 
 
 By saving doctrine, and from error lead 
 
 To know, and, knowing, worship God aright, 
 
 Is yet more kingly. This attracts the soul, 
 
 Governs the inner man, the nobler part ; 
 
 That other o'er the body only reigns. 
 
 And oft by force ; which, to a generous mind, 
 
 So reigning, can be no sincere delight." 
 
 Dryden's career of authorship began some years before the publica- 
 tion cf Milton's great poems. One of his early pieces was his heroic 
 stanzas on the death of CromweU ; and, when the Restoration took 
 place, he veered, quickly round, and was ready with a congratulatory 
 poem on the happy return of His Sacred Majesty Charles II., and a
 
 176 LECTUKE EIGHTH. 
 
 panegyiic for the coronation-day. When, after the austere years of the 
 commonwealth, poetical composition began to be again cultivated, it 
 resumed the form of the metaphysical poetry of the preceding years, re- 
 sembling — to borrow Sir Walter Scott's clever simile— those who, after a 
 long mourning, resume for a tune their ordinary dresses, of which the 
 fashion has in the mean time passed away. But it was only a short- 
 continued revival. A new fashion of taste was coming instead of the 
 liarsh and scholastic form which had been so laboriously cultivated. 
 
 One immediate consequence of the Restoration was the opening of 
 the theatres and the attendant renewal of dramatic literature. It was 
 not, however, the renewal of the old drama, — the drama of Shaks])eare 
 and his strong contemporaries. That was too massy for a frivolous 
 generation. Besides, Charles II. came back to his native land with 
 tastes as corrupt as his morals. The French drama had grown familiar 
 and pleasing to his ear ; and, however it may have suited the reign of 
 France, it never was meant to be domesticated in England. 
 
 The literature of every language has its distinctive and proper charac- 
 teristics; and, whenever any attempt is made to disguise them in a foreign 
 dress, injury is inevitably done by the metamorphosis. In this way 
 the English drama was spoiled by the GaUican character that was given 
 to it ; and in a similar way, let me here add, would good prose writing 
 be, were it possible for the intolerable attempt of a few living writers — 
 one especially of considerable power (Carlyle) — to Germanize English 
 style, to receive a general sanction. The imported iniiuence on the 
 drama of England gave it a forced, unnatural, hyperbolical inflation, 
 greatly conti'asted with its true native power. The stately march and 
 the pompous diction which it was deemed proper for the French stage 
 to assume in the august presence of Louis XTV. was to be acted over 
 in the pi-esencc of his kinsman Charles 11. The tragedies which this 
 taste gave rise to were what were called the heroic plays. All the men 
 were made to speak in the stately style of fanciful heroex, and all the 
 women were to be veritable tragedy-queens. These dramas .are also 
 entitled, with reference to another trait, " the rhi/miiir/ iragedios." The 
 blank verse, .so admirably proved, in the earlier and incomparably better 
 dramas, as suited to the expression of passion, was laid aside, and Dry- 
 den boldly vindicated the use of rhyme, the unceasing recurrence of 
 identical sounds in the most monotonous form of rhyme, — the couplet, 
 — as a step in advance of his great dramatic predecessors, and as carry- 
 ing the drama anollicr degree on towards perfection. Immediately after 
 the Restoration, Dryden devoted his powers to the pojuilar and patron- 
 ized labour of nuuiufacturing acting plays for the stage : he became a
 
 dryben's plats. 177 
 
 prolific playwright, producing more tragedies than I have been at the 
 pains of counting. He wrote them by contract, the bargain stipulating 
 the number, the time, and the compensation ; and the result was, in 
 most cases, very like Avhat is, I believe, the usual character of contract 
 labour. But these plays of Dryden's answered the author's purpose : 
 they were written to sell, and not to survive their temporary service. They 
 were received in the green-room, acted, applauded, ])rinted, and are 
 forgotten. They may be revived, so far as a repriut in Dryden's Com- 
 plete Works, as edited by Sir Walter Scott, is a revival ; but, for all 
 that, they are dead beyond all chance — I will not say hope — of restora- 
 tion. Their only resuscitation is an occasional exhumation by some 
 labourer in obsolete literatui-e, bringing them to light again, like poor 
 " Yorrick's skull," the king's jester, full of dii't and jowled to the ground 
 and knocked about the mazzard by a sexton's spade ; and then these 
 dead things of a once busy poet may be moralized over by some literary 
 student in Hamlet's very words : — "Alas! poor Yorick ! — a fellow of 
 iutiuite jest aud most excellent faucy : where be your jibes now ? your 
 gambols ? your sougs ? the dust is earth." 
 
 It is not my intention to illustrate by quotation the bad taste and the 
 wretched poetry of the heroic plays in which Dryden had so guilty a 
 share ; for, while I am relying greatly upon your indulgence in a course 
 of lectui'es so comprehensive in its range as that I have ventured on, it 
 would not be prudent to put your patience in jeopardy by imposing on 
 you tasteless and uninteresting citations. Let me say that the whole 
 theory of these productions was unsound ; and I will endeavour to 
 show it in a way \» Inch will at the same time give me the opportunity 
 of introducing something in the way of incidental comment on Shak- 
 speare. It wiU be remembered by every one, that in the tragedy of 
 Hamlet there is introduced a little di'ama which is acted in the presence 
 of the imaginary king and courtiers, — a play, therefore, Avithin a play. 
 It must have been observed too, by even careless readers of oui- great 
 dramatists, without perhaps being aware of the reason for it, that the 
 style of the play before the king is wholly different from the style of 
 Shakspeare's o^vn play. The secondary play, as I may call it, is in 
 rhyme ; the sentiments are in an exaggerated vein, and the language 
 hyperbolical : how different from the primary play, Shakspeare's own 
 exquisite blaiik verse and his just tone of thought aud feeling, as may 
 readily be shown by placing a few lines of each in contrast ! I select 
 expressions of thought not altogether uidike : — 
 
 " Orderly to end, where I begun : 
 Our will.-, and fates do so contrary run 
 N
 
 178 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 That our devices still are overthrown ; 
 
 Our thouglits are ours, their ends none of our own : 
 
 So think thou wilt no second husband wed ; 
 
 But die thy thoughts, when thy first lord is dead." 
 
 Now by the side of this observe a meditation of Shakspeare clothed 
 in his appropriate diction : — 
 
 " Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, 
 When our deep plots do pall ; and that should teach us, 
 There 's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we will." 
 
 In this diiference of style, both of thought and language, Shakspeare 
 acted from a deep principle of art. If the play within the play had 
 been expressed in his usual style, there would have been nothing to 
 distinguish it. It was necessary to have a line of discrimination be- 
 tween the two ; otherwise Hamlet and the dramatic interlude woven 
 into the plot would have been very much the same thing. But how 
 was this to be accompUshed ? In a way manifesting Shakspeare's per- 
 fect sense of the true philosophy of the drama as an imaginative imita- 
 tion of life. The play to be acted at Hamlet's suggestion, to satisfy 
 his doubts of the king's guilt, was, of course, one degree further re- 
 moved from nature ; and consequently a style proportiouately removed 
 from the ordinary speech of life was appropriated to it : a hyperbolical 
 strain was needed to show its position beyond the primary drama, it 
 being an imitation within an imitation, and the most fastidious taste is 
 thus unconsciously reconciled to its exaggerations. Now, in applying 
 these principles to the heroic tragedies of Dryden, it is perceived that 
 the author has gone directly to the exaggerations, without any of that 
 necessity which is the explanation of Shakspeare's employment of sucli 
 a style. The simple language of imagination was not stimulant enougli 
 for a vitiated taste. The bounds of nature, within which the genius of 
 Shakspeare moved, were disdainfully overleaped ; and the consequence 
 was bombast and fustian and all extravagance. 
 
 After Dryden had wasted much of his strength on his rhyming 
 tragedies, his opinions began to undergo a change, and, perhaps with a 
 truer appreciation of Shakspeare, to penteive that the fashion he had so 
 greatly encouraged was nothing more than a fashion. The prevalent 
 dramatic style had been keenly satirized, in the famous parody, "The 
 Rehearsal," by tlie witty and profligate Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 
 — Dryden being held up to chief ridicule in the prominent character of 
 the dramatic author " Bayes." The sharp shaft pierced him, giving not 
 a mortal but a poisoned wound ; for Dryden reserved his vengeance for
 
 "Duyuen's alteration c)f "the tempest." 179 
 
 tne weighty blow lie dealt to Buckingham some years after in his cele- 
 brated political satire. When the rhyme was relinquished and blank 
 verse adopted by Drydeu, iu his later tragedies, his tone rose with the 
 change ; and now and then a passage may be discovered of adniii-able 
 poetic cast. 
 
 Before dismissing tlie dramatic part of Dryden's career of authorship, 
 two of his productions should be mentioned, as singularly illustrative 
 of the perverted taste of the writer, and of those for whom he wrote. 
 The first was his paraphrase of "Paradise Lost," which- he traduced 
 into a rhyming play, in five acts, entitled " The Fall of Innocence :" — a 
 work the merit of which may be conjectured from the plan of it, and, 
 to my mind, conclusive that Drydeu coidd not have had a just appre- 
 ciation of the great epic poet. I know there is au expression of Dry- 
 den's often quoted to prove his admiration of Milton ; but there is also 
 enough to show that he considered himself on this occasion as refining 
 the matchless poem he w"as tampering with, and as giving it a polish 
 and grace it stood in need of. A still bolder venture was when, jointly 
 with Davenant, he undertook to impror.e Shakspeare's exquisite ]jlay, 
 " The Tempest," and gave it the altered form which is still listened to 
 in the theatres, doubtless, by not a few, as the real original production. 
 This abuse of another of his unapproachable predecessors was also ac- 
 companied by words of adnuration ; for in the prologue he used the 
 lines frequently quoted,— 
 
 " Shakspeare's magic could not copied be: 
 "Witlvia that circle none durst walk but he." 
 
 But tlie sincerity of these words is scarcely to be reconciled Avith the 
 ill-judged work they are prefaced to, of which it has been well said that 
 not only "not one additional beauty has been inserted, not one fe- 
 licitous hint improved, but the profound skill and knowledge of nature, 
 for which the original has been justly praised, has been lost sight of by 
 the improvers, who have stripped the spiritual creation of Shakspeare 
 of its sky-tinctured robes, and stifled the wild harmony of its notes, in 
 order that they might deck it in the artificial finery and bestow on it 
 the conventional manners of their grosser times and their degraded 
 theatre." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott has, with great truth, observed " how much the 
 character and style of Shakspeare's and Dryden's dramas were influ- 
 enced by the manners of the respective ages in which they lived, and 
 the different audiences they were addressed to. The poor, small 
 theatres in which Shakspeare's and Jonson's plays were represented 
 
 N 2
 
 180 LECTUEE EIGHTH. 
 
 were filled with spectators who, though of the middle ranks, were pro- 
 bably worse educated than our more vulgar ; but they came prepared 
 with a tribute of tears and laughter to bursts of passion or efPusions of 
 wit, though incapable of estimating the beauties derived from the 
 gradual development of a story, well-maintained characters, well-ar- 
 ranged incidents, and the minute beauties of lauguage. Dryden, on the 
 other hand, wrote what was to pass before the judgment of a monarch 
 and his corn-tiers, professed judges of di-araatic criticism, and a formidable 
 baud of town critics. Art, therefore, was not only a requisite qualifica- 
 tion, but the principal attribute, of the dramatic poet. An exhibition 
 of nature, in the strength of her wildest energies, as in ' Lear ' and 
 ' OtheUo,' — deep emotion, or sweet and simple pathos, — would have 
 found no correspondent feeling in the bosoms of the selfish, the witty, 
 the affected, and the critical audiences who preferred the ingenious, 
 romantic, and polished:" and, therefore, Scott reasonably questions 
 whether the age of Charles II. would have borne the introduction of 
 Othello or Talstaff. 
 
 The miserable vassalage of Dryden to the theatre at last began at 
 once to irritate and depress him ; for he had a spirit which, if net 
 elevated enough to save his talents from unworthy pursuits, did yet 
 sooner or later awaken the painful sense of self-degradation. " I desire," 
 said he, "to be no longer the Sisyphus of the stage, — to roll up a stone 
 with endless labour, which, to foUow the proverb, gathers no moss, and 
 which is perjietually falling down again." 
 
 The ambition of an heroic poem was flitting across his mind. But 
 from this he was called away to a difterent service ; and it is vain to 
 speculate what an epic poem from the pen of Dryden might have been. 
 I can sec little reason to regret that he was diverted from the attempt ; 
 for his imagination, with all its power in certain departments, was 
 hardly capable of a long-sustained and requisite majesty. He Mas now 
 to enlarge the domain of English poetry by the production of the most 
 nervous political satire in the language. When the inquiry' is made as 
 to the ground of Drydcn's poetical fame, he is found to be one of the 
 poets whose reputation is not at once justified by a reference to any one 
 c/«'(^ production. It probably rests )n-incipally upon his great satire, — 
 the poem of "Absalom and Adiitoijlicl." The reign of Charles II. was 
 a reign of political iixtrigue, — an effect or one form of its corruption. 
 It was a period of plot and cabal, busy with the present and stiU busier 
 with the future, — the question of the s.'.ecession. It would consume 
 more time tlian is at my command to recall the state of things which 
 Dryden took as the occasion of his poem. It was levelled against the
 
 THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 191 
 
 scheme of Shaftrsburv and his adherents to set aside the heir-presump- 
 tive to the throne and advance the interests of the king's natural son, 
 — the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth. Political lampoons and satires 
 were no novelties in the ephemeral literature of England ; but such a 
 satire as Dryden's was an engine of destruction such as had not been 
 known before. It was like some of the weapons which are revolutioniz- 
 ing modem warfare, contrasted with the bow and arrow or the clumsy 
 matelilock musket of olden times. The satire of Drydeu had the merit 
 of striking high as well as strongly,— having, however, it should be 
 added, the royal encouragement to sanction its boldness, and some 
 against whom it was levelled having fallen from their higli station. 
 The poem gave its author opportunity for liis long-reserved retribution 
 upon one who had made the lirst assault, — the Duke of Buckingham, 
 ■ — the satire of " The Rehearsal " being now repaid in a few lines, into 
 which was compressed sarcasm a hundredfold multiplied. The character 
 of Zimri, in which he represented Buckingliam, was considered by the 
 author himself as the masterpiece of his satire, and his own comment 
 is the best statement of the admirable adroitness of the attack : — 
 " The character of Zimri, in my ' Absalom,' is, in my opinion, worth the 
 whole poem. It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough ; and he for 
 whom it lA as intended was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had 
 railed, I might liave suffered for it justly ; but I managed my own work 
 more happily, perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of 
 great crimes, and applied myself to tlie representing of blind sides and 
 little extravagances, to which the wittier a man is he is generally the 
 more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished ; the jest went round!, and 
 he was laughed at in his turn, who began the frolic : — • 
 
 " Some of their chiefs were princes of the land : 
 In the first rank of these did Zimri stand ; 
 A man so Tarious that he seem'd to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong ; 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long. 
 But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking. 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
 Blest madman, who could every hour emploj' 
 With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 
 Railing and praising were hi« usual themes, 
 And both, to .show his judgnant, in extremes, 
 So over-violent or over-civil, 
 That every man with him was god or devil.
 
 182 LECTURE EionTn. 
 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art, 
 Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
 Bcggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate ; 
 He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief 
 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief." 
 
 The finest skill of the satirist was shown in his choiee of the vulner- 
 able points of character. Buckingham was a cankered profligate, case- 
 liardened in sensuality, Avith every moral feeUng literally dead ; and, 
 therefore, if the satire had consisted of invective of his immorality, or 
 exposure of what was abeady notorious, — his debauchery and Aice, — it 
 would have trickled off like drops of water on an oiled surface ; but, 
 us it was, it struck him, indurated as he was, like a shower of molten 
 lead. Dryden well knew how encased his adversary was in the armour 
 of a moral torpor; but he detected the joints of that armour, and there 
 found space to thrust with his keen sword a desperate wound. 
 
 The grasp of Dryden's satire seized on some of his luckless contem- 
 ])oraries in authorship, — his small rivals in poetry,— M'ho have gained ii 
 sinister immortality, owing all their fame to the stamp he put upon them, 
 — such as Shadwell and poor Settle, who have come down to posterity 
 in these lines : — • 
 
 " Doeg, though without knowing how or why, 
 
 Made still a blundering kind of melody ; 
 
 Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, 
 
 Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in ; 
 
 Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, 
 
 And, in one word, heroically mad. 
 
 He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, 
 
 But fagoted his notions as they fell. 
 
 And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well." 
 
 I cannot here omit noticing that a very wretched condition of literary 
 society existed in Dryden's time ; for there was a multitude of writers, 
 many of them mere scribblers and versifiers, full of pretensions and 
 empty of every manly princijile and generous feeling,^mean, mercenary, 
 and stupid, for ever on the alert to take unfair advantage of a fellow- 
 labourer. When Dryden meditated an epic poem, he was carefully 
 mysterious as to the intended subject of it ; for what reason, do you 
 suppose ? AVTiy, from the fear that it would be imnunliately seized and 
 appropriated by some of the countless scribblers, and thus his design 
 be forestalled by this curious species of literary larceny. How melan- 
 dioly a contrast is this to that hearty and opcn-heart,cd intercourse 
 whicli prevailed among the distinguished dramatic contemporaries of
 
 DRTDEN AND MILTON CONTRASTED. 183 
 
 Shakspeare,— those frank and happy festivities at the Mennaid Tavern, 
 the tradition of which ha,s been kept alive, and presents to onr fancy 
 the great di-ainatist, with Ben Jouson and Tletcher, Beaumont, Donue 
 and I'ord, and the rest, like a band of brothers. In Drydeu's day there 
 was envy and jealousy and malice, great and small, — each man's impulse 
 selfishness. The time had nearly gone by for that amiable, fraternal 
 feeling in literature,— the joint authorship, — such as carries the names 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher inseparable and undistinguished to future 
 generations. 
 
 In treating the powers of Dryden as a wTiter of satire, let me briefly 
 notice what has occurred to me as a contrast with his illustrious pre- 
 decessor, Milton. Like Dryden, Milton was involved in strife with 
 men of the world and of letters, politicians and authors ; he too had 
 occasion for satire. Bat for that he deemed "the vision and the faculty 
 divine" too sacred ; and he poured forth his fierce denunciations and 
 rebukes in prone. Bitter and sometimes coarse and vulgar words, which 
 cannot but be deplored, broke from him, but never in his pure and majestic 
 poetry. His Muse was too sacred to be profaned by this world's angry 
 and fleeting passions. It is only over the stormy temper of Milton's 
 pi'ose that one of his most enthusiastic admirers has lamented in a noble 
 sonnet. The Hues are from an ardent lover of genius, — hijnself a man 
 of genius, — the late Sir Egerton Brydges : — 
 
 " Not Milton's holy genius could secure 
 In life his name from insult and from scorn, 
 And taunts of indignation, foul as fall 
 Upon the vilest tribe of human kind ! 
 Nor yet untainted could his heart endure 
 The calumnies his patience should have borne ; 
 For words revengeful started at his call, 
 And blotted the effulgence of his mind. 
 But, oh ! how frail the noblest soul of man ! 
 Not o'er aggressive blame the bard arose ; 
 His monarch's deeds 't was his with spleen to scan, 
 And on his reign the gates of mercy close. 
 He had a hero's courage ; but, too stern, 
 He could not soft submission's dictates learn. 
 
 I must hasten on from the satirical portion of Dryden's authorship, 
 to notice, very briefly, some of his argumentative poems, — a species of 
 poetry especially illustrating the two prime qualities of liis poetry, — the 
 power of reasoning in verse and a compressed vigour of style. Imme- 
 diately after the accession of James II., when that prince's design of 
 reconciliug England to tlie Church of Rome became apparent, Dryden,
 
 18i LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 at a time most suspicious for his sincerity, suddenly declared himself a 
 convert to PopeiT, and gave to his new alliance the allegorical poem 
 " The Hind and the Panther," the longest of his original poems. The 
 fable is fanciful, perhaps somewhat fantastic, in the device of conveying 
 an elaborate theological controversy, as some simple moral is inculcated in 
 ^sop's little parables. It has been remarked of Dryden that he reasoned 
 better in verse than in prose. In this poem the reasoning is acute, 
 with an intermixture of wit and the best flow of his versification. It is 
 a statement, probably to their full advantage, of the arguments employed 
 in favour of the infaUibihty of Romanism against an unsteady and ultra 
 Protestantism. The hind, an immaculate and unoffending animal, was, 
 to the fancy of the proselyte, a type of the purity and gentleness of the 
 Church of Rome ; the panther, a strong and beautiful but spotted beast, 
 is the Church of England ; and various other beasts are representatives 
 of different sects, — the quaknig hare, for instance, being the type of 
 that worthy Society in which the poet finds naught else to censure but 
 their scruples as to war and oaths. But the associates of his early days, 
 the Presbyterians, find less mercy at the poet's hands ; for their image 
 " is a gaunt and hungry wolf, who pricks up his 'predestinating ears." 
 While it is wiser, as well as more charitable, neither to condemn Dry- 
 den's adoption of Roman Catholic tenets for insincerity, nor to ascribe 
 it to sordid motives, it should be understood that it was not a conversion 
 from any previous well-settled creed, but the movement of a mind which 
 as yet had taken little heed to its hereafter. He found himself growing 
 old, many precious years misspent in worthless, thankless, and danger- 
 ous pursuits, in the service and in the society of the dissolute and un- 
 principled, making sport for them, and displaying his God-given strength 
 in literary gladiatorship ; after a life busied in the thickest of the throng 
 of a faithless generation, he began at last to have misgivings, and to 
 feel, in the words of a truly moral poet who had gone before liim, — 
 
 " That unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 
 
 He witnessed the ecclesiastical ferment of his times, — affairs of clmrch 
 entangled with alfairs of state, —and his wearied and awakened spirit 
 hastened from the apathy or restlessness of scepticism into the repose 
 of absolute ecclesiastical infallibility. The M'hole course of tlie argument, 
 in the poem, shows this, even if it were not pretty clearly avowed : — 
 
 " My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires ; 
 My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, 
 Follow'd false lights ; and when their glimpse was gone 
 My pride struck out new sparkles of its own.
 
 THE HIND AND THE PANTHER. 185 
 
 Such was I, such by nature still I am ; 
 
 Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame ! 
 
 Good life be now my task : my doubts are done." 
 
 The opening lines of the " Hind and the Panther " have been reputed 
 airiong the most musieal in the language, — an opinion, however, enter- 
 iained by those who have limited their sense of rhythm chiefly to the 
 rliyme and the couplet : — • 
 
 " A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged. 
 Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged ; 
 Without, unspotted, innocent within. 
 She fcar'd no danger, for she knew no sin. 
 Yet hud she oft been chased with horns and hounds. 
 And Scythian shafts ; and many winged wounds 
 Aim'd at her heart ; was often forced to fly. 
 And doom'd to death, though fated not to die. 
 * « * » * 
 
 Panting and pensive, now she ranged alone 
 
 And wander'd in the kingdoms once her own ; 
 
 The common hunt, though from their rage restrain'd 
 
 By sovereign power, her company disdain'd ; 
 
 Grinn'd as they pass'd, and with a glaring eye 
 
 Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity. 
 
 'T is true, she bounded by, and tripp'd so light. 
 
 They had not time to take a steady sight ; 
 
 For truth has such a face and such a mien 
 
 As, to be loved, needs only to be seen." 
 
 With the high eulogies on Dryden's odes, especially "Alexander's 
 Feast," I confess myself unable to sympathize. While there is much 
 of lyrical rapidity in it, there is an absence of lyrical dignity both in 
 thought and language : it has somewhat too much of the bacchanalian 
 strain and too much of the pettiness of a mere song to come up to tlie 
 standard of a true ode. 
 
 In the course of this lecture I have had occasion to condemn the per- 
 version of Dryden's genius to low and unhallowed purposes. There was 
 not only the native licentiousness in many of his dramas, but a borrowed 
 iniquity in not a few of his translations from ancient authors. His 
 imagination did not, like Milton's, travel into Greek and Roman poetry 
 to feed on the purity and wisdom to be found there, but gloated over 
 ils corruptions and obscenity, as if it were better to go to the Eternal 
 City and there to delve in the tombs or beneath the mouldering arches 
 of its sewers than to stand on the Capitolinc aiul breathe tlie pure air 
 under an Italian sky and blowing across the seven hills of Rome. 
 
 It was my intention to have attemiitcd to draw a contrast between
 
 186 LECTUBE EIGHTH. 
 
 the old age of Milton and Dryden, to each of them a season of solitude 
 and worldly misfortune : — Milton's the noble, placid closing of a Ufe 
 spent " ever in his great Taskmaster's eye," — the veiy darkness of 
 blindness sanctified to his meditative spirit, as he sublimely imagined it, 
 " the shadows of heavenly wings " falling upon his footsteps ; — Dry den's 
 old age the remnant of a life worn out in his Egyptian bondage, embit- 
 tered by the memory of talents spent in the thankless services of the 
 meanest, most sordid and grovelling of earthly kings. This contrast was 
 in my thoughts ; but, when I reflect on the lines I now in conclusion 
 read, I find myself disarmed of the intention : — 
 
 ' If joys hereafter must be purchased here 
 With loss of all that mortals hold so dear, 
 Then welcome infamy and public shame, 
 And, last, a long farewell to worldly fame ! 
 'T is said with ease ; but oh, how hardly tried 
 By haughty souls to human honour tied ! 
 Oh, sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride ! 
 Down then, thou rebel, never more to rise ! 
 And what thou didst, and dost, so dearly prize, — 
 That fame, that darling fame, — make that thy sacrifice ; 
 'T is nothing thou hast given ; then add thy tears 
 For a long race of unrcpenting years : 
 'T is nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give ; 
 Then add those may-be years thou hast to live ; 
 'T is nothing still ; then poor and naked come ; 
 Thy Father will receive his unthrift home. 
 And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum." 
 
 fe^R>^
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 K^t ^igc of ^ucfn ^nne : |1o,pc ; 
 
 AND 
 
 ^octs of tljc liitcr part of the ^icibtccntlj Ctnturn : (f ofopcr. 
 
 THE AGE OF POPE-CHAXGE IX THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF AUTHORS— LANGUAG K 
 OF DEDICATIONS— PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS— STATE OF BRITISH PARTIES- 
 LORD' MAHON'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE AGE— SPIRIT OF THAT AGE— ALEXANDER 
 POPE— HIS ASPIRATIONS— HIS WANT OF SYMPATHY WITH HIS PREDECESSORS- 
 IMITATION OF FRENCH POETRY— POPES EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE— POPE'S PAS- 
 TORALS— CORRUPTIONS OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE— JOHN DENNIS'S EMENDATIONS 
 OF SHAKSPEARE— POPES VERSIFICATION— THE " TOWN "—THE MOONLIGHT SCENE 
 IN THE ILLVD— POPE AND MILTON CONTRASTED— " ELOISA TO ABELARD "— THE 
 "RAPE OF THE LOCK"— POPE'S SATIRES— THE "ESSAY ON CRITICISM "—THE 
 " ESSAY ON MAN "—LORD BOLINGBROKE— ORTHODOXY OF THE " ESSAY ON MAN " 
 —HIS APPRECIATION OF FEMALE CHARACTER— WILLIAM COWPER— HIS INSANITY 
 —"THE TASK"— "JOHN GIU^IN"— "THE DIRGE"— "THE CASTAWAY "—" COWPER'S 
 GRATE." 
 
 THE lecture on Dryden has bron<i;ht our studies dcwni to tlie close of 
 the seventeenth century, his death having its date in the year 1700. 
 A literary era of great brilliauoy soon followed in the early years of the 
 eighteenth century, — the age of Queen Anne, as it has been styled, — of 
 the poetry of which Pope stands, by universal admission, the represent- 
 ative—enjoying very much the same exclusive supremacy as had been 
 attained by his immediate predecessor, Dryden, in his days. The age 
 lias its distinctive traits, political, moral, and social, affecting its litera- 
 ture ; and Pope lived in close and strong sympathy with the times. He 
 was, though devoted to the prime pursuit of literary fame, intimately 
 associated with the actors and the scenes of public life. His rc})utatiou 
 was speedy and brilliant. Tlie real worth of it has been much disetissed 
 \vithin the last few years, — a discussion, however, in whicli, except with 
 a few ultraists, there is less real difference of opinion than zeal of 
 controversy. 
 
 Before entering upon any statement of these opinions, I wish to notice 
 a change which, at this time, was taking place in the social relations of 
 authors, — their position in the community. The condition of literature 
 has in dilferent moods of society, by this consideration, been materially
 
 18S LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 controlled, taking a character from outward agencies. In tlie earlier 
 ages of English authorship, the poets, when seeking the favour and 
 countenance of men of rank, conciliated their patronage by tributes 
 which were no less honourable to hiin that gave than to him who re- 
 ceived ; for the language of dedication was a manly language, wholly 
 free from servility. What, for instance, could be liner than the magnifi- 
 cent series of dedications of Spenser's " Fairy Queen," — the affectionate 
 and dutiful homage of a heart — a true poet's heart — for ever seeking 
 the good and the honourable and the beautiful, wherever his imagination 
 dwelt ? The poet and the man of true nobility appear not to have been 
 separated by any strongly-marked line of social demarcation : there was 
 equal and honourable intimacy. ■ Coming down to a later period, 
 writers are seen pitiably fawning upon the great, the rich, and the 
 powerful ; an adulation poisonous to the love of truth and independence 
 becomes a deep-seated and wide-spread disease. The boundless extrava- 
 gance of Dryden's flattery is one of the moral blots upon his memoiy. 
 What was a poet's function, iu that sensual generation, but to feed an 
 impure and palsied taste, for ever demanding stronger and stronger 
 stimulants ? His position had scarce more of moral elevation than that 
 of a court buffoon, rising higher only when called to render a vassal's 
 service in some fugitive quarrel of his master's, and to provide weapons 
 from the arsenal of poetic satire. A better state of things was brought 
 about in the succeeding period. The press was beginning to acquii-e 
 an influence over public opinion which greatly affected the circum- 
 stances of men who were competent to write. The introduction of 
 periodical publications may be referred to the reign of Queen Anne ; 
 and political leaders soon felt how great must be the sway upon public 
 measures, and the policy of the two great parties, of discussion thus 
 circulated. It has been well remarked, in reference to the fact of Lord 
 Bolingbroke and the Lord-Chancellor Cowpcr having contributed to 
 certain periodical publications, that two such statesmen, taking such a 
 course, must have perceived the full extent of this influence. The 
 power of a party-press was realized, and Whigs and Tories, Ministry 
 and Opposition, rallied men of letters in their respective ranks. The 
 man of letters, of course, rose in estimation ; his social position was a 
 better one. His attitude was not indeed as advantageous — not as pro- 
 pitious, I mean — to the gonial activity of his powers, as that which ex- 
 isted under the affeetionate, generous, and uncalculating relation be- 
 tween the early poets and their patrons and friends. Far less is it t« 
 be compared with that lofty independence maintained by Milton ; but 
 assuredly far better than such a state of things as d(!graded most of the
 
 LORD MAHON's remarks ON THE AGE. 189 
 
 authors whose misfortune it was to have their lot cast under the do- 
 minion of the hiter Stuart kings. The period now under review was it 
 pahny one for men who hekl a pen of power. This M^as a new condition 
 of English literature, arising from the state of British pai'ties and the 
 expansion of the periodical press. It has been well illustrated by Lord 
 Mahou in his agreeable history of that period : — " During the reigns of 
 William, of Anne, and of George I., till 1721, when Walpole became 
 prime minister, the Whigs and Tories vied with each other in the en- 
 couragement of learned and literary men. Whenever a writer showed 
 signs of genius, either party to which his principles might incline him 
 was eager to hail him as a friend. The most distinguished society and 
 the most favourable opportunities were thrown open to him. Places 
 and pensions were showered down in lavish' profusion : those who 
 wished only to puj'sue their studies had the means afforded them for 
 learned leisure, while more ambitious spirits were pushed forward in 
 Parliament or diplomacy. In short, though the sovereign was never an 
 Augustus, every minister was a Mfecenas. Newton became Master of 
 the Mint, Locke was a commissioner of appeals, Steele was a commis- 
 sioner of stamps. Stepney, Prior, and Gay were employed in lucrative and 
 important embassies. It was a slight piece of humour at his outset, and, 
 at his introduction, the ' City and Country Mouse,' that brought forth 
 a mountain of honours to Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax and 
 First Lord of the Treasury. Wlien Parnell first came to court, Lord- 
 Treasurer Oxford passed through the crowd of nobles, leaving them all 
 unnoticed, to greet and welcome the poet. ' I value myself,' says Swift, 
 ' upon making the ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and 
 not Parnell Avith the ministry.' Swift himself became Dean of St. 
 Patrick's, and but for the queen's dislike would have been Bishop of 
 Hereford. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was debarred from all places of 
 honour or emolument ; yet Secretary Craggs offered him a pension of 
 £300 a year, not to be known by the public, and to be paid from the 
 secret service-money. In 1714, General Stanhope carried a bill pro- 
 viding a most liberal reward for tlie discovery of the longitude ; Addi- 
 son became secretary of state ; Tickell was secretary in Ireland ; several 
 rich sinecures were bestowed on Congreve, and Rowe, and Hughes, and 
 Ambrose Phillips." 
 
 It is necessary to be cautious, lest we conclude too hastily that the 
 moral improvement of men of letters kept pace with their social im- 
 provement. Their elevation in society in consequence of the spread of 
 political literature had indeed brought with it a certain kind of independ- 
 cuce, which secured to them a certain dignity in public estimation ; but
 
 100 LECTURE NINTIT. 
 
 it seems to me that they were too much entangled in associations alien 
 to a pure and elevated literature. Even with that increased independ- 
 ence, there was still preserved a system of patronage such as gave to 
 the Earl of Halifax the reputation of the Maecenas of the age, and to 
 which authors found it expedient to pay coiu't. These were influences 
 not propitious to the higher aspirations of genius. 
 
 The age of Queen Anne was an age distinguished for its courtly re- 
 finement, in comparison at least with the grossness which had been so 
 predominant a few years before. The unclean spirit had gone out, but 
 it walked in dry places ; during the early reigns of the eighteenth 
 century, England seems to have been in the condition of a relapse. 
 There was a heartlessness in the nation, in all its leading classes, in the 
 Chui-ch, in the State, and among its writers. The lofty character of 
 the statesman was lowered to that of the politician, and the inspired 
 bard became chiefly studious of a polished diction and a nicely-balanced 
 verse. The great political parties of a former age had dwmdled into 
 tangled factions. Venality had become a prevalent vice, and tlie cm-rent 
 of public affairs was stirred less by the agitation of deep principles than 
 by petty intrigues. Men had lost theii* magnanimity ; and in its stead 
 they trusted to small expedients and large pretensions. Ascendency 
 was held by wits and freethinkers and shallow philosophers. 
 
 After these general notices of the spirit of those times, it is my pur- 
 pose to look at its influence upon English poetry, as it may be traced 
 in the poems of its representative during abnost the first half of the 
 eighteenth century, — Alexiinder Pope. 
 
 Intimately as Pope was associated with men in prominent and active 
 public life, his career was essentially a literary one. The cause to which 
 he devoted all his cares and labours was the acquisition and guardian- 
 ship of his reputation as an author. Sir Walter Scott has pointed out 
 the striking contrast in this particular between Pope and his robust - 
 minded friend. Dean Swift, who seems to have disdained the character of 
 a mere man of letters, and to have been careless of his works beyond 
 their mere occasional use. Scott himself had a touch of Swift's charar- 
 terin this particular, and has therefore ])ointedly adverted to wliat he 
 regarded as a weakness in Pope's moral and intellectual constitution. 
 
 "Pope's character and habits," he remarks, "were cxehisively 
 literary, with all the hopes, fears, and failings which are attached to 
 that feverish occupation, — a restless pursuit of poetical fame. Without 
 domestic society or near relations, separated by weak health and per- 
 sonal disadvantages from the gay, — by fineness of mind and lettered 
 indolence from the busy part of mankind, surrounded oidy by a few
 
 pope's ASPIKATTONg. 191 
 
 friends who valued those gifts in which he excelled. Pope's whole hopes, 
 wishes, and fears were centred in his Literary reputation. To extend 
 his fame he laboured indirectly as well as directly, and to defend it 
 from the slightest attack was his daily and nightly anxiety. Hence the 
 restless impatience which that distinguished author displayed under the 
 libels of dunces whom he ought to have despised ; and hence, too, the 
 venomed severity with which he retorted their puny attacks." 
 
 Now, in such a career it is at once manifest that there is an absence 
 of the magnanimity of a great poet's soul. The highest aspiration of 
 Pope's ambition was the acquisition of fame at the hands of the genera- 
 tion he was living with. He was surrounded by men of talents, of wit 
 and accomplishments, men of the world, men of the town ; and he 
 deemed then- praises all that a poet need desii-e. Their admiration was 
 the voucher to him for his fame. He does not seem to have looked 
 above or beyond the companionship of his own generation, as if never 
 doubting that their judgment must be echoed by posterity. His hopes 
 were centred in the approval of his contemporaries, and he bent his 
 efforts to earn a speedy popularity witb them. It has been nobly s.aid 
 of Milton that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." An 
 imagination shining, starlike, brightly and loftily would have probably 
 shone in vain upon the generation in which Pope's lot was cast. Of 
 him it may be said that the light of his genius had more of wprldly 
 kindling ; it dwelt not apart, but glittered nearly, clearly, and gayly, 
 like a ball-room lamp. 
 
 Pope's aspirations were crowned with success beyond all parallel. 
 He gained duriag his lifetime, and therefore for his ovm personal enjoy- 
 ment, a wider and more brilliant reputation than had been attained by 
 any English poet who had preceded him, — a reputation still cherished 
 in the constant admiration of many of our elders, who find in his well- 
 turned and well-tuned and well-pointed lines their favourite quotations. 
 It is my duty now to endeavour to ascertain how that reputation was 
 acquired, and to measure its real height apart from aU prepossessions 
 and prejudices. 
 
 Let me in the first place remark that Pope's heart, whatever profes- 
 sions of admiration may have occasionally fallen from him, was not with 
 any of his most illustrious predecessors. His path was a continuation 
 of that which had been trod by Dryden. The process begun by that 
 poet, of giving to English poetry the polish of French versification, was 
 to be completed by Pope. He began his career of authorship under 
 the persuasion that his country, while it had produced several great 
 poets, had no great poet that was correct ; and to supply that delicieury
 
 102 LECTUHE NINTH. 
 
 was his study and the aim of his whole course. Apart from Shakspeare, 
 whose genius was a law to itself, it is an interesting fact that each of 
 the great poets fortified his powers by affectionate study of the imagina- 
 tion of his great English predecessors. Spenser has told of his ol)liga- 
 tions to Chaucer, "the father" of our poetry; and Milton was the 
 student of both Chaucer and Spenser. But Drydcn and Pope looked 
 to Continental poetry, with something of repugnance to the insular 
 barbarism of their poetical ancestry : they fashioned their imaginations 
 after the Trench models, forgetting that in thus copying traits which 
 were uatui-al to Trance they were smoothing away the bold and dis- 
 tinctive features of their native poetry. It was applying to the fresh 
 and ruddy complexion of the English Muse cosmetics and artiticial 
 colour. The imitation was avowed and ju.stified by Pojie : — 
 
 "We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms ; 
 Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our amis ; 
 Britain to soft refinement less a foe, 
 Wit grew polite, and numbers leara'd to flow. 
 Waller was smooth ; but Dryden taught to join 
 The varying verse, the full, resounding line. 
 The long majestic march and energy' divine. 
 Though still some traces of our rustic vein 
 And splay-foot verse remain'd, and will remain 
 Late, very late, correctness grew our care. 
 When the tired nation breathed from civil war; 
 Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire 
 Show'd us that France had something to admire 
 Not but the tragic spirit was our own. 
 And full in Shakspeare, fair in Otway, shone ; 
 But Otway fail'd to polish or refine, 
 And fluent Shakspeare scarce effaced a line : 
 E'en copious Drydcn wanted or forgot 
 The last and greatest art, — the art to blot." 
 
 When Pope began his career, the field, it seems to me, was open to 
 the ready accomplishment of his ambition ; for the best and earlier 
 English poetry had no more place in tlie afi'ections of his contemjioraries 
 than in Ids own. How low must have been their appreciation of Shak- 
 speare is in some measure shown by lliat most remarkable edition of 
 tlie great dramatist's works, — Pope's edition, — in which he hitroduced 
 throughout, in tlie margin, certain marks, intended to point out what 
 he called the most shining passages. There M'cre many men who thouglit 
 like Lord Clicsterfield, who said that he was obliged to take snuli' whcu 
 he read " Paradise Lost," — the small wit of which remark I am not 
 sure that I distinctly see ; but I suppose it meant that lie needed some
 
 pope's versification. 193 
 
 stimulus to keep him awake during the effort. Pope showed an in- 
 stinctive knowledge of the age he was writing for when he made it a 
 chief object to give to English versification a polish and a smoothness 
 surpassing what had been before attained, — not, indeed, transcending 
 the harmouy to be often found, but a harmony of unequalled uniformity, 
 free from even occasional harshness. This he was enabled to accompli.sh 
 partly by elaborate finish and partly by his natural endowment of a cor- 
 rect ear. Versification had been a spontaneous delight in childhood 
 with him : he 
 
 " Lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came." 
 
 The poet introduced himself to public observation by his " Pastorab." 
 These poems could scarcely be read now with any interest even by a 
 zealous admirer of Pope. They had, however, a success that fixed the 
 character of his poetry. The public ear was fascinated with the un- 
 broken flow of the verse and the unwonted refinement of the diction. 
 
 This refining process has influenced so much of English writing that 
 I wish to notice the changes style underwent during the latter part of 
 the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century. In the years 
 of the Restoration, the language lost much of its purity and its native 
 tone by two opposite con-uptions : one, the adoption of very easy and 
 vulgarly-coUoquial expressions, — an infection which touched even some 
 of the most celebrated pulpit oratory, a freedom and coarseness of dic- 
 tion denominated slang, a word belonging to the very vocabulary it 
 denotes. The other corruption was OAving to a mistaken notion of re- 
 finement, — a squeamLslmess in iising native strong idiomatic English 
 forms of expression. Dryden gave a sanction to tliis affectation of a 
 misplaced precision, which I may exemplify by mentioning his deter- 
 mination to correct as faulty and inelegant liis use of the Anglicism of 
 ending a sentence with a preposition ; changing, for example, the 
 phrase " I cannot think so contemptibly of the age I live in " into " the 
 age in which I live." 
 
 The poets and the critics of this period manifestly prided themselves 
 on superior skdl in poetic art, and disparaged their greater predecessors 
 for a semi-barbarian rudeness. This was Dryden's habit of opinion ; it 
 was Pope's ; and, to show how general it was, one of the chief victims 
 of Pope's satire in the " Dunciad," John Dennis, gave his care to re- 
 fining what he thought unsightly irregularities in Shakspcare's drama. 
 The historical play of " Coriolanus " came forth doubly refined under 
 the process, presenting a feebleness of paraplu-ase woefully contrasted 
 witli tlie original. " The icicle that hangs on Dian's temple " is made 
 " the icicle that hangs on the temple of Diana." 
 
 o
 
 191 LECTURE NINXU. 
 
 The Roman's fond expression of constancy to his wife, — 
 
 " That kiss 
 I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip 
 Hath vir^in'd it e'er since," — 
 
 is evaporated in these more polished and mawkish words : — 
 
 " That kiss 
 I carried from my love, and my true lip 
 Hath ever since preserved it like a virgin." 
 
 And, to take one more example, who would recognise in this furbished 
 and feeble version, — 
 
 " This boy, that, like an eagle in a dovecote, 
 Flutter'd a thousand Voices in Corioli, , 
 
 And did it without second or acquittance. 
 Thus sends their mighty chief to mourn in hell,"^ 
 
 who could recognise the natural burst of mingled triumph and indigi.ii- 
 tion when Coriolanus is taunted with the word " boy " ? — 
 
 " Boy .'—False hound ! 
 
 If you have writ your annals true, 't is there, 
 
 That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I 
 
 Flutter'd your Voices in Corioli : 
 
 Alone I did it. — Boy ! " 
 
 r notice this propensity to give a high-wrought polisli both to diction 
 and metre, because, while it was, I doubt not, the fashion of the times, 
 no one gave more pains to the process than Pope, llis versification is 
 entitled to all praise for its exquisite smoothness and beauty of sound, 
 though limited almost entirely to one species of verse, m which he dis- 
 played his skill as a metrist. The couplet which of all others is said to 
 have best satisfied his own ear is the following, in the " Dunciad:" — 
 
 " Lo ! where Macotis sleeps, and hardly flows 
 The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows." 
 
 The pages of Pope abound also in felicitous combinations of words, — 
 phrases commended to the memory and impressed tliere by their beauty, 
 wliieh is one of tlie reasons his lines are so frequently quoted. It would 
 be scarcely possible to find words more happily chosen and more aptly 
 combined than ui his well-known expression, — one among many of the 
 same description, — 
 
 " To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art." 
 
 The success of Pope's early poems misled him into a belief which 
 could not fail to be fatal to him as a descriptive poet of external nature, 
 lie found, from the reception of his " Pastorals," that ])eop]e were 
 wLUiiig tu be pleased with a poetry purporting to be descriptive, iu
 
 THE " TOWN." 195 
 
 which there was in truth no description of nature either actual or 
 imaginative. The greatest of the poets had been dutiful and affection- 
 ate in the study of nature ; and the bounteous recompense was that 
 nature ministered to them. So was it with Chaucer, Spenser, and 
 Siiakspeare ; and with Milton, fiUing the storehouse of his fancy with 
 treasures that were to last during the famine of incurable bHndness. A 
 change came over the spirit of poetry under the dynasty of Drydcn, 
 and still more of his follower — follower in time and in poetic theory — 
 Pope. A style of description grew fasliionable wliich betrayed that 
 their comraiuiion with nature was not dii-ect, thoughtful, and imagin- 
 ative, but through the medium of books, and verbal and fantastic. It 
 has been well said that "when Milton lost his eyes, Poetry lost hers." 
 A time followed when our poets ceased to commune with nature and 
 ceased to love her, and, as there can be no true knowledge without love, 
 ceased therefore to know anything about her. Man again became all in 
 all, but not the ideal human nature of Greek poetry in its altitudes of 
 action and passion, — the human nature of what was called the toicn, 
 with all its pettinesses and hoUownesses and crookednesses and rotten- 
 nesses. The great business and struggle of men seemed to be to out- 
 lie, out-cheat, and out-hector each other. Our poets then dwelt in 
 Grub Street, and, to judge from tlieir works, seldom left their garrets, 
 save to go to the coffee-house, the play-house, and other polluted places. 
 Dryden wrote a bombastic description of night, from which one miglit 
 suppose that he had never seen night except by candle-light. He talked 
 of " nature's self seeming to lie dead ; " of " the mountains seeming to 
 nod their drowsy heads," — much as Charles II. used to do at a sermon ; 
 — and of " sleeping flowers Kweafing beneath the night-dews." Yet this 
 was extoUed by Rymer, a countryman of Shakspeare's, as the finest de- 
 scription of night ever composed, — an opinion which Johnson quotes 
 without expressing any dissent, telling us, moreover, that these lines 
 were oftener repeated in his days than almost any other of Dryden's. 
 What, then, must have been the knowledge of nature, and what the 
 feeling for it, in an age when the poetical imagery which the readers 
 and repeaters of poetry were accustomed to associate with night, was 
 nature's lying dead, mountains nodding iheir drowsy heads, and sleep- 
 ing flowers sweating beneatli the night-dews ? People even learned to 
 fancy and to tell one another that all this was indeed so. As it is the 
 wont of hollow things to echo, whenever a poet hit on a striking image 
 or a starthng expression, it was bandied from mouth to mouth. Thus, 
 " nodding mountains " became a stock phrase, a piece of falsetto, which 
 pfissed from Dryden to Pope. 
 
 2
 
 196 LECTURE JfTNTII. 
 
 This once-cclebrated description (and I have seen it quoted, even 
 wiihin a few years past, as an example of Dryden's peculiar felicity in 
 describing repose) is in these vague, inflated, and unmeaning lines : — 
 
 " All things arc hush'd, as nature's solf lay dead; 
 The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head ; 
 The little birds in dreams their songs repeat. 
 And sleeping flowers beneath the night-dews sweat." 
 
 This passau-e has lost its celebrity; but there is a passage of Pope's 
 which has held its place in public adiuii'ation much longer, — his trans- 
 lation of lhe celebrated niooidight scene in the Iliad, — showing an equal 
 disregard of the most obvious appearances of nature ; for, though he 
 had Homer to guide him, the lines have been justly condemned as 
 throughout false and contradictory : — 
 
 " As when the moon — refulgent lamp of night - 
 O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, 
 When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
 And not a cloud o'ereasts the solemn scene ; 
 Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole ; 
 O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
 And tipt with silver every moiintain's head : 
 Then shine the vales ; the rocks in prospect rise ; 
 A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ; 
 The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
 Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." 
 
 "Here," said Mr. Southey in a pithy comment on tliis passage, "are 
 tlu; planets rolling round the moon ; here is the pole gilt and glowing 
 with stars ; here are trees made yellow and mountains tipped with 
 silver by the moonlight, and here is the whole sky in a flood of glory: — 
 appcaninces not to be found either in Homer or in nature. Finally, 
 these gilt and glowing skies, at the very time when they are thus pour- 
 ing forth a flood of glory, are represented as a blue vault ! The as- 
 tronomy in these lines would not appear more extraordinary to Dr. 
 Herschell than the imagery to every person who has observed moon- 
 light scenes." " Strange," it has been well said, too, — " strange to 
 thuik of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, re- 
 citing these verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having 
 his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity !" 
 I have alluded to these passages to show how, in this school of poetry, 
 its masters, Diydcn, and, perha])s still more, I'ope, could bring them- 
 selves to think the visible universe as of little consequence to a poet. 
 Fidelity to nature— the truthfulness which distinguished the elder poets
 
 THE "rape of the LOCK." 307 
 
 — was banished lUj vvortliless, and fine words and smooth verses were 
 the substitute. 
 
 The nature that Pope loved and admired was such an artificial nature 
 as he liad formed for liimself in his famous grotto at Twickenham. It 
 seems to me typical of his poetry so far as that poetry purported to be de- 
 scriptive ; especially when I fancy him seated there attired in the costume 
 of Queen Anne's days, laced tightly in the stays he was obhged to wear on 
 account of the weakness of his figui-e, his tie-wig pushed a little on one 
 side, as his portrait represents him, or with a velvet cap on his head, his 
 grotto composed of marbles, spars, gems, ores, and minerals. When I 
 fancy him there eating sweetmeats, or conversing with Lord Boling- 
 broke, catching his philosophy from that nobleman, the poet thus fancied 
 seems to me the very incarnation of his poetry. How contrasted, let 
 me add, with the tradition of Milton's personal appearance, equally 
 typical, clad in simple dress, a gray coarse cloth coat, and seated at tin; 
 door of his residence near Moorgate, in warm, sunny weather, to enjoy 
 the fresh air or the affectionate and reverential visit of some friend of 
 simple habits of life like his own ! In Ida heart a strong and unadul- 
 terated love of nature always had its indwelling ; for, when old and blind, 
 all that was left was the pure enjoyment of the fresh air, touching his 
 noble brow and fanning the flo\dng hair that was parted on it, bringing 
 too, no doubt, reeoUeetions of his suburban rambles and the happy rural 
 home at Horton. 
 
 But Pope's reputation rests less at the present day on his descnpiii-e 
 poetry than upon his satires and his moral poems, besides his heroi- 
 comical poem, the "Rape of the Lock," and the "Eloisa to Abelard." 
 In the latter poem there are evidences of higher efforts of imagination 
 than Pope has shown in any other of his poems ; but, unfoi-tunately, 
 his imagination was employed upon a theme of which tlie grossness has 
 been heightened in his hands, notwithstanding the dazzUng veil inter- 
 posed of exquisitely-finished verse. Of the " Riipe of the Lock " I ac- 
 knowledge my inability of admiration. It always seems to me a piece 
 of raillery wonderfully overwrought and with very little of comic force 
 under its heroic cover. I can enter most heartily, as I hope to be able 
 to show you, into the enjoyment of Burns's elfin creations, — the folks 
 that Tarn O'Shanter met at Kirk-AUoway, — or in Shakspeare's fairy 
 world, the realms and the subjects of Oheron andTitania, Puck and the 
 othe'r merry wanderers of the night keeping their quaint and moonlight 
 revels, following darkness like a dream, .singing fairy songs, and, 
 " By paved fountain, or by riis'iy brook, 
 Or on the beachud margcnt of the sea. 
 Dancing their ringlets to the whistling wind."
 
 198 LKCTURE NINTH. 
 
 But, as for the ball-room elves, the sylphs of the " Rape of the Lock," 
 Pope's Zephyrettas and Momentillas, Erillaules and Crispiss;is, it is 
 essential artifice : they are a sort of brocadc-and-hooped faiiies ; there 
 is no nature, no life in them. 
 
 The satii-ical poems of Pope show great powers in that department (of 
 poetry. His satire is a weapon of greater keenness and polish but less 
 weight than Dryden's. The famous character of Addison is an ad- 
 mirable specimen of Pope's best satirical discrimination and skill : — 
 
 " Peace to all such ! But were there one whose fires 
 TiTie genius kindles and fair fame inspires, 
 Bless'd with each talent and each heart to please, 
 And born to write, converse, and live with ease, — 
 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. 
 Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ; 
 View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, 
 And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. 
 And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 
 Willing to wovind, and yet afraid to strike ; 
 First hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
 Alike reserved to blame or to commend, — 
 A timorous foe, and a .suspicious friend ; 
 Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged. 
 And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
 Like Cato, gives his little senate laws, 
 And sits attentive to his own applause ; 
 While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
 And wonder with a foolish face of praise : — 
 ^^ ho but must laugh if such a man there be ? 
 Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? " 
 
 This passage sliows Pope's talent for satire to better advantage, it. 
 seems to me, than any of his bitter and veliemcnt invectives or tlie 
 Niitty sarcasm which abounds in the "Duuciad." 
 
 The reputation of Pope has l)cen considerable as a philosophic and 
 moral poet. His j)hilosopluc poen)s are the "Essay on Criticism " and 
 the "Essay on Man," with the supplementary essays. The former 
 was a youthful production with but, a small proi)ortion of imaginative 
 spirit, having been first written in prose and then translated into verse. 
 It is a poem which supplies frequent quotations of commonplace truisms 
 ill metre, conveniently remembered; such as 
 
 " A little learning is a dangerous thing: 
 Drink deep, or tiuste not the Pierian spring." 
 
 The "Essa, on iMan" is a mor.; elaborate metaphysical poem, with
 
 LOED BOLTNGEROKE. 199 
 
 a high design and a comprehensive scope, — a system of ethics deduced 
 from considerations of tlie nature and state of man in his various rela- 
 tions. To criticise the execution of this plan and measure its consist- 
 ency with Christian philosophy cannot now be attempted. Let me 
 only remark, I find it impossible, in reading the poem, to divest my 
 mind of the recollection of the source of the philosophical views to 
 which Pope gave the popularity of verse. By whom was the design of 
 the poem prompted? by whom its theory and arguments dictated? to 
 whom was it dedicated ? and whose praises are interwoven with it as 
 the author's "friend," his "genius," "master of the poet and the 
 song," his " guide and philosopher " ? To Henry St. John, Viscount 
 Bolingbroke ! And who and what was Lord Bolingbroke ? He was 
 one whose name was most prominent in both the literary and political 
 circles of society during the reign of Queen Anne and the first of the 
 Brunswick race of English kings. His youth had been severely trained 
 under a preceptor whom he afterwards sneeringly styles a puritanical 
 parson who made one hundred and nineteen sermons on the 119th 
 Psalm. His early manhood recoiled into the excesses of a libertine ; 
 he became a sceptic, priding himself upon the sufficiency of an infidel 
 philosophy ; and, when political reverse cast him down from the high 
 place of power and honours into exile and disgrace, he boastfully pro- 
 claimed that virtue could find a home on any soil. But his philosophy 
 did not avail him : he pined in a foreign land, a miserable outcast, 
 craving his lost influence and station. The mind of Pope dwelt in the 
 .shadow of Bolingbroke's. Now, how could it, thus overshadowed, the 
 light of revelation thus intercepted by the dark and restless leaves of 
 the poisonous tree of a faithless philosophy, — " philosophy falsely so 
 called," — how could it have other than a stinted growth ? The whole 
 body of the "Essay on Man" was Bolingbroke's ; and Pope's function 
 was to give it the outward garb of verse, — to give it \vings to fly into 
 hearts it never otherwise would have reached. It is utterly impossible 
 to reconcile the notion of Pope's being an author of an exalted and 
 powerful genius, with the mere ministerial relation in wliich he was 
 content and happy to stand to Bolingbroke, and such a man who well 
 earned the epithet given in Shakspeare to an earlier one of the same 
 name, — " the cankered Bolingbroke." The poet worsliipped the philoso- 
 pher as his genius : — yes, but unhappily the genius was but a minister- 
 ing spirit of evil. Like Satan close at the car of Eve, the infidel was 
 at the poet's side, — 
 
 " Assayina; liy liis clovilish art to reach 
 The organs of his fancy."
 
 200 LECTURE NIKTH. 
 
 When the consistency of the reasoning in Pope's poem with Eevela- 
 tion was questioned, 1 know that strong men, Warbiirton among them, 
 were ready to indicate its orthodoxy ; but I greatly fear there was 
 something in the constitution of Pope's mind which fitted it for the re- 
 ception of the seeds of Bolingbroke's philosophy. How far the poet 
 wiis a dutiful chUd of the Roman Catholic Church I cannot undertake 
 to judge ; but a strange kind of faith it must have been when such a 
 sentiment as this passed between him and his noble friend. In Bobng- 
 brokc's elaborate letter to Pope, he says, " You quoted to me onc(;, 
 with great applause, an apophthegm : — ' Where mystery begins, religion 
 ends.' " What a poor thing would religion be if its depths were sJial- 
 lows to be sounded by the scant line of such philosophy as Ecjliug- 
 broke's ! It is just to add that Pope did not himself realize the full 
 extent of the principles he was thus taught ; and I can well believe 
 there was lurking in Bolingbroke's callous heart the infidel scorn at tlie 
 poet's deluded innocence, beholding him swallowing the poison un- 
 awares. WTiatever interpretation may be put on the poem to reconcile 
 it with Revelation, certain it is that it contains nothing to which Bo- 
 liiigbroke, infidel as he was, could not have given his whole consent. 
 What but the deistical fallacy of the sufticiency of natural religion, as 
 it is called, and the equally sophistical sentiment of a spurious liberality, 
 is in these Lines ? — 
 
 " Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, 
 But looks through nature up to natui'e's God." 
 
 Or, again, how unsound are those lines so often quoted with unthinking 
 approval ! 
 
 " For forms of government let fools contest ; 
 
 Whate'er is best administcr'd is best. 
 
 For modes of faith let senseless zealots fight ; 
 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 As if the administration of a government did not greatly depend upon 
 its form ; as if the rectitude of life did not depend on its faith. 
 
 One great fault in the constitution of Pope's mind was the excess of 
 a dangerous clement : — the proueness to satire. It is dangerous in any 
 mind, — man's or woman's, — the love of saying disagreeable things, the 
 small shafts of which some people always carry theii- quiver full, — the 
 tendency to criticise, to detect faults ; it is dangeroixs above all to the 
 poet, for it lowers the tone of his enthusiasm, by drawing his thoughts 
 away from the grand and good and beautiful. In any one — poet or other 
 —it brings its own penalty ; for i1 closes at last many sources of pure 
 enjoyment, sacrificing tlie haj)piness of dcliglit to the poor pleasure of
 
 pote's appreciation of female chakacter. 201 
 
 crilittd ucutcness. In the worst moral character which Shakspeare has 
 created, he has made the disproportionate excess of satirical temper a 
 large element. "I am nothing," exclaims lago, "if not critical." 
 Throughout Pope's poems runs an almost uninteiTupted vein of satire 
 in some of its forms : it has penetrated even the epitaphs he has written. 
 He scarcely ever touches the character of woman without reproach, — 
 some expression of unmanly contempt or direct insult. How different 
 from that lofty, chastened sentiment of admiration and love which 
 breathes on the pages of every one of our truly great poets ! In this, 
 as in other respects, what men, what perfect gentlemen, they were ! 
 I say this not hy way of gallantry, but because I have not the least doubt 
 that it is an element in the true poetic character. Observation on the 
 chief English poets would verify it as a fact ; and, if there was time, I 
 believe I could state the theory of it. But, passing that by. Pope 
 seems to have had no correct appreciation of female character. The 
 only woman towards whom he ever entertained anything approaching a 
 tender passion was, indeed, more of a man than a woman, — Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montague. The text of his celebrated epistle on the character 
 of women was, — 
 
 " Most women have no characters at all," — 
 
 a piece of sarcasm the sting of which has been admirably extracted by 
 <uie who was as full of gentleness of heart as of genius, — the late Mr. 
 Coleridge. " ' Most women have no characters at all,' said Pope, and 
 meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew men and women much bet- 
 ter, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of women to be character- 
 less, as Desdemona and Ophelia." 
 
 I am not a frequent reader of Pope's poetry, for the simple reason 
 that I am not an earnest admirer of it : as this lecture has probably 
 shown, my heart is not in it. I will say with all candour, that I have 
 had difficulty in duly: appreciating it in close contrast with the superior 
 poetry that lias gone before. Wliilc preparing this lecture, 1 have 
 chanced to light upon some notes made several years ago, after reading 
 Pope's poems, and amidst a variety of very crude and puerile criticism 
 I find one expression which, fuU as it is of boyish fervour, is yet not 
 inappropriate to ray more recent examination of the same poetry. The 
 words were simply these : — " I cannot raise my admiration of Pope very 
 high, because I have just come hof- from Milton." 
 
 A short space, I believe, remains before I reach the verge to which 
 1 venture to tax your patience. The injurious influence of Pope's 
 jioetry in enfeebling Englisii poetry, confirmed as it was by that yerj
 
 202 LECTURE NIIfTH. 
 
 exooptionahle book of its kind. Dr. .Tohnsou's "Lives of the Poets," 
 iind the first si^ns of tlie gradual rcs,'eneration of imaginative literature 
 in the latter part of the century, arc subjects I must seek some oppor- 
 tunity to notice in a subsequent lecture. In that regeneration no one 
 shared more largely than William Cowper, — a true poet, well inspired 
 and well disciplined by the study of one of the chief masters of English 
 song. I had it in my heart to examine vrith you Cowper's whole career 
 with affectionate attention ; but the limits of my course will not permit 
 more than a few allusions, which, T fear, will be as unsatisfactory to 
 to you as, surely, they are to myself. His story, however, is a familiar 
 one ; his poetry, closely interwoven with it, is familiar too. The great 
 value of Cowper's poetry consists in its departure from the French 
 s(!hool of English verse. Milton was his youthful, his life -long ad- 
 miration and model : — 
 
 " Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms : 
 
 New to my taste, his Paradise surpass'd 
 
 The struggling cfForts of my boyish tongue 
 
 To speak its excellence. I danced for joy. 
 
 I marvell'd much that, at so ripe an age 
 
 As twice seven years, his beauties had then first 
 
 Engaged my wonder, and, admiring still 
 
 And still admiring, with regret supposed 
 
 The joy half lost because not sooner found." 
 
 Cowper's early writings were love-verses, meant only for the eye of 
 his fair cousin, who liad won his heart and gave her own in return, 
 though they were doomed soon to be parted for ever during their long 
 lives. The mysterious malady which during fifty years was the affliction 
 of his life came on in prime manhood. It would have a fearful interest 
 to trace its progress from its first intimations, and the fitful, self- 
 frustrating attempt at suicide, to his residence in a madhouse, and the 
 several relapses in after-years. It might be done without the wantcm- 
 ness of holding "vain dalliance with the misery even of the dead ;" but 
 it must suffice to say that it was insanity in its most appalling form, — 
 utter hopelessness of the salvation of his soul, — the monomania of the 
 desperate dread of eternal misery. In the very tumult of his first at- 
 tack he describes his own condition in a few verses, the most agonized, 
 l)robably, that ever fell from poet's pen ; some of them too distressin"- 
 to be repeated ; the wildness increased by the Sapphic m(!asure, strange 
 JD English verse : — 
 
 " Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion, 
 
 Scarce c:in endure delay for execution, — 
 
 Wait witli impatient readiness to seize my 
 Soul in a moment.
 
 cowpeb's insa-Nity. 203 
 
 Man disavows aiid Deity disowns me ; 
 Hell might afford my miseries a shelter, 
 Therefore, hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all 
 Bolted against mc." 
 
 Wioii bodily darkness fell on the footsteps of Milton, he imagined it 
 the overshadowing of heavenly wings ; and we might ascribe to a like 
 cause the spiritual darkness of poor Cowper's days. The gloomy 
 thought that had taken possession of him was never relinquished ; but 
 often it seemed to fade away into the unreal wi-etchedness of a dis- 
 tressing dream. Happiness was ministered to him in various forms. 
 He found contentment in humble occupations, — the innocent amuse- 
 ment of some work of mechanism or the playful companionship of the 
 pet animals he has immortalized. Friends, the kindest and most con- 
 stant man was ever blessed \A\\\, were providentially raised up, one 
 after another, to watch over him. 
 
 Criticism could find few better themes than to examine the character 
 of Cowper's poetry, — to show it always pure and gentle, though some- 
 times overcast by the melancholy of his malady or of a sombre theology, 
 and occasionally rising from its usual familiar range to a region of 
 sublimity. There is great interest, too, in tracing how his knagination 
 extracted melody from his madness, — the evil spirit that troubled him 
 charmed to rest by the harpings of his Muse. But I can notice only 
 tlie most beautiful of his minor poems. It was Covrper's misfortune to 
 lose his mother before he was six years of age. A picture of her was 
 sent to him when he was nearly sixty years old. At the sight of it 
 there started up images and recollections and feelings which had slept 
 for more than half a century. Time and forgctfulness were baffled by 
 a sister art ; and the work was completed by Poetry in as touching 
 lines as ever recorded the movements of a poet's memory into the 
 bl)adowy region of childhood : — 
 
 " Oh that those lips had language ! Life has pass'd 
 
 With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 
 
 Those lips are thine. Thy own sweet smile I see, — 
 
 The same that oft in childhood solaced me. 
 » » » * • 
 
 Now, while that face renews my filial grief, 
 Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief, 
 Shall steep me in Elysiun reverie, — 
 X momentary dream that thou art she. 
 
 My mother ! when I leiirn'd that thou wast dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
 Ilover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son ? 
 Wretch even then, — life's journey just begun !
 
 204 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss, — 
 Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in hliss. 
 Ah ! that maternal smile ! it answers, Yes ! 
 I heard the bell toU'd on thy burial-day, 
 I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
 And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
 A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
 But was it such ? It was. Where thou art gone, 
 Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown ! 
 May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
 The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 
 Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, 
 Oft, gave me promise of thy quick return. 
 What ardently I wish'd I long believed, 
 And, disappointed still, was still deceived; • 
 By expectation every day beguiled. 
 Dupe of to-morrow, even from a child. 
 ^ Thus, many a sad to-morrow came and went. 
 Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
 I learn'd at last submission to my lot, 
 But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." 
 
 It did not please Heaven to unweave the tangled meshes of poor 
 Cowper's brain. The dark delusion of despair hung over his mind to 
 Ihe very verge of his long life of just threescore years and ten. His 
 last original piece, the " Castaway," is, indeed, under aU the circun;- 
 stancos, one of the most aflecting ever composed. He had been reading, 
 in Anson's Voyages, an account of a man lost overboard in a gale of 
 wind : that appalling casualty, which often consigns the sailor to a hel})- 
 less fate, is told in vivid stanzas, closing with the saddest possible 
 moralizmg : — 
 
 " No poet wept him ; but the page 
 Of narrative sincere, 
 That tells his name, his worth, his age, 
 
 Is wet with Anson's tear : 
 And tears by bards or heroes shed 
 Alike immortalize the dead. 
 
 " I therefore purpose not, or dream, 
 
 Descanting on his fate. 
 To give the melancholy theme 
 
 A more enduring date : 
 But misery still deliglits to trace 
 Its semblance in another's case. 
 
 " No voice divine the storm nllay'd, 
 
 No light prf)pitious chonc,
 
 "COWPEr's GKAyE." 205 
 
 Whon, snatch'd from all effectual aid, 
 
 We perish'd, each alone, — 
 But I beneath a rougher sea 
 And whelm'd hi deeper gulfs thau he." 
 
 On his death-bed Cowper put away the words of consolation and hope 
 that were addressed to him, thus showing, in the words of a friend who 
 tended his last moments, that, though his spirit was on the eve of being 
 invested with angelic light, the darkness of delusion still veiled it. 
 As if to mitigate the anguish of those kind hearts which had watched 
 so dark a death-bed, the expression into which his countenance settled 
 after death was that of calmness and composure mingled, as it were, 
 with holy surprise. 
 
 For these very imperfect notices of Cowper, falling so very far below 
 the interest of the subject and my own wishes, let me make some 
 amends by repeating to you some admirable stanzas, entitled " Cowper's 
 Grave." They are from a living woman's pen : — 
 
 COWPER'S GRAVE. 
 
 It is a place where poets crown'd may feel the heart's decaying ; 
 It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying : 
 Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish I 
 Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. 
 
 O poets ! from a maniac's tongue was pour'd the deathless singing ! 
 O Christian ! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging ! 
 O men ! this man, in brotherhood, your weary paths beguiling, 
 Groau'd inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling. 
 
 And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, 
 How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory. 
 And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, 
 He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted, — 
 
 He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation. 
 
 And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration ; 
 
 Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken ; 
 
 Named softly, as the household name of one whom God hath taken. 
 
 With quiet sadness, and no gloom, I learn to think upon him 
 With meekness, that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him, 
 Who suffer'd once the madness-cloud to his own love to blind him. 
 But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him, 
 
 And wrought within his shatter'd brain such quick poetic senses 
 As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences ; 
 The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, 
 And silent shadows from the trees rofrcsh'd him like a slumber.
 
 20() LECTURE NIJs'TH. 
 
 Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share liis home-caresses, 
 Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses ; 
 The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, 
 Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving. 
 
 But while in blindness he remain'd unconscious of the guiding. 
 And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing, 
 He tcstitied this solemn truth, though frenzy-desolated : — 
 Kor man nor nature satisfy whom only God created ! 
 
 Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, 
 
 And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses, 
 
 That turns his fever'd eyes around, — " My mother ! where 's my mother :' 
 
 As if such tender words and looks could come from any other ! 
 
 The fever gone, with leaps of heart, he sees her bending o'er him. 
 Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him ! 
 Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, 
 Beneath those deep pathetic eyes which closed in death to save him. 
 
 Thus? Oh, not thus .' No type of earth could image that awakhig, 
 Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him breaking. 
 Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted. 
 But felt those eyes alone, and knew " Mij Saviour " not deserted ! 
 
 Deserted ! Who hath dreamt that, when the cross in darkness rested 
 Upon the Victim's hidden face, no love was manifested ? 
 What frantic hands outstrctch'd have e'er the atoning drops averted ? 
 What tears have wash'd them from the soul, that one should be deserted ? 
 
 Deserted ! God could separate from his own essence rather, 
 
 And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father ; 
 
 Yea, once Immaniiel's orphan'd cry his universe hath shaken ; 
 
 It went up single, echoless : — " My God, I am forsaken i " 
 
 It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation, 
 
 That of the lost no son should use those words of desolation ; 
 
 That earth's worst frenzies, marring hoj)e, should m;ir not hope's fruition. 
 
 And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision !
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 (with notices of Johnson's lives of the poets. J 
 
 SIONOTONY OF POPE'S VERSE— THE REVIVAL OF A TRUER SPIRIT OF POETRY— 
 CHATfERTON— MERIT OF COWPER— DR. JOHNSON'S LITERARY DICTATORSHIP- 
 HIS "LIVES OF THE POETS "—SIR EGERTON BRYDGES'S CRITICISM ON THEM— 
 COWPERS JUDGMENT OF THEM— JOHNSON'S INCAPACITY FOR POETICAL CRITI- 
 CISM — JOHNSONS JUDGMENTS ON GRAY —" LONDON " — " V.AN IT Y OF HUMAN 
 WISHES "—PERCY'S "RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY "—THE CHARAC- 
 TER OF THIS POETRY— ROBERT BURNS— HIS BOYHOOD— EARLY^ TRIALS— MOSS- 
 GEIL FARM-THE FRESHNESS OF HIS POETRY— ITS UNIVERSALITY— WORDS- 
 WORTH'S IJNES— THE MOUNTAIN-D.VISY— THE FIELD-MOUSE— COTTERS SATUR- 
 DAY NIGHT— TAM OSH.VNTER— MARY C.\MPBELL— MORALITY OF BURNSS POETRY 
 —THE BARD'S EPITAPH— "WORDSWORTH'S LINES TO THE SONS OF BURNS. 
 
 IN my last lecture I was constrained to pass, somewhat too hastily, 
 from the poetry of Pope to that of Co'wper, thus hringino; the 
 earlier portion of the eighteenth century in too close contact with its 
 later period. It has been my aim throughout this course of lectures, 
 to make it, as far as possible, comprehensive not only of the exposition 
 of the individual poets selected, but of the progress of English poetry 
 in its successive ages, as it has been modified by the influence of genius 
 and the spirit of the times. I propose, therefore, in order not to devi- 
 ate now from the plan as presented to my own mind at the outset, to 
 endeavour to supjily, in a very general way, the chasm in my last lecture 
 between Pope and Cowper. Before proceeding to the chief subject of 
 the present lecture, I wish to dispose in as short a space of some of the 
 omitted subjects. The influence of Pope's poetry, or rather that school 
 of poetry which began with Dryden and was completed by Pope, was un- 
 questionably injurious on all the writers who came within its reach. It 
 reduced poetry to mere versification, and thus, in the hands of pupils who 
 were deficient in the natural powers of the masters, it became mecliani- 
 cal, — a thing of sound, and little else. Besides, the ear was habituated 
 but to one fashion of sound ; for Dryden and Pope had spent almost 
 their whole effort upon one form of verse, — the rhyming couplet of I \u- 
 ten-syllable line. Tliey had set English poetry to one tune in the posi- 
 tion of its pauses and the balanced succession of the notes, so thai
 
 208 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 every puny versifier could give, if not the same music, at least a very 
 good echo of it. It became a kind of hand-organ operation, in which one 
 hand could grind out tlie sounds nigh as well as another. Besides this 
 levelling faculty, listening almost exclusively to one fashion of metrical 
 sounds, the ear lost its power of receiving other metres. With the in- 
 cessant, unrelieved tinkling of the heroic rhyming couplet, the sense of 
 poetical music grew deaf to the richer and varied hannonies in which 
 the elder poets had taken such delight, and exhibited such manifold 
 power both in the language and in themselves. The melody of Shak- 
 speare's admirable dramatic blauk verse, and the equally appropriate 
 epic blank verse, and the variety of versifications in his smaller poems, 
 ceased to be appreciated ; and, when Pope is extolled as having brought 
 verse to perfection, it is forgotten that there is a multitude of other 
 metrical constructions besides that on which he relied. Indeed, when 
 he departed from the one tune he played so sweetly, in other measures 
 he failed egregiously ; for, when attempting an unwonted lyrical strain 
 in honour of St. Cecilia, to whom certainly his best music was due, the 
 strain he uttered was one from which the saint herself could scarce 
 have extracted melody ; and in that much overrated ode, " The Dying 
 Christian to his Soul," the sound of the verses is at once poor and in- 
 appropriate, falling greatly below the solemnity of the subject. But 
 the imitators of Pope risked few such experiments, and followed their 
 model in that species of verse in which he had been so successful, that 
 they were willing to consider it the chief and best of English measure, 
 if not the only one worth cultivating. Prosperous as both Dryden and 
 Pope had been in establishing each in his day, and though there have 
 been critics who have praised that species of poetry as the highest order 
 of poetry, it is a school in which not one poet of eminence has risen. 
 In fact, it died with Pope ; for, when carried to its legitimate results, 
 it then became obvious how much nature had been sacrificed to art, and 
 hDw, sooner or later, the heart of the nation craved that nature should 
 bi! brought home to enjoy her own again. The truth was told in some 
 lilies by Dryden : — 
 
 " There is miisic, iininform'd by art, 
 In those wild notes which, with ii merry heart, 
 Tlie birds in unfrequented shades express, 
 Who, better taught at home, yet please us less." 
 
 Giving to Pope all praise for skill as a versifier in one form of verse, 
 I cannot but consider his metrical powers as greatly overrated, when I 
 remember how limited they were in their application. Indeed, it seems 
 to me conclusive of the sinking of English poetry during that period,
 
 MONOTONY OF POPE's VERSE. 209 
 
 that its music was monotonous. The Muse had given up many of her 
 grandest and sweetest notes. Artificial poetical composition needs but 
 a limited set of metres, like a musical instrument with its certain range 
 of keys. But true poetry has its hundred, its unnumbered voices, like 
 nature. The poet needs them all : each one in its true time is ready in 
 his service. How narrow must the scope of poetry have grown when, 
 as with the poets and critics of a considerable part of the eighteenth 
 century, the high-wrought, one-toned verse of Pope attained such ex- 
 aggerated and exclusive favour ! It has not been so with the greatest 
 of our poets ; and it is indeed one proof of their greatness that there 
 were perpetually rising, in their spirits, imaginations and thoughts and 
 passions, each naturally seeking and finding utterance in varied and 
 appropriate measure. When calling quickly to my memory the vast 
 variety of English metres, the compass of instrumental music seems an 
 inadequate parallel to the many-toned voice of Poetry. I would find it 
 rather in the multitudinous sounds of Nature herself: — 
 
 " For terror, joy, or pity. 
 
 Vast is the compass and the swell of notes ; 
 From the babe's first cry, to voice of regal city, 
 
 Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats 
 Far as the woodlands, with the trill to blend 
 
 Of that shy songstress whose love-tale 
 Might tempt an angel to descend 
 
 While hovering o'er the moonlight vale ; 
 * * * « « 
 
 The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still 
 
 As they themselves appear to be, 
 Innumerable voices fill 
 
 With everlasting harmony ; 
 The towering headlands, crown'd with mist, 
 
 Their feet among the billows, know 
 That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ; 
 
 Thy pinions, universal air, 
 Ever waving to and fro, 
 
 Are delegates of harmony, and bear 
 Strains that su])port the seasons in their round : 
 Stern winter loves a dirge-like sound." 
 
 Turn to the pages of Pope or of his imitators : the sound comes like 
 the melody from a well-tuned and well-touched musical instrument ; 
 but when you listen, with an ear well cultivated by the study of the 
 metrical combination and flow of words, to the measured music that 
 may be heard, cither sensibly or imaginatively, from the pages of the 
 greater poets, the sound comes with the touching and ever-varied har- 
 
 p
 
 210 LECTURE lENXn. 
 
 iHoiij of nature, — at one time with the loud voice of the stormy wind, 
 again with the soothing murmur of a breeze blowing through the tops 
 of pine-trees ; at one time with surges like ocean angry and euchafed, 
 again like the ripples of a lake or river touching tlie sides of an anchored 
 ship, or the gentle sounds of a running brook. 
 
 I notice this subject of versification because the merits of Pope in 
 this department have been, I think, exaggerated in a manner injurious 
 to English poetry, as superseding its noblest and most varied metres. 
 A style of versification was introduced which fascinated the car, because 
 the tune, though soon monotonous, was not only smooth but marked. 
 If the ear once content itself with this form, it is apt to neglect that 
 cultivati(m which is essential for the enjoyment of the finest poetical 
 melody in the language. It was a sign of the coming regeneration of 
 English poetry when some appeared who sought other forms of verse 
 than that one which Pope had bequeathed to his imitators. Simultane- 
 ous with this was a returning sense of what was due to natui-e, — an evi- 
 dent desire to quit the path wliich had been so artificially cut and beaten. 
 Pope's immediate followers had pushed the system to its limits; and 
 readers began at last to ask themselves whether something else Mas not 
 wanted besides polished language, verse of an unrelieved smoothness, 
 and a certain perpetually-recurring assortment of images, which had 
 become so much the traditional jn-opcrty of the versifiers that a writer 
 could set himself in the bvisiness, as any tradesman might sui)])ly himself 
 with his stock in trade. People were growing weary of hearing nothing 
 but cold mythological personifications. They scarcely ventm-ed to say 
 so ; but, for all that, it was a relief to hear the sun called by his simple 
 almanac-name instead of the loftier prescriptive title of Phoebus. TLe 
 moon had been known only as Diana. Naiads were as plenty in every 
 watercourse as fish. Dryads were as common as bii'ds ; and every west 
 ^vind that blew, whether it was "thcswcet south or the blustering north- 
 wester, was a gentle 7,c])hyr." The versifiers who took Pope for their 
 model were like the artists who illustrated his poems by carrying the 
 system out to all its consequences. In one of the early editions of his 
 ])oems tlierc is an engraving prefixed to the "Essay on Criticism," re- 
 presenting some venerable ancient introducing Pope, the little Queen 
 Anne's poet, wrapped in a ]{oman toga, to the nine Muses, who arc 
 seated by the side of a kind of creek, clad in the usual amount of clothing 
 deemed appropriate to the comfort of a Muse, — one of them with a foot 
 in the water and looking up to tlie sky, and another seated on a small 
 eminence and busy performing on the bass-viol. This was the taste of 
 Die times : poetry had set the fasliion, and the arts followed in the train.
 
 CIIATTEKTON. 211 
 
 Tf Pope was followed by servile imitators, there also came after him 
 poets who, with a truer fervour of inspiration, souglit to unfetter tlie 
 poetry of their country from the technicalities and tlie artifices which 
 liad been woven i-ound it. They were obliged to toil against the influ- 
 ence of established authority and a dominant false taste. Thomson, and 
 Gray, and Goldsmith, and Beattie, and Churchhill, and CoUins, contri- 
 buted to the revival of a truer spirit of poetry, and have left behind 
 them poems which it is much easier for me to find space for in my good 
 opinion than in my lectures. There was Chatterton, too truly 
 
 " The mai-vellous boy, 
 The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride." 
 
 Hereditary insanity and the frenzy of a frustrated ambition tortured 
 his young heart ; and, after liaving bafSed half the learning of Britain 
 by his impostures, he ended his brief agony of life by poison. 
 
 The poets of the eighteenth century, especially its latter portion, 
 deserved much for ridding English poetry of its cold formalities and 
 pouring fresh life-blood into it. Especially was this the merit of him 
 whom in the last lecture I presented to you in such a hurried, crowded 
 comment, — the happy, unhappy — the cheerful, melancholy — Cowper. 
 
 Tliese poets not only threw off the depressing weight of an artificial 
 taste still remaining from the Anglo-Gallican school of poetry, but there 
 was an adverse authority, in the literary dictatorship of Dr. Johnson. 
 This authority was exerted not only to the fuU extent of his colloquial 
 influence, but made still more absolute and more lasting in a work to 
 which I have alluded once or twice in the course of these lectures, and 
 on which I must now dwell for a few minutes. 
 
 Let me preface what I have to say either directly or in illustration of 
 Dr. Johnson with the remark that it applies to him solely as a critic of 
 poetry. As the maker of the great Dictionary of our language, he is 
 entitled to the most reverential gratitude of every student of English 
 literature. He has written much excellent morality, and as a man he 
 was kind in deeds while harsh in words. "V^Tien the late Bishop White, 
 visiting England in early life, was introduced to him. Dr. Johnson said 
 to him, in allusion to the then recent Stamp Act difliculties, " Sir, if I 
 liad been prime minister I would have sent a frigate and levelled one of 
 your principal cities." "But," added the bishop, in recording this re- 
 mark, with the admirable discrimination of a gentle-hearted man, " I 
 h'-ard from him sentiments convincing me he would not have done as he 
 said." The present examination has reference, however, to Dr. John- 
 son's words, his critical judgments. I have no ambition to stretch my- 
 self to the tiptoe height of my small statiu'c to strike a blow at a lofty 
 
 V 2
 
 212 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 name. The reputation of Dr. Johnson, and the want of a better work 
 on the subject, has given to his " Lives of the Poets " a circulation 
 wliich has beyond all question been injurious to the cause of our ima- 
 ginative literature. It was a luckless day for the poets when they fell 
 into the hands of Samuel Johnson. This work, which it is absolutely 
 necessary for me to notice, because it is the very book which is always 
 resorted to as authority in the history and criticism of English poetry, 
 — this work has an absurdity in the capital letters of its title-page : — 
 " The Lives of the most Eminent English Poets ; " and when we open 
 it, to our astonishment, as has been well said, the first name we find is 
 that of Cowley. What has become of the morning star of English 
 poetry ? w^iere is the bright Elizabethan constellation ? Or, if names be 
 more acceptable tlian images, Mhere is the ever-to-be-honoured Chaucer ? 
 Where is Spenser ? Where Sydney ? And, lastly, where is Shakspeare ? 
 These, and a multitude of others, not unworthy to be placed near them, 
 their contemporaries and successors, we have not. But in their stead 
 we have Roscommon, Stepney, and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and 
 Duke, and King, and Sprat, Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve, 
 Broome, and other, reputed magnates, metrical writers utterly worthless 
 and useless, except as instances to show what a small quantity of brains 
 is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the 
 aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of the day. 
 The truth is, that, amidst all the small deer that were herded together 
 by Johnson as the most eminent English poets, Milton is the one soli- 
 tary poet of high eminence. But the wrong does not stop here. Pass- 
 ing by the consideration that Johnson's registry excludes all but one of 
 the greatest names, and includes all the little ones, or, at the least, 
 abundance of them, the execution of the work is as wrong as the plan. 
 It is full of false canons of criticism, — false, I do not hesitate to say as 
 absolutely as Dr. Johnson could make an assertion, — false because at 
 variance witli the unimpcachal)le autliority of tlic actual poetic inspir- 
 ations of tlic great poets. Its incurable defect is an utter absence of 
 imagination: it is a treatise on imaginative literature produced by an 
 unimaginative intellect. Yet it acquired in its day an authority wliich 
 none dared publicly to question, though there were minds well endowed 
 with the elements of true poetic character which deeply felt what injury 
 was done to tlie cause. That ardent enthusiast, full of the fervour of 
 genius. Sir Egcrton Brydges, who died only a few years ago, has re- 
 corded tlie impression tJie work made on his mind at the time of its 
 publication. " The appearance of Johnson's Lives," are his words, 
 " damped my spirits and froze the genial flowiugs of my soid : their
 
 cowper's jubome^t of johnso>''s "WOT^K. 213 
 
 Cfvptiousnoss, tlicir liardnoss, their awkward liumour, their affeeted rail- 
 lery, and capricious contempt, seemed like the burst of discordant sounds 
 npou fairy dreams. If the splendour of Collins could not save him 
 from such rudenesses, what, I thought, must inferior powers expect ? " 
 Another witness to a similar feeling, expressed, not after the lapse of 
 years, but promptly, at the time, was Cowper. He revolted especially 
 at Johnson's treatment of Milton, and expresses a meek man's warmest 
 indignation at the critic's injustice. It is in one of the letters in that 
 inimitable epistolary collection, the most natural and agreeable in oiu- 
 literature, — Cowper's Letters,^that he writes iu these words, after 
 noticing how he has smeared his canvas in the portraiture of Milton 
 as a man : — " As a poet, Johnson has treated Milton with severity 
 enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers out 
 of his Muse's wings and trampled them under his great foot. I am 
 convinced he has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it was stopped by 
 prejudice against the harmony of Milton's. Was there ever anything 
 so delightfiJ as the music of ' Paradise Lost' ? It is like that of a fine 
 organ, has the fullest and the deepest tones of majesty, with aU the 
 softness and elegance of a Dorian flute, — variety without end, and never 
 equalled. Yet the doctor has little or nothing to say upon this copious 
 theme, but talks something about the unfitness of the English language 
 f-^r blank verse, and how apt it is, in the mouth of some readers, to 
 degenerate into declamation. Oh, I could thrash his old jacket till I 
 made his pension jingle in his pocket ! " To this playful vengeance of 
 the gentle Cowper, let me add the belief that Johnson's eulogy of the 
 " Paradise Lost " bears the marks of ha\ang been extorted from him, 
 chiefly, I presume, out of deference to Addison's celebrated critical 
 papers on that poem in " The Spectator." He had no sympathy with 
 the highest poetic genius that was contemporary with him. The fine 
 powers of Gray, the elaborate finish of whose poetry, it might be 
 thought, would have pleased him, were disparaged in a style disreput- 
 able to a candid critic. The high, aspiring imagination of the unfortun- 
 ate Collins won no better treatment; and this is lamentable to think 
 of, when we remember how his tender nature suffered for the want of 
 sympathy, the fever of his visionary tremulous spirit turned iu the 
 anguish of disappointment to insanity, and his fitful career, closing in 
 the succession of a moody melancholy, a few lucid intervals, and pa- 
 roxysms of a maniac's violence, when his shrieks were heard in the most 
 appalling manner echoing through the cloisters of Winchester Cathedral. 
 In all that was wrought by the pen of Dr. Johnson, or all that rolled 
 from his tongue, there is no evidence of his having any apprehension of
 
 214 LECTURE TE^"TU. 
 
 a high effort of a pure imagination, whether of the earlier great poets 
 or his contemporaries. When he assumed tlie ofhce of tlie great critic 
 of English poetry, he ventured on a duty for which he was physically, 
 intellectually, and morally unfit. Physically, because his shortsighted- 
 ness amounted to a species of blindness, obliging him to hold communion 
 with the visible world through the secondary medium of books. If I 
 remember rightly, he was hard of hearing ; he certainly was stone-dc!i,f 
 to the finest metres of English verse, — that sweet music which rises up 
 to the imagination when reading poetry to our silent selves, catching 
 the flow of the verse and beautiful sounds, though in silence as still as 
 a midnight thought. Unless poetry beat stoutly and rattled loudly on 
 the drum of Dr. Johnson's ear, he proclaimed there was no melody in 
 it, as he said of blank verse (spirits of Shakspeare and MUton, what a 
 thought !) that it was verse only to the eye. How far Dr. Johnson's 
 education influenced his character it is not necessary to ask ; but there 
 was one of his teachers whose influence may have had some connection 
 with the Johnsonian grandiloquence : this was a man that published a 
 spelling-book and dedicated it to the Universe. Intellectually Dr. 
 Johnson was disqualified for the guardianship of the memory of the 
 poets, because, whatever were his powers of argumentation, no particle 
 of imagination or fancy entered into his constitution. He was perpe- 
 tually striving to disenchant poetry of all its magic, to strip it of the 
 radiant vestments of its imaginative philosophy, " sky -robes spun out 
 of Iris ^oof," and wrap it in the coarse, home-spun cloak of his logic. 
 Morally, Johnson was unfit for the lofty task, without, of course, mean- 
 ing to impeach the uprightness of his character or his piety. It has 
 been said, with great truth, that, as the poet must -wTite in the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice, so the reader of pocti-y who would rightly feel and enjoy 
 it must in like \nanner pass out of himself into it. He must forget 
 himself and his own prejudices and predilections and associations, and 
 give himself up to the work he is reading, and try to take his stand on 
 the author's point of view. So that the obstacle which checks the 
 spread of true, genial poetry — of such poetry as ean-ics us out of the 
 purlieus of our own habitual notions into fresh fields of the imagination 
 — is stiU the spirit of selfishness, — man's unwillingness to abandon his 
 old inveterate preconceptions. Now, taking this principle, — the truth 
 of which must be felt by all, — can there be a moment's hesitation as to 
 Johnson's moral unfitness for poetical criticism ? If the ])rinci])le hold 
 good as to the reader of poeti-y, how much more as to liim who sets 
 himself up for a judge to guide and even command the reading of others ! 
 To forget himself and his own prejudices and predilections and associ-
 
 Johnson's unfitness for poetical criticism. 215 
 
 ations, to take his stand on the author's point of view, were impossi- 
 bilities for a nature constituted like Johnson's. It dwelt in the im- 
 penetrable centre of his own habitual notions, — in the thick fog of 
 literary bigotry, — taking his stand in himself as the central point, and 
 therefore, for the most part, beholding things in wrong proportions and 
 in false lights. His poetic sympathies were few and contracted; and, 
 instead of that catholic taste which is at once the true critic's power 
 and his exceeding great reward, he was bitter and bigoted in his judg- 
 ments and rugged in his feelings. What is the entire warp and woof 
 of Boswcll's curious biography of him but a tissue of unbroken dog- 
 matism ? Perhaps there never was a virtuous man with so much of 
 selfishness. His appetite for argument was as voracious as his physical 
 appetite. I wiU not say it was meat and drink to him, because his 
 dogmatism was intermitted, and then only, in the act of eating. Argu- 
 mentative triumph was his ambition, his passion; and it would be 
 edifying to observe into hfiw many opinions, strange for a wise and 
 good man, he was led by this overweening self-love, the adoration of 
 his own opinions and tastes. It made liim often the advocate even of 
 shallow judgments magnified and mystified by swelling words, and 
 sometimes of dangerous opinions ; for instance, his absolute doctrine in 
 these words : — " Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God 
 and the human soul, cannot be poetical," because, among other sophist- 
 ical reasons, " the essence of poetry is invention ; — such invention as, 
 by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics 
 of devotion are few." Contemplative piety cannot be poetical ! the 
 topics of devotion are few ! Why, what in the world had become of 
 the good man's Bible ? Mark how Johnson's perpetual intrusion of 
 his own personality, in some shape or other, made him censorious and 
 scornful, — qualities fatal to all genial love of poetry. By it, and the 
 added incense of flattery which his satellites were for ever burning be- 
 neath his nostrils, the idea of self became an absorbing one. Look at 
 the account of him in social life, seizing upon almost any opinion for 
 the sake of opposition and disputation, with a dangerous recklessness of 
 truth, as if it was a thing that could be safely so tampered with ; in- 
 sulting Garrick, ridiculing poor Goldsmith, treading upon BosweU as if 
 he were, in rough sport, rubbing liis huge foot upon a spaniel's back, 
 and then, after monopolizing nearly all tlic talk to himself, with an in- 
 imitable self-complacency exclaiming, " What a fine conversation we 
 have had!" — an exelaination whicli, considering the monstrous dispro- 
 portion, was about as appropriate as if, on turning down the last leaf of
 
 216 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 one of the longest of these lectures, I were to say to you, " Wliat a fine 
 conversation we have had ! " 
 
 Now, if an admirer of Dr. Johnson should be disposed to think that 
 I have thrown off the bridle of my tongue, let it be remembered what 
 authority his work on the poets has exercised. Let it be borne in mind 
 how he has scattered his harsh and scornful judgments, pronouncing 
 Milton's exquisite " Masque of Comus " a drama inelegantly splendid 
 and tediously instructive ; his sonnets, " the best only not bad ; " 
 " Lycidas," " vulgar and disgusting ; " and undoing his reluctant 
 eulogy of the " Paradise Lost " by declaring its perusal a duty rather 
 than a pleasure, and that we retire harassed and overburdened, besides 
 condemning its diction as harsh aiid barbarous, and waging perpetual 
 war against what has been well styled emiucutly the English metre : 
 how he could find in Milton's republicanism nothing but a selfish law- 
 hissness ; and how, after the lapse of more than a hundred years, he 
 could venture to say of such a man as Milton, that, omitting public 
 prayer, he omitted all. Let it be remembered, too, that the arch-critic 
 could discover in Gray's fine odes nothing more than what he super- 
 ciliously calls " a kind of strutting dignity, — a glittering accumulation 
 of ungraceful ornaments, image magnified by alleetation, and language 
 laboured into harshness ; " and that he dismissed the true poetry of the 
 hapless Collins with tlie contemptuous opinion that it may sometimes 
 extort praise when it gives little pleasure. These were judgments, too, 
 coming from one who claimed to be himself a poet, esteeming the high- 
 sounding declamation of his " London " and " Vanity of Human Wishes " 
 as poetry, and priding himself upon his hundred lines a day. Tor 
 all the wrong — unconscious wrong and wilful wrong — that Johnson has 
 done the poets I might take a malicious vengeance in a retaliative cen- 
 soriousness on some of his own poems. Indeed, I had written some- 
 thing of the sort ; but some admirer of Johnson's might say that is 
 ill-natured and has nothing to do with the matter. I think myself it 
 would have something to do with it : but let it pass. 
 
 About the same time the "Lives of the Poets" was published, an- 
 other work was also given to the world, which, though at first coldly 
 received, and by Johnson treated with contempt, wastlostincd to render 
 good service to the cause of English literature. Percy's " Reliques of 
 Ancient English Poetry " has been esteemed by high authorities as one 
 of the chief agencies in reviving a genuine feeling for true poetry in the 
 public mind. The traditionary minstrelsy, ancient ballads, and historical 
 songs were collected, restored, and remodelled, and thus redeemed from
 
 BUBNS'S BOTUOOD. 217 
 
 their obscurity. It was a poetry wliich, to its own early generation, 
 liad ministered to an important public use by softening, and perhaps 
 chastening, the rudeness of a martial and unlettered people. It was 
 now to serve a v;idely-different purpose : — to help in restoring nature 
 where it had been displaced by artifice, to give life again to what had 
 grown cold, and to invigorate a poetry which was sickly from excessive 
 refinement. 
 
 But this poetry, which Dr. Percy brought in his collection to the ac- 
 quaintance of scholars and men of reading, had a life elsewhere. It was 
 composed of winged words that had taken their flight from one gener- 
 ation to another. Its home was not so much in books as in floating 
 tradition preserved by affectionate memory. It was a music in the air ; 
 for it might be heard sung by reapers in the held one harvest after an- 
 other, by women lightening with its oft-repeated strains their household 
 labours, by mothers singing over their children, or in some single chant- 
 ing to a fireside group. It was a poetry dwelling chiefly in the North 
 of Britain, secluded from Southern refinements. There was, for in- 
 stance, a Scottish gardener's wife, who had an inexhaustible store of the 
 ballads ; some simple, solemn ditties, which when she chanted them 
 could bring tears down an old man's cheeks, and others spirit-stirring, 
 at sound of which the fire flashed in the dark eyes of her listening child. 
 That deep dark-eyed Scottish bairn was Robert Burns. His ear was 
 attuned in childhood to the old minstrelsy ; the sounds sunk into his 
 spirit to come forth again in after-years, his imagination giving them a 
 more glorious poetry than they had ever echoed to before. The obliga- 
 tion of the poet to his other parent was careful reb'gious instruction, 
 which, if it did not furnish safeguards against sad excesses of his impe- 
 tuous passions in after-life, at least saved him from ever sinking into 
 the recklessness of a reprobate. He has recorded also a debt of his 
 infant and boyish days to an old woman domesticated under the same 
 humble roof, remarkable, he says, for her ignoi-ance, credulity, and 
 superstition, and having the largest collection in the country of tales 
 and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, 
 spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, 
 giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. "The house- 
 hold life of Burns's parents is represented in the imperishable portraiture 
 of the 'Cotter's Saturday Night ;' and the origin of those stanzas finely 
 exhibits the continued presence of early salutary influences amid the 
 tumultuous passions of the poet's heart." There was, he said, something 
 peculiarly venerable to his thoughts in the phrase "Let us worship 
 God," used by a decent, sober head of a family introducing family wor-
 
 218 LECTURE TEKTir. 
 
 ship. That single simple sentiment, thus impressed in early life, was 
 the germ which was expanded by his true poetic imaghiation into the; 
 admirable description above alluded to. 
 
 The adversity that befell the elder Bums weighed heavily on the 
 poet's boyhood. In consequence of the father's misfortune, there fell 
 to the share of the boys more labour than was good for them, — the pre- 
 mature pressure which is too apt to force the young heart out of its 
 true proportions. A good plain education led Burns to a course of 
 reading which might shame many a one with better opportunities. But 
 the poetic instinct in him was awakened, I imagine, less by what ho saw 
 on the pages of books than by the traditionary minstrelsy by which he 
 was led along as by the music sung, up in the air, by the invisible Ariel. 
 The earliest stirrings of his powers were rude rhymes half uttered when 
 he was humming the tune, or, in Scottish phrase, crooning to himself, as 
 he has described in one of the familiar poetical epistles he was fond of 
 writing to his friends : — 
 
 " Amaist as soon as I could spell, 
 I to the crambo-jingle fell, 
 
 Tho' rude an' rough ; 
 Yet crooning to a body's sell 
 Does weel enough." 
 
 The poetic fire was kindled by another fire ; for the first of the long 
 series of his love-stories dates in his fifteenth year, when the boy sought 
 expression in verse for his devotion to his bonny partner in the harvest- 
 iield, where it was a Scottish custom to group the reapers in pairs, lad 
 and lass. With one whose heart was like tinder, it was impulse enough 
 to give speech to his imagination. The early trials of his strength were 
 very speedily followed by the ambition of gaining for himself a name, 
 and even more; and this shows how soon the consciousness of his 
 might came to him, — the ambition of producing something to do honour • 
 to liis country, his slighted country : — 
 
 " I mind it wccl, in early date, 
 When I was beardless, young, and blate, 
 
 And first could thresh the barn, 
 Or hand a yokin' at the pleugh, 
 An' though forfoughten sair cneugh, 
 
 Yet unco proud to learn ! 
 When first amang the yellow coni 
 
 A man I rcckon'd was, 
 An' wi' the lave ilk merry uiDru 
 
 Could rank my rig and la-i.^.
 
 HIS HATRED or HYPOCKTST. 219 
 
 " E'en then a wish (I mind its power), 
 A wish that to my hitest hour 
 
 Shall strongly heave my breast, — 
 That I for poor auld Scotland's sake 
 Some usefu' plan or book could make, 
 
 Or sing a sang at least. 
 The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide 
 
 Amang the bearded bear, 
 I turn'd the weedin'-heuk aside. 
 
 An' spared the symbol dear." 
 
 Bums's first uotoriety— his first becoming known, as he said, as a 
 maker of rhymes — came in a way scarcely to have been expected, and 
 less congenial with the spirit of true poetry than the simple eflusions 
 of his better feelings. The Church of Scotland was dinded into two 
 ecclesiastical parties, who were waging against each other a warfare of 
 words the bitterness of which spread from the manse to the cottage ; 
 and, as Bums said, polemical divinity was putting the country half 
 mad. In the midst of a general strife he was not one likely to remain 
 UQConcerued. How far he felt a real interest in the discussions of 
 " Auld Light " and " New Light " it would be hard to say ; but, be 
 that as it may, it was a chance for him to feed his hungering after a 
 name. He began his impetuous alliance in some of his free-spoken and 
 iiTevercnt productions, which were welcomed, as he described it, with a 
 roar of applause. This was a welcome given— such was the heat of 
 "ecclesiastical factions — not only by laity, but by clergy, on the side the 
 poet espoused. These audacious pieces wrought this eflect to be noticed 
 in tracing the progress of Bums's genius : — that they developed, and 
 doubtless at the time increased, the nerve and force of his imaginative 
 powers. The influence -on the moral side of his genius was much more 
 questionable. The excesses which Burns witnessed among men active 
 in the national church of Scotland exaggerated his hatred of In-pocrisy, 
 and, at the same time, a recklessness of public opinion, a palliation of 
 his own misdoings in the belief that the propriety was an assumed and 
 superficial thing, as in the address to the " Unco Guid," or rigidly 
 lighteous : — 
 
 " ye wha are sae gnid yoiirscl, 
 
 Sae pious and sae holy. 
 Ye 've nought to do but mark and tell 
 
 Your neebors' faults anil fully ! 
 Whose life is like a wcel-gaun mill, 
 
 Supplied wi' store o' water, 
 The heapet happcr 's ebbing still. 
 
 And still the clap plays clatter."
 
 220 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 Ur ill that better-known stanza, — 
 
 " Oh wad some power the giftic gic us 
 To see ourscls as others see us ! 
 It wad frae nionie a blunder free us 
 
 And foohsh notion : 
 What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us 
 
 And e'en devotion ! " 
 
 Burns had an ambition to distinguish himself by his conversational 
 powers, — oratory to groups of villagers : this made him a ready dis- 
 putant in the polemics of the church. That soon passed ; but he found 
 another kind of intercourse, — unhappUy, a live-long intercourse, with 
 boon companions, — a freer field for his native wit. 
 
 " The star that rules my luckless lot 
 Has fated me the russet coat 
 And damn'd my fortune to the groat, 
 
 But, in requit, 
 Has bless'd me wi' a random shot 
 
 O' country wit ! " 
 
 Occasional intei-vals of absence from the homestead had early made 
 Burns a looker-on in scenes of freer living than was known in the do- 
 mains of peasant -life. Tlie fondness for revelry had not yet begun to 
 work its mischief upon him ; and, while free from the sting of self-re- 
 proach and the misery of a dangerous indidgence, he was able to rouse, 
 the feeling of nationality on the subject of Scotch drink, and to give a 
 poetic dignity to distilled liquors. The spu'it of Pindar's first Olympic 
 ode — the praise of water and the panegyric on the Sicilian ring — 
 breathes in Bums's stanzas, giving as they do a dignity, a sublimity, to 
 strong drink, by a grand eftbrt of imagination in associating it with the 
 dying Highland soldier : — 
 
 " Bring a Scotsman frae his hill. 
 Clap in his cheek a highland gill, 
 Say such is Royal George's will. 
 
 And there 's the foe ! 
 He has nae thought but how to kill 
 
 Twa at a blow. 
 
 " Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him. 
 Death comes ; wi' fearless eye he sees him, 
 Wi' bluidy hand a welcome gics him ; 
 
 And, When he fa's, 
 His latest draught o' breathing lea'es him 
 In faint huzzas.
 
 MOSSGEIL FAEM. 221 
 
 " Sages their solemn e'en may steek, 
 An' raise a philosophic reek, 
 An' physically causes seek, 
 
 In clime and season. 
 But tell me Whisky's name in Greek, 
 
 I '11 tell the reason." 
 
 It seenis to have been reserred for Bums, in one of the genial moods 
 of the better part of his life, to give a picture, at once humorous and 
 elevated, of tipsyness : — 
 
 " The clachan yill had made me canty, 
 I was na fou, but just had plenty ; 
 I stacher'd whyles, but yet took tent aye 
 
 To free the ditches ; 
 An' hillocks, stanes, and bushes kenn'd aye 
 
 Frae ghaists and witches. 
 
 " The rising moon began to glower 
 The distant Cumnock hills out owre ; 
 To count her horns wi' a' my pow'r, 
 
 I set mysel ; 
 But whether she had three or four, 
 I could na tell." 
 
 The most propitious era of the poet's life was that portion of it spent 
 at the Mossgeil Farm. The cottage, with its few acres, had been taken 
 by the two brothers, with the dutiful and affectionate purpose of pro- 
 viding a shelter for their parents and the determination of earning their 
 subsistence by manly labour. It was there made manifest that Scotland 
 was in possession of a great national poet. The early inspirations of the 
 Scottish Muse had been given to the indwellers of a palace, — the ancient 
 King James Stuart; and, after poetry had declined with the decline of the 
 national spirit, in consequence of the union of the two kingdoms of Eng- 
 land and Scotland, after the lapse of centuries it was reanimated in the 
 humble clay cottage of Mossgeil Farm. The poet's life was tlie outdoor- 
 life of a labourer in the fields ; he was in perpetual and cpiickly-sensitive 
 communion with nature ; and here especially was gained the glory of the 
 peasant-poet of Scotland. The poetry of Burns was as indigenous as 
 the thistle ; it was a pure native growth, as different as possible from 
 the trim, unnatural exotics which had been cidtivated with hothouse 
 temperature and method. The freshness of old Chaucer's genius 
 seemed to be breathing again upon British poetry. The long-lost hon- 
 ours given by the chief of the early poets to the lowliest flower of the 
 field, as I noticed in a former lecture, was now restored, when Burns 
 suddenly checked his plough at the sight of the mountain-daisy looking
 
 222 LECTUEE TENTH. 
 
 up to him from the mid-furrows. It was a moment of genuine poetic 
 inspiration ; for, while actually holding the plough, his imagination 
 fjishioned itself into musical words : — 
 
 " Wee. modest, crimson-tipped flower, 
 Thou 's met me in an evil hour ; 
 For 1 maun crush amang the stoure 
 
 Thy slender stem ; 
 To spare thee now is past my power, 
 
 Thou bonnie gem. 
 
 " Alas ! it 's no' thy neebor sweet, 
 The bonnie Lark, companion meet, 
 Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, 
 
 Wi' sprcekled breast, 
 When upward-springing, blithe, to greet 
 
 The purpling East. 
 
 " Cauld blew the bitter-biting North 
 Upon thy early, humble birth ; 
 Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 
 
 Amid the storm. 
 Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth 
 Thy tender form. 
 
 "The flaunting flowers our gardens yi' Id, 
 High sheltering woods and wa's mauu shield ; 
 But thou, beneath the random bield 
 
 0' clod or stane. 
 Adorns the histie stibble-field, 
 
 Unseen, alane. 
 
 " There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
 Thy snawic bosom sunward spread, 
 Thou lifts thy unassuming head 
 
 In humble guise ; 
 But now the share up-tears thy bed. 
 
 And low thou lies ! 
 
 " Such is the fate of artless maid, 
 Sweet floweret of the rural shade ! 
 By love's simplicity betray'd, 
 
 And guileless trust. 
 Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid 
 Low i' the dust. 
 
 " Such is the fate of simple bard, 
 On life's rough ocean mckless starr'd : 
 Unskilful he to note the card 
 
 Of prudent lore. 
 Till billows rage, and gales blow hard. 
 And whelm him o'er.
 
 THE MOUNTAIN-DAISY. 223 
 
 " Such fate to sviffering worth is i;iven, 
 "Who long with wants and woes has striven, 
 By human pride or cunning driven 
 
 To misery's brink, 
 
 Till, wrcnch'd of every stay but Heaven, 
 
 He, ruin'd, sink ! 
 
 " Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate. 
 That iatc is thine, — no distant date ; 
 Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate, 
 
 Full on thy bloom. 
 Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight 
 
 Shall be thy doom ! " 
 
 Who can fail to feel that this was 
 
 " Indeed a genuine birth. 
 Of poetry : — a bursting forth 
 Of genius from the dust? " 
 
 What a strain of truth and imagination, manly and tender-hearted ! 
 Compare Burns with Pope in descriptive poetry, — comparison in other 
 departments would be ill-judged, — the grotto at Twickenham with the 
 bleak Mossgeil mountain-side ; and how redolent of nature is this little 
 poem ! It has the freshness and grateful odour that arises from the 
 new furrows of a ploughed field. In that singular collection, the 
 " Medical Remains of the great Lord Bacon," one of the fanciful pre- 
 scriptions for the prolongation of Ufe and the renewing of health was, 
 in an early hour, after the sun is risen, to take an air from some high 
 and open place with a ventilation of roses and fresh violets, and to stir 
 the earth with infusion of wine and mint. Poetry in the eighteenth 
 century seemed to need some such renovation ; and, after her long con- 
 finement in the close air of an artificial system, the peasant-poet of 
 Scotland ministered to her health. When Burns, in the rapt mood of 
 inspiration, was standing with his hand on the plough, how little could 
 he have dreamed that the music thus rising in his heart would wing its 
 flight as far as the English language, — the spirit of every true Scotsman, 
 whether in the centre of British India or at the farthest west of the 
 wilds of America, kindling at the recollection of tliat one mountain- 
 daisy ! The criticism which more than any other delights me is that 
 which may sometimes, though rarely, be discovered in tlie response made 
 by the imagination of one poet to tliat of anotlier. Some seven or 
 eight years ago a great poet was travelling through that region of 
 country which has earned even the title of The Land of Burns, and one 
 of those itinerary records which the imagination of Wordsworth has 
 scattered in every land he has visited is in these lines : —
 
 224 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 " ' There ! ' said a stripling, pointing with meet pride 
 Towards a low roof, with green trees half conceal'd, 
 ' Is Mossgeil Farm, and that 's the verj' field 
 Where Burns plough'd up the daisy.' Far and wide 
 A plain helow stretch'd seaward ; while, descried 
 Above sea-clouds, the Peaks of Arran rose, 
 And, hy that simple notice, the repose 
 Of earth, sky, sea, and air, was vivified 
 Beneath ' the random bield of clod or stone." 
 Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower 
 Near the lark's nest, and, in their natural hour, 
 Have pass'd away, less happy than the one 
 That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove 
 The tender charm of poetry and love.'' 
 
 Another poem, composed under the same circumstances as the 
 " Mountam-Daisy," was that on turning up, ^vith the plough, the nest 
 of a field-mouse. It is conceived in the same vein of imagination, and 
 of feeling the association of the mishaps of his own life with that of 
 the little creature : — 
 
 " I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken nature's social union, 
 An' justifies that ill opinion 
 
 Which makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor earth-born companion 
 An' fellow-mortal ! " 
 
 The lesson of generosity, like mercy twice blessed, — to him that 
 gives and him that takes, — is exquisitely told, when he bids the wee 
 thief welcome to nibble at the corn : — 
 
 " I '11 get a blessing wi' the lave. 
 And never miss 't ! " 
 
 " The Cotter's Saturday Night " was first recited to his brotlier as 
 they walked iogether on a Sunday afternoon, a poem wliicli, by its 
 admirable soothing tone of reverence for lioly things, a noble tribute to 
 Scottisli piety, has be.st served to sliield tlie poet's memory from harsh 
 judgments on his frailties. Witli Burns's quick apprehension, he was 
 living a life which placed him in close communion with nature ; and, 
 though he delighted chiefly in portraying the stormy aspects of the 
 elements, he did not overlook the minuter appearances worthy also of a 
 ])oot's eye, as in that admirable piece of humorous imagination and 
 vigorous thought, " The Brigs of Ayr," the couplet describing the form- 
 at ion of ice : — ■ 
 
 " The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam 
 Crept gently — crusting o'er the glittering stream."
 
 TAM O'SIIANTEE. 225 
 
 And then the passage, rismg to a higher strain of fancy, after the 
 tallc of the Anld Brig and the New is over : — 
 
 " What further clishmaclaver might been said, 
 What bloody wars, if sprites had blood to shed 
 No man can tell ; but all before their sight 
 A fairy train appear'd in order bright ; 
 Adown the glittering stream they featly danced ; 
 Bright to the moon their various dresses glanced : 
 They footed o'er the watery glass so neat, 
 The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet." 
 
 This fairy passage carries me in thought hastily to what Burns al- 
 ways thought, and rightly too, the best of all his productions, the 
 matchless "Tam O'Shanter." Short as it is, it is a great poem, with 
 merits unassailable by tlie most rigid criticism, and which the most en- 
 thusiastic cannot exaggerate. It is wonderful, especially for the power 
 which harmonizes the terrific and the laughable, — a Shakspearian blend- 
 ing of tragedy and comedy. It was the work of a single day, com- 
 posed by the river-side, where his wife found the bard crooning to him- 
 self, and soon, with strange and wild gestures, in a fit of ungovernable 
 joy, bursting out loudly ii| one of the most animated passages. There 
 is great dramatic power in the poem : — the spirited introduction of the 
 hero ; the first allusion to the bewitched spot he was to pass by ; the 
 forewarning of witchcraft in his wife's affectionate and cheerful predic- 
 tions ; — 
 
 " She prophesied that, late or soon, 
 
 Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon ; 
 
 Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk 
 
 By Alloway's auld haunted kirk." 
 
 The arch reference to lengthy conjugal counsels ; — 
 " Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet. 
 To think how mony counsels sweet, 
 How mony Icngthen'd sage advices. 
 The husband frac the wife despises ! " 
 
 The convivial exultation of the reprobate and his cronies, set forth in 
 1 wo lines, the most vivid that revelry was ever told in ; — 
 
 " Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious. 
 O'er a' the ills o' life victorious." 
 
 The transition from the careless, riotous enjoyment at Ihe warm ingle- 
 side, ])y a different strain, giving one of the happiest imaginative illus- 
 trations in the range of poetry ; — 
 
 " But pleasures are like poppies spread : 
 You seize the flower, its bloom is shed ;
 
 226 LECTURE TENXn. 
 
 Or like the snow falls in the river, 
 
 A moment white, — then melts for ever ! " 
 
 Tarn's midnight ride, and his approach to the haunted kirk, after pass- 
 ing several spots, each having its own peculiar awe in some deed of 
 death likely to leave a ghost behind : — where a pcdhir had been 
 smothered in the snow ; where a drunken traveller had broken his neck ; 
 where a murdered bairn was fouud by the hunters ; and where some 
 old woman had huug herself ; — 
 
 " Nae man can tether time or tide. 
 The hour approaches Tam maun ride ; 
 That hour of night's black arch the key-staue, 
 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 't wad blawn its last ; 
 The rattling showers rose on the blast ; 
 The speedy gleams the darkness swallow 'd. 
 Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd ; 
 That night a child might understand 
 The deil had business on his hand. 
 Weel mounted on his gray mare Meg 
 (A bettor never lifted leg), 
 Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire. 
 Despising wind, and rain, and fire. 
 Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, 
 Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet, 
 Whiles glowering round wi' prudent cares, 
 Lest bogles catch him unawares ; 
 Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh. 
 Where gliaists and houlets nightly cry." 
 
 " Heroic Tam," with a drunken heroism, rides on over the haunted 
 ground, his car beaten by wild, and, thus far, only natural, sounds, the 
 waves of the Doon roaring with an angry flood, the tossing branches of 
 the trees, and the incessant eclioing of the thunders, when to his eye, 
 dazzled by quick alternations of lightning and a mirk midnight, — 
 
 " Glimmering through the groaning trees, 
 Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a blecze ; 
 Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing. 
 And loud resounded mirth and dancing." 
 
 Tlie scene that followed I sliall not attempt either to fjuote or to de- 
 scribe : — witchcraft with all its intensity ; what you feel inclined some- 
 times to laugh at, but, before you venture to do so, a shudder creeps 
 over you at the mention of the Wicked" One's horrid playthings ;
 
 TAM o'snA>-Tp:R. 227 
 
 but that hideous image as appalling as any terror in Shakspcarr"s 
 
 sorcery:— 
 
 " 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." 
 
 The hideousness of the supernatural scene is aggravated hy the intro- 
 duction of one human being mingling in the spectral revelry, — a woman 
 who had dealings in witchcraft. The scene suddenly changes ; for, 
 when Tarn's silent amazement gave way to an impudent exclamation of 
 applause at the agility of the beldame dancer, — 
 
 " In an instant all was dark, 
 And scarcely had he Maggie rallied 
 When out the hellish legion sallied." 
 
 The chase by the witches, and Tarn's very narrow escape across the 
 running stream with the loss of his gray mare's tail, bring the poem to 
 an appropriate ending. It won an immediate popularity, for it was cir- 
 culated among the Scottish cottages, and one peasant did not meet an- 
 other without one or both indulging in quotations. This had been the 
 case also with Bunis's earlier poems. Allan Cunningham mentions the 
 fact of his father's having procured the volume from a Camerouian 
 clergyman, with this remarkable admonition : — " Keep it out of the way 
 of your children, John, lest ye catch them, as I caught mine, reading it 
 on the Sabbath." One very remarkable evidence of the popiJarity of 
 " Tarn O'Shanter" is the fact that it made the churchyard of Alloway's 
 old haunted kia-k quite a fashionable burial-place : for the neighbouriug 
 gently began to vie with humbler worth and noteless industry, in finding 
 in its little area room for their last resting-place. 
 
 I do not attempt to trace the course of Burns's personal story closely, 
 as it is connected with his poetic career, as in the affecting incident of 
 his love for Mary Campbell, and his pathetic lament over her as his 
 " Higldand Mary." On every leading event his poetic heart spake from 
 its fulness, as when what he called a bitter blast of misfortune's cold 
 " nor'-wcst" was near driving him from his native land, and he wrote, in 
 obvious allusion to himself, the stanzas " On a Scottish Bard gone to 
 the West Indies :"— 
 
 " Auld cantie Kyle may weepers wear, 
 An' stain them wi' tlic saut, saut ti'ar; 
 'T will mak' her poor auld heart, I fear, 
 
 In flinders flee ; 
 He was her laureate monie a year 
 That's owre the sea. 
 Q2
 
 22S LECTTJKE TENTH. 
 
 " He ne'er was gien to great misguiding, 
 Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in ; 
 VVi' him it ne'er was under hiding : 
 
 He dealt it free ; 
 The Muse was a' that he took pride in 
 
 That 's owre the sea. 
 
 " Jamaica bodies, use him weel. 
 An' hap him in a cozic biel : 
 Ye 11 find him ay a dainty chiel, 
 
 And fu o' glee ; 
 He wad na wrang'd the vera dcil 
 
 That 's owre the sea." 
 
 The introduction of Bnrns to Edinburgh society, and his intercourse 
 ^vith it, were liurtfnl to the moral growth of Lis genius. It brought 
 him into a closer contact with life, presenting the inequality of human 
 condition, especially amid aristocratic institutions. His own sense of 
 independence, and of his own intrinsic intellectual worth, was strong 
 enough to make him realize social inequality, but not strong enough to 
 raise him above it to a magnanimous coiitcntment : — 
 
 " See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight. 
 So abject, mean, and vile, 
 Who begs a brother of the earth 
 To give him leave to toil. 
 
 " If I 'm design'd yon lordling's slave, 
 By nature's law design"d. 
 Why was an independent wish 
 E'er planted in my mind ? " 
 
 Kindly as a peasant-poet was received in Edinburgh, he detected that 
 often in that kindness there was condescension ; and, with a sensibility 
 as tremblingly exquisite as his sense was strong, he suspected, as has 
 been remarked by one of his biographers, " that the professional meta- 
 physicians who applauded his rapturous bursts surveyed them, in reality, 
 with something of the same feeling which attends a skilful surgeon's 
 inspection of a curious specimen of morbid anatomy." " I doubt," said 
 Bums liimself, in a private record, " whether one man may pour out his 
 bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very inmost soul, with 
 unreserving confidence, to another, without hazard of losing part of that 
 respect which man desen^s from man, or, from the unavoidaljle imper- 
 fections attending human nature, of one day repenting his confidence." 
 Happy would it have been could Burns have held his spirit at the eleva- 
 tion which he reaches in another strain: —
 
 MORALITY OF BTJKNS's POETRY. 229 
 
 " It 's no in titles nor in rank ; 
 It 's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 
 
 To purchase peace and rest ; 
 It 's no in books, it 's no in lear 
 
 To make us truly blest. 
 * » * » 
 
 Think ye that sic as you and I, 
 
 Wha drudge and drive thro' wet an' dry, 
 
 Wi' never ceasing toil, — 
 Think ye, are we less blest than they 
 Wha scarcely tent us in their way, 
 
 As hardly worth their while ? '" 
 
 Happier still would it have been could he have realized one of Lis 
 purest aspirations : — 
 
 " To make a happy fireside clime 
 For weans and wife, 
 That 's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life.'' 
 
 The question as to the morality of Burns's poetry may be reduced to 
 a simple statement. That he, in his way of Kfe, departed widely from 
 paths which his conscience vainly persuaded him to, iu opposition to un- 
 governable passions, cannot and ought not to be concealed. He never 
 debased himself to a sottish intemperance, but sought convivial excite- 
 ment, and the worst relief from morbid bodily affections brought on by 
 premature distress. He has uttered a touching appeal for charitable 
 judgments : — 
 
 " Gently scan your brother man. 
 Still gentler sister woman ; 
 Though they may gang a kennin' wr.ang ! 
 
 To step aside is human : 
 One point must still be greatly dark, — 
 
 The moving why they do it : 
 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 
 How far perhaps they rue it. 
 
 ■' Who made the heart, 't is He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us ; 
 He knows each chord — its various tone, 
 
 Each spring — its various bias : 
 Then at the balance let 's be mute ; 
 
 We never can adjust it : 
 What 's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
 His poetry has been charged — falsely, it seems to me — with c con- 
 tempt or affectation of prudence, decency, and regularity, and an admir-
 
 230 LECTUEE TENTH. 
 
 ation of thoughtlessness, oddity, and vehement sensibility ; in short, 
 with a belief in the dispensing power of genius in all matters of 
 morality. Burns had too much masculine good sense ever to fall into 
 that wretched fallacy. He never so deceived himself. Wild words, 
 indeed, often broke from him ; and once, in well-known lines, most 
 wrongly, perhaps somewhat impiously, he pleaded that the light which 
 led astray was light from heaven. But he has written enough of self- 
 condemnation, self-reproach, to show he did not think so. Who can 
 doubt this on reading that sincere and solemn avowal in the stanzas he 
 styled "The Bard's Epitaph " ?— as touching a confession as ever was 
 composed : — 
 
 " Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
 
 Owi-c fast for thought, owre hot for ruk-, 
 
 Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool ? ^ 
 
 Let him draw near, 
 And owre this grassy heap sing dool, 
 And drap a tear. 
 " Is there a bard of rustic song, 
 Who, noteless, steals the crowds among. 
 That weekly this area throng ? 
 
 Oh, pass not by ! 
 But, with a fi-ater-feeling strong 
 Here heave a sigh. 
 " Is there a man whose judgment clear 
 Can others teach the course to steer, 
 Yet runs himself life's mad career 
 Wild as the wave ? 
 Here pause, and, through the starting tear, 
 Survey this grave. 
 " The poor inhabitant below 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know. 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 And softer flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low. 
 And stdin'd his name. 
 *' Header, attend: whether thy soul 
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole 
 
 In low pursuit ; 
 Know, prudent, cautious self-control 
 Is wisdom's root." 
 
 That grave for which this epitaph in fancy was meant has been visited 
 hj those who perhaps deemed the poor inhabitant below to have been 
 uo better than a miserable drunkard, by otlicrs wlio wrongly condcmaed
 
 LINES TO THE SO?f3 OF BURNS. 231 
 
 him for having perverted his great, endowment to the vindication of 
 moral lawlessness. It has been, too, visited phrenologically. The 
 l)hrenologists, as Allan Cunningham sarcastically describes the affair, 
 disinterred the skull, applied their compasses, and satisfied themselves 
 that Burns had capacity equal to the composition of " Tarn O'Shauter," 
 " The Cotter's Saturday Night," and " Mary in Heaven." " Oh for 
 an hour of Burns for these men's sakes ! " exclaims a kindred spirit : 
 " were there a witch of Endor in Scotland, it would be an act of com- 
 parative piety ia her to bring up his spirit : to stigmatize them in 
 verses that would burn for ever would be a gratification for which he 
 might think it worth while to be thus brought again upon earth." All 
 mankind have heard of the malediction which Shakspeare utters from 
 his monument, and of the dread which came upon the boors of Strat- 
 ford-upon-Avon as they presumed to gaze upon his dust. No such 
 fears, however, fell upon the craniologists of Dumfries. The clock 
 struck one as they touched the dread relic : they tried their hats upon 
 the head and found them all too little, and, having made a mould, they 
 deposited the skull in a leaden box, carefuUy lined with the softest ma- 
 terials, and returned it once more to the hallowed ground. 
 
 The grave has been visited by those who brought a better power and 
 a better purpose, — a poet and his sister. He has described their find- 
 ing it in a comer of the churchyard ; and, looking at it with melancholy 
 and painful reflections, they repeated to each other his own verses be- 
 fjinning — 
 
 " Is there a man whose judgment clear ? " 
 
 " He, taking the music of that epitaph, has given what is at once the 
 best tribute to the dead and the best warning to the liviug. I know 
 of no fitter close for this lecture than Wordsworth's lines " To the Sons 
 of Burns, after visiting their father's grave." 
 
 " 'Mid crowded obelisks and urns, 
 I sought the untimely grave of Burns : 
 Sons of the Baid, my heart still mourns 
 
 With sorrow true ; 
 And more would grieve, but that it turn.s 
 Trembaug to you ! 
 
 " I'lirough twilight shades of good and ill 
 Ye now arc panting up life's hill ; 
 And more than common strength and skill 
 
 Must ye display. 
 If ye would give the better will 
 
 Its lawful sway.
 
 232 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 " Hath nature strung your nerves to bear 
 Intemperance with less harm, beware ! 
 But if the poet's wit ye share, — 
 
 Like him can speed 
 The social hour, — of tenfold care 
 
 There will be need 
 
 " For honest men delight will take 
 To spare your failings for his sake ; 
 Will flatter you, — and fool and rake 
 
 Your steps pursue, 
 And of your father's name will make 
 
 A snare for you. 
 
 " Far from their noisy haunts retire, 
 And add your voices to the quire 
 That sanctify the cottage fire 
 
 With service meet : 
 There seek the genius of your sire ; 
 
 His spirit greet. 
 
 " Or where, 'mid ' lonely heights and hows, 
 He paid to nature tuneful vows. 
 Or wiped his honourable brows 
 
 Bedew'd with toil, 
 While reapers strove, or busy ploughs 
 TJpturn'd the soil. 
 
 " His judgment with benignant ray 
 Shall guide, his fancy cheer, your way ; 
 But ne'er to a seductive lay 
 
 Let faith be given. 
 Nor deem that ' light which leads astray 
 
 Is light from heaven.' 
 
 " Let no mean hope your souls enslave ; 
 Be independent, generous, brave : 
 Your father such example gave, 
 
 And such revere ; 
 But be admonish'd by his grave. 
 
 And think and feur I "
 
 LECTUEE XI. 
 
 (Koirtrmpflrarj) ITittrature. 
 
 TIIE PRESENT AGE NOT AN UNPOETICAI. ONE— FFvE NAMES WORTHY OF DISTINC- 
 TION— SAMUEL ROGERS— THE " PLEASURES OF MEMORY '—ROGERS'S " ITALY ' — 
 GALILEO AND MILTON— MOORE'S SONGS— IRISH PATRIOTISM— THE TRUE aUES- 
 TION RESPECTING POETICAL COMPOSITION— LAJNIB'S LINES ON THE" OLD FjXJUILIAR 
 FACES "—SCOTT'S CAREER OF AUTHORSHIP— SCOTT THE SECOND IN RANK OF 
 SCOTTISH POETS— HIS CHILDHOOD AT SANDY KNOWE— HIS EARLY READING— 
 HIS INTERVIEW WITH BURNS— INFLUENCE OF THE STORY OF THE REBELLION 
 OF 1715 ON HIS GENIUS— HIS LOVE OF NATURAL SCENERY— THE MINSTRELSY OF 
 THE SCOTTISH BORDER- HALLAH'S REMARK ON THE SCOTTISH BALLADS— STORY 
 OF CHRISTIES WILI^"THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL"— SCOTT'S MERIT AS 
 A. POET— INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ON HIS MIND—" MARMION — 
 "THE LADY OF THE LAKE "—DECLINE OF HIS POETICAL POWERS— " BONNY DUN- 
 DEE"— "BATTLE OF OTTERBUBNE "— HIS PILGRIMAGE TO ITALY. 
 
 CpHIS coui'se of lectures, so kindly and patiently followed by you, 
 I has now brought us to the limit of the poets of a past generation. 
 Tlie lives of those two true poets who were last considered reached the 
 closing years of the last century, — the death of Burns having taken 
 I)lace in the year 1796, and that of Covqier in 1800. The mind naturally 
 draws a boundary -line which separates them from the poets of the pre- 
 sent century and our own times. The remaining lectures will be ap- 
 propriated to some of our contemporaries who have devoted their 
 genius to the cultivation of that vast and noble held of English htera- 
 ture we have been travelling over. 
 
 It is quite an habitual opinion to characterize the generation of the 
 nineteenth century as unpoetical ; and in many respects, it must be con- 
 fessed, the censure is well directed. Eut when the philosophic critic 
 of some future age shall seek to judge us, the judgment will be a dif- 
 ferent one. We are apt to form our estimate with minds diverted to 
 the countless agencies visibly at work around us, — to the various mani- 
 festations of the busy, bustling, superficial temper of the times, which 
 leads men to seek the unsure and brief support of mere expedients, in- 
 stead of the constancy and security of abiding princijjles. There are 
 perpetually obtruded on our notice some traits of the times, showing 
 the race occupied rather with the world of sense than with strenuous 
 eiforts of thought or liigh aspirations of imagination. But these — the
 
 23 i LECTUEE ELEVENTH. 
 
 more obvious cliaractcristics — are temporary ; they pass away, and in 
 their place remain those which are more durable. Wiien some future 
 literary historian shall come to write the character of his ancestry in 
 the early portion of the nineteenth century, he will seek for evidences 
 of that character, not in such things as from time to time flash upon us. 
 awakening some admiration or amazement, but in the surviving litera- 
 ture of the generation, and especially in the imaginative department of 
 it, which, gaining a wider and more permanent command of the ispnpa- 
 thics, has therefore a most lasting life. It endures from age to age, and 
 to it men of other times are apt to look as the mirror of the generation 
 to which that literature belonged. It is a somewhat vain and perhaps 
 presumptuous thing to attempt to gain futurity for a point of imagin- 
 ative vision, and thus anticipate the judgment of posterity. As far as 
 we may indulge in such speculation, we may fancy some eye as yet un- 
 born, conning ^yhat is now the fair page of some fresh book, but then 
 turned into the " sere and yeUow leaf ; " and if it should chance to be 
 a page on which is inscribed some shallow piece of pride in the supe- 
 riority of the age, — some ostentation of the incomparable advancement 
 of physical science or the mechanic arts, or of universal education and 
 the march of mind, or some loud boasting of political regeneration, — it 
 might prompt the compassionate smile at sucli ebullitions of inordinate 
 and short-sighted vanity ; short-sighted, because these are matters in 
 which, great as may be the achievements of one generation, tliey arc 
 usually outstripped and set aside by those of a succeeding generation. 
 Prom such manifestations of our character we might be pronounced a 
 sensuous, unimaginative generation. Self-centred, self-seeking, self- 
 satisfied, prone to divorce the ])resent from both past and future, 
 breaking covenant with the mighty dead by irreverent violation of 
 time-honoured institutions and usages, as being, according to the 
 phrase, behind the times, and not looking with prophetic eye to days 
 that are to come. But the chief evidence of tiie character of an age is 
 sought in its literature; and, contemplating that of our times, the 
 writer of some distant day will lind that there flourished during the 
 (iarly period of the nineteenth century a numerous company of poets, and 
 among them not a few truly inspired, who would do honour to any age. 
 Indeed, unimaginative and unpoetic as we are, too often, in the habit 
 of considering the generation of our own times, if we measure both the 
 amount and meriC and variety of the jioetry wliich has been produced 
 within tlie la.st thirty or forty years, this age, in the annals of English 
 poetry, is surpassed only by tlie golden age of Queen Elizabeth, with 
 wluch, indeed, it may not inappropriately be compared.
 
 FIVE NAMES WORXnr OF DISTINCTION". 235 
 
 The list of successful poets in our times is, in truth, a registry which 
 ■ contrasts finely with the poverty of several former periods ; and, on 
 approaching what may be called our contemporaries' poetry, I have 
 found a necessity of making some selection from a numerous company 
 of poets who would aU be entitled to consideration in a more extended 
 course. I have, therefore, chosen five names as worthy of chief dis- 
 tinction, hoping to be able occasionally to present some incidental notices 
 of those to whom more space would, under other circumstances, be due. 
 The choice names — chosen not without reflection, and with regard to 
 their emuieuee and their influence — are the names of Scott, Coleiidgc, 
 Southcy, Byron, and Wordsworth.- The ranks of the poets of the nine- 
 teenth century have been already thinned by death. Of the five names 
 just repeated but two survive, and only one in the unimpaired posses- 
 sion of his genius. That one has witnessed the passing away of his 
 brother bards, iu quick succession too, within the last few years, — a 
 speedy action of death, not lost upon the thoughtful imagination of the 
 survivor : — 
 
 " Like clouds which rake the mountain summit, 
 Or waves that own no curbing hand, 
 How fast has bi-other follow'd brother 
 From sunshine to the sunless laud ! 
 
 "Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers 
 Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
 A timid voice, that asks, in whispers, 
 Who next will drop and disappear ? " 
 
 iJyi'on, and Scott, and Coleridge, and Crabbe, and the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd, — as he is called, to escape the unpoetic name of James Hogg, — and 
 Mrs. Hemans, each having filled a space in the literature of this century, 
 are in their graves. The survivors, not a few in number, are for the 
 most part mute in song as the dead ; but, to appreciate the extent of 
 living poetic power, it is only necessary to recall the names of Rogers, 
 and Campbell, and Moore, and Milman, and Southey, and Wordsworth, 
 to say notliing of some others of good repute. 
 
 It is a noticeable fact, that among the poets of our days the one who 
 first gained an honourable award of reputation, the first and oldest of 
 them all, is stiU among the living, " a worthy and a prosperous gentle- 
 man," — the poet Samuel Rogers. He came into public notice as the 
 author of the " Pleasures of Memory," which appeared during the List 
 century ; and he is now living in cheerful and esteemed old age, after a 
 life of purity and affluent elegance, on the verge of eighty years. He 
 stands truly the patriarch of the poets of the nineteenth century; and.
 
 236 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 as such, honour should first be done to him before I pass on to the chief 
 subjects of this aud the succecdina: lectures. 
 
 Rogers's lirst poem was j)roduced at a time most propitious to the 
 acquisition of a general po{)ularity. It was a period of poetical dearth. 
 The career of Burns as well as of Cowper were well nigh over when this 
 poem upon the pleasurable emotions of memory was cordially and 
 widely welcomed to supply a void in the public mind. 
 
 It was on a theme of universal interest and of ready comprehension, 
 and abounding in a succession of pleasing pictures, rather than present- 
 ing any lofty efforts of imagination ; and, therefore, it is not surprising 
 that it should have won, under such circumstances, a wide-spread 
 favour. At the present day, or even somewhat later than the publica- 
 tion of the " Pleasuj-es of Memory," I do not think it could have se- 
 cured so favourable a reception. There has since been so much of the 
 stronger inspiration, that the avenue to a poetic reputation is by no 
 means so open to entrance. Indeed, this is shown by the state of 
 popular opinion respecting some of Rogers's later poems. His " Italy," 
 for example, seems to me to show a far more vigorous and cultivated 
 imagination, — to be, in a \Vord, a greatly superior poem to his lirst 
 poem ; but Rogers's name became first known as the poet of Memory, 
 and as such will it be preserved. Passages of genuine poetry are 
 scattered through his " Italy," giving it a higher value than is perhaps 
 recognised. It is a descriptive poem, finely enriched, as descriptive 
 poetry should be, with moral associations, in the present case arising 
 chiefly from historical and biographical allusions. The interesting visit 
 of the young Milton, a traveller in Italy, to the aged Galileo, is thus 
 introduced and fitly touched : — 
 
 " Nearer we hail 
 Thy sunny slope, Arcetri, sung of old 
 For its green wine, — dearer to me, to most, 
 As dwelt on by that great astronomer, 
 Seven years a prisoner at the city-gate, 
 Let in but in his grave-clothes. Sacred be 
 His cottage ; (justly wa.s it call'd the jewel !) 
 Sacred the vineyard where, while yet his sight 
 Glimmer'd, at blush of dawn he dress'd his vines, 
 Chanting aloud, in gaiety of heart. 
 Some verse of Ariosto. There, unseen, 
 In manly beauty, Milton stood befoix> him, 
 Gazing with reverent awe, — Milton his guest, 
 Just then come forth, all life and enterprise ; 
 Jle in his old age and extremity, 
 Blind, at noonday exploring with his staff,
 
 mooee's soifQs. 237 
 
 His eyes upturn'd as to the golden sun. 
 
 His eyeballs idly rolling. Little then 
 
 Did Galileo think whom he bade welcome ; 
 
 That in his hand he held the hand of one 
 
 Who could requite him, — who would spread his name 
 
 O'er lands and seas, — great as himself, nay, greater : 
 
 Milton as little that in him he saw, 
 
 As in a glass, what he himself should be, 
 
 Destined so soon to fall on evil days 
 
 And evil tongues, — so soon, alas ! to live 
 
 In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round 
 
 And solitude." 
 
 [There is a break in the manuscript here, which I have found it impossible to repair. 
 Diligent search has been made for the missing matter, but without success. — Ed.] 
 
 In the last lecture I had occasion to make some remarks on the sub- 
 ject of lyrical poetry, and its demand for a higlily-musical versiiication 
 and a variety of rhythm. The remarks were connected with the higher 
 department of lyrical composition, — the Ode, — but now lead me to 
 mention slightly the numerous contributions of a living poet of another 
 department of lyrical poetry. No English wTiter, that I am aware of, 
 has produced so many songs as Moore. Pamiliar, too, by musical ac- 
 companiments, they have gained a wide popularity by the alliance of 
 many a sweet voice that has sung them. But, as a matter of poetry 
 and not of music, a good song is an exceedingly rare production. In 
 the whole extent of English poetry the number is quite small. Moore, 
 prolific song-writer as he has been, has written much fewer of decided 
 merit than would be supposed, considering the success they have had. 
 When you come, for instance, to read over his " Irish Melodies," you 
 find too much elaboration, too much of art, — strains of overwrought and 
 artificially-stimulated fancy. They want the simplicity, the natural im- 
 pulse and emotion, the bird-like utterance, which characterize the song 
 of the true lyrical poet. The musical accompaniments of INIoore's songs 
 have served not only to give them their due effect, but also to conceal their 
 faults. This is perceived when they are simply read. But at the same 
 time, the poet's merit is considerable in the variety of his versification, 
 and many of his songs display his skill in developing the compass of 
 English metres. Tlie following stanzas are much simpler in style than 
 Moore's usual strain, and a more peculiar measure than he often uses. 
 With something of his bright fancy, they are not devoid of a pleasing 
 plaintiveness : — 
 
 Brisrht be thy dreams ! May all thy weeping 
 
 Turn into smiles while thou art sleejung !
 
 238 LECTTTKE ELEVENTH. 
 
 Those by sea or death removed. 
 Friends who in thy spring-time knew thee, 
 
 All thou 'st ever prized or loved, 
 In dreams come smiling to thee ! 
 There may the child whose love lay deepest, 
 Dearest of all, come while thou slecpest ; 
 
 Still be the same, — no charm forgot. 
 Nothing lost that life had given ; 
 Or, if changed, but changed to what 
 
 Thou 'It hud her yet in heaven ! 
 
 There is much more of the true poetic fire in some of Moore's na- 
 tional than in his amatory lyrics. They glow with a very impetuous 
 fervour of patriotism, — Irish patriotism, of which it has been said, half 
 in jest and half in earnest, that it is somethin£^ very like British treason. 
 Be that as it may, when his theme is poor, misruled, poverty-stricken 
 Ireland, there is the air and tone more of reality in his etfusions. They 
 come more from the heart, as seems to be the case with these energetic 
 
 lines : — 
 
 " Oh, where 's the slave so lowly, 
 Condemu'd to chains unholy. 
 
 Who, could he burst 
 
 His bonds at first, 
 Would pine beneath them slowly ? 
 What soul, whose wrongs degrade it. 
 Would wait till time decay'd it, 
 
 When thus its wing ' 
 
 At once may spring 
 To the throne of Ilim who made it ? 
 
 Farewell, Erin! farewell, all 
 
 Who live to weep our fall ! 
 
 " Less dear the laurel growing 
 Alive, untouch'd, and blowing, 
 
 Than that whose braid 
 
 Is pluek'd to shade ? 
 The brows with victory glowing, 
 We tread the land tliat bore us; 
 Her green flag glitters o'er us ; 
 
 The friends we 've tried 
 
 Are by our side. 
 And the foe we hate before us ! 
 
 Farewell, Erin ! farewell, all 
 
 Who live to weep our fall ! 
 
 I/d, me take this opportunity to remark, that Moore's poetry may 
 well .serve to illustrate the diil'ercncc between true natural feeling and 
 tliat bright and often delusive reilcction of it which our language sup-
 
 NATURAL FEELING AND SENTIMENTALITT. 239 
 
 plies a very apt term to describe, — sentimentality. It is a counterfeit 
 resemblance of seutiment, and very current in poetry. There are few 
 points on which it is more important for the reader to be able to dis- 
 criminate between the reality and the shadow, especially as they are 
 often separated by almost imperceptible Lines. Moore, for instance, has 
 written a great number of very pretty things ; but the reader must 
 have a low estimate of the art who supposes that it is merely pretty 
 tilings which constitute good poetry. Often the fancy is touched, and 
 it will be thought the heart is touched too, when in truth its pulses 
 may be beating all the while as sluggishly as ever. The gentle and even 
 pulsations of sentimentality are very often mistaken for the strong 
 stirrings of the feelings ; and, if that confusion were done away with, it 
 is wonderful how much false and sickly poetry would be done away at 
 the same time. The reader of poetry is often exposed to this imposi- 
 tion ; for there are wTiters whose delight it is to dally with the feelings 
 as if they were mere playthings, to be tricked out in the finery of pretty 
 words and figures and afi'ectations ; whereas a genuine emotion is a 
 strong and simple utterance from the very depths of the poet's heart, 
 arrayed it may be, but not encumbered, by the glory which his imagin- 
 ation gives to it. There are a great many verses in the literature of all 
 nations in which the display of sentiment is considerable, but it is all 
 on the surface. It is the tliin soil of sentimentality, fit only to sustain 
 the growth of a few slight flowers. We should be prepared, therefore, 
 to ask ourselves the question respecting poetical composition, "Is there 
 real feeling here?" We should seek to satisfy ourselves that the poet 
 truly and imaginatively experienced the emotion for which he asks our 
 sympathy, and that it is not mere affectation and exaggeration. Nor is 
 it always easy to discriminate ; for sentimentality is not so much an 
 absolute mockery of real sentiment as it is sentiment dressed up in fine 
 clothes. Besides, it is to be borne in mind that a powerful emotion, 
 when joined with a strong imagination, will grasp at tlioughts and im- 
 ages which might be judged too remote, but which it makes its own. 
 This is one of the most natural and legitimate functions of tlie poetic 
 faculty, and which reconciles the highest acts of the imagination with 
 the most sincere and deepest feeling. This is, I believe, a kind of 
 mystery to some persons, who are inclined to doubt the possibility of a 
 man's feeling strongly what he expresses in verse, as if poetry were 
 universally an empty shadow, — an unreal imitation of real emotions. 
 So very often it is ; and this makes it necessary to distinguish. It is a 
 matter of very serious misapprehension in the reading of poetry ; and, 
 as the materials for illustration are at hand, let me briefly exemplify.
 
 210 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 Those lines of Charles Lamb on the " Old Familiar Faces," which 1 
 have this evening repeated, express a feeling wliich has, I presume, 
 been experienced by every one who is now listening to me, — that pain- 
 fully hollow sense of destitution when there comes across us the me- 
 mory of faces familiar to some former period of life ; the craving after 
 the departed ; the missing of something whieli had been a portion of 
 our very selves, incorporated in our existence. Several of the stanzas 
 go on to mention the memory of what has been and never more will be. 
 This is told in language as simple as possible, — ^just such words as the 
 feeling would express itself in, finding natural utterance in earnest con- 
 versation, being only distinguished by a metrical construction of equal 
 simplicity. But suddenly, as the feeling is dwelt upon, the imagination 
 expands, and, as the shadowy recollections of childhood — memories of 
 the old familiar faces — throng around him, the mourner feels the 
 spectre-like haunting of the scenes of childhood, and his loneliness 
 makes the earth a very desert : — 
 
 " Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood, 
 Earth seem'd a desert I was hound to traverse, 
 Seeking to find the old familiar faces." 
 
 This strikes me as a genuine burst of true imaginative emotion. No 
 one can for a moment doubt the perfect sincerity of the poet's feelings. 
 By the side of it let me place a piece of fanciful, sentimental poetry, — 
 a fair specimen of that sort, — turning on much the same memory of de- 
 parted youth and gladness. It is one of Moore's melodies, — well-known 
 ^'erses, and so familiar, no doubt, to the ears of many of you in con- 
 nection with their musical accompaniment, that they may sound rather 
 (jddly under the rude handling of criticism : — 
 
 " Oft in the stilly night, 
 
 Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
 Fond memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me : — 
 The smiles, the tears 
 Of boyhood's years, 
 The words of love then spoken ; 
 The eyes that shone. 
 Now dimm'd and gone, 
 The cheerful hearts, now broken. 
 Thus, in the stilly night, 
 
 Ere slumber's chain has bound me. 
 Sad memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me.
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 241 
 
 " When I remember all 
 
 The friends, so link'd together, 
 I 've seen around me full. 
 Like leaves in wintry weather, 
 I feel like one 
 Who treads alone 
 Some banquet-hall deserted. 
 Whose lights are fled, 
 Whose garlands dead, 
 And all but he departed. 
 Thus, in the stilly night. 
 
 Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
 Sad memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me." 
 
 In passing to the consideration of the chief name to be presented in 
 this lecture, let it be remembered that that brilliant chapter in English 
 literature, the Waverley Novels, is not comprehended within the scope 
 of the present course. That Scott's principal fame wUl rest upon them 
 I entertain no doubt ; but we have at present to deal only with the 
 character of his poems. Scott's career of authorship was probably the 
 most amazing that has ever been witnessed in any countiy, whether we 
 consider it with reference to its almost inexhaustible fertility, its sub- 
 stantial remuneration, or its wide-spread popularity and the innocent 
 gratification afforded to an incalculable number of readers. His poems 
 form comparatively but a small proportion of all his productions. The 
 rapid and brilliant popularity of Scott's poetry has been eclipsed by his 
 imaginative prose, and thus people have often allowed themselves to 
 judge of that poetry carelessly, disregarding it as a thing gone by and 
 superseded. That is hardly fair ; for poetry which had won a general 
 admiration by no unworthy arts is entitled to a more deliberate judg- 
 ment to know both the grounds of that popularity and the causes of its 
 decline. Tm-ning, then, away from the Waverley Novels as from a 
 subject unconnected with this course of lectures, interesting as a gen- 
 eral criticism of them might be, I must confine myself to the consider- 
 ation of the character of Walter Scott as a poet. 
 
 In my last lecture I had occasion to allude to the influence of the 
 traditionary minstrelsy in the development of Burns : it was an influ- 
 ence still more strikingly manifested upon the character of Scott, the 
 second in rank of the Scottish poets. The succession had been quickly 
 followed ; for it was in the very year of Burns's death that Scott's first 
 attempt in verse was published. His first attempts were not successful, 
 for they were made m a track not truly congenial for the development
 
 242 LECTURE ELEYENTII. 
 
 of his powers. His first impulse was taken, not from the indigenous 
 poetry of iiis own land, but from the ballads of German poets, — a fo- 
 reign literature which acquired a short-lived popularity in the closing 
 years of the last century. Imitation of the German ballad-poetry was 
 not the true direction of the young poet's genius, which was destined 
 to receive an impulse more effectual because more Scottish. The study 
 of the ballads of some of the German poets was a mere matter of fashion, 
 among the literary circles of Edinburgh society ; and Scott, quick in 
 his apprehensions, was naturally affected by it for a season. 
 
 A much more abiding influence had begun earlier, and is to be traced 
 back to a very early period of his life. In his second year, by a sudden 
 paralysis, Walter Scott was a cripple for life, the unformed strength of 
 the tottering infant having then been stricken by a malady of old age. 
 Among various remedies, he was sent from Edinburgh to dwell for a 
 time in the open air of a neighbouring farm, where the regimen which 
 invigorated his sickly frame wrought manifestly on his genius. It was 
 at Sandy Ivnowe that his education began, his first teacher an illiterate 
 shepherd, and the infant-school the rough ground of a Scottish sheep- 
 fold. Wiien the old man went forth to watch the flocks as they browsed 
 upon the hills, the child was carried along ; and Scott long after said 
 it was his delight to roU about u])on the grass all the day long in the 
 midst of tlie flock, and that the fellowship he thus formed with the 
 sheep and laml)s had impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate 
 feeling towards them which lasted through life. Such, with his earliest 
 consciousness of existence, was the beginning of his education, — the 
 shepherd and the shepherd's dog and the flock his daily companions. 
 But, more than this, he was thus placed in familiar intercourse with 
 nature herself ; and no one can divine how it is that the material world 
 around us exercises its influence upon the spiritual world within us. 
 It is no overstrained fancy to say that the senses of the little child 
 began even then to be tributary to his imagination and his moral being. 
 Eor what an image of the poet's (-hildhood is ])resented in the tradition 
 illn.straiive of such influences, which fells of his having been one day 
 forgotten among the knolls in a thunder-storm, and being found lying 
 on his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and crying out "Bonny ! 
 Ijonny !" at every flash ! 
 
 Another part of his education consisted of the old songs and tales 
 familiar to his daily companions as the lore appropriate to the spot 
 itself; for the summit overhanging the farm-house commanded the 
 prospect (jf a district of which it was said every field had its battle, and 
 every rivulet its song. AVitli these the child became familiar, tluis, no
 
 SCOTT S CHILDHOOD. 21'3 
 
 doubt, acquiring much before lie could read. But, besides his commun- 
 ings with the outward world, and with the minstrelsy with which, it 
 may be almost said without exaggeration, the air was filled, there is one 
 reminiscence which shows that his mihd must early have dwelt with some 
 earnestness on the pages of books. A lady writes to Mr. Lockhart that 
 she distinctly remembers a sickly boy sitting at the gate of the house 
 of one of his relatives, with his attendant, when a poor mendicant 
 approached, old and woe-begone, to claim alms. When the man was 
 retiring, the servant remarked to "Walter that he ought to be tliankful 
 to Providence for having placed him above the want and misery he had 
 been contemplating. The child looked up with a half-wistful, half- 
 incredtdous expression, and said, " Homer teas a beggar.'" " How do 
 you know that ? " said the other. " Why, do n't you remember,' 
 answered he, — 
 
 " Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread ?" 
 
 The lady smiled at the " Roman, cities ; " but already 
 " Each blank in faithless memory void 
 The poet" s glowing thoughts supplied." 
 
 This is a small matter, and so, in one sense, are all things respecting 
 children; but there seems to us a ray of true genius in such thinking 
 of so mere a child, — the finding in beggary an association between the 
 idea of Homer and the mendicant, and then by a process of imagination 
 investing the Scotch pauper with somewhat of the dignity of the prince 
 of bards. 
 
 With Scott, the influence of tuition — that which is often exclusively 
 styled education — bore an unusually small proportion to the self- 
 education on which his genius chiefly relied. This was, perhaps, in 
 some measure of necessity the case, for the ordinary school-process, at 
 first delayed by his bodily infirmity, was interrupt'ed by the general 
 feebleness of his health. The boy, however, had acquired an impetuous 
 love for reading, and the bent of his intellect was shown by the mastery 
 he gained over the region of imaginative literature. While yet a mere 
 stripling, he had peopled his mind with the old romances, the legendary 
 poetry, the " Arabian Nights," and the lofJ^|fc visions of the English 
 poets. All this was undirected ; and it was oWly a turn for historical 
 pursuits, which never forsook him, that he conceived saved his mind from 
 utter dissipation. Still, the boy's appetite for works of imagination, 
 fierce as it was, was too healthy to feed on trashy fictions. His spirit, 
 taking its first impulse from the Border-song, then roved at will through 
 the fantastic realms of Oriental fiction, the gorgeous gallerv of the
 
 244 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 '"Fairy Queeu," the spheres of the " Paradise Lost," and the world re 
 vealed upon the pages of Shakspeare. 
 
 An interesting evidence of the extent of Scott's early reading, com- 
 prehensive not only of tlic chief Englisli poets, hut of many of inferior 
 rank, may be noticed in his reminiscence of his own interview, if it may 
 be so called, with his great predecessor Burns. When the peasant-poet, 
 then in the full flush of his fame, paid his first visit to Edinburgh, 
 Walter Scott was a lad of about fifteen years of age, and was present, 
 on one occasion, when Burns was entertained in the most accomplished 
 society of the Scottish metropolis. There chanced to be shown a print 
 representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting on the 
 one side, and on the other his widow with a child in her amis ; under- 
 neath these lines : — 
 
 " Cold on Canadian hills or Mindcn's plain, 
 Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain, 
 Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew. 
 The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, 
 Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
 The child of miser}' baptized in tears." 
 
 Bums was much affected by the print, and asked whose the lines 
 were. It chanced that nobody remembered, except young Walter 
 Scott, that they occurred in a scarcely-known poem by Langhome. He 
 modestly whispered the information to a friend, who mentioned it to 
 Bums. The kind look with which it was acknowledged was a pleasur- 
 able recollection for Scott many a year after. 
 
 Scott's poetical cliaractcr was not only greatly fashioned by the in- 
 fluence of the traditionaiy minstrelsy, but it was impregnated by an 
 intense nationality ; and this may also be traced to a very early period 
 of his consciousness. During his residence at the farm-house, besides 
 the border legend's, the mingled fact and fiction of a remote age, the 
 child's thoughts were made famiUar with the nearer story of the suffer- 
 ings of his countrymen some thirty years before, in the Rebellion of 
 1745. The vengeance which triumphant England wTcaked upon Scot- 
 land was freshly remembered by many; and, as the child listened to the 
 narratives of the atrocities wliich fastened on the victor the horrid title 
 of the " Butcher Cum1)erland," there sprang from his childish sympathy 
 a deep affection for his injured country. Tlie smouldering fires of 
 Scottish resentment had burst fortli in two M-ide-spread rebellious in 
 support of the banished family of Stuart, and tlic power of England 
 over the prostrate cause of the Pretender was maintained by the bloody 
 penalties which followed the victory at CuUoden. The Duke of Cum-
 
 scott's loa'e of natural scenery. 245 
 
 berland, hardened iu the trade of war, carried English vengeance into 
 every splierc of life : the cottage-hearths were wet Avitli slaughter, and 
 the sounds that Avcut np from the glens of Scotland were the shrieks 
 and the death-moans of famishing women and children. In the language 
 of Smollett's fine Ijric, nttered at the time, — 
 
 " When the rage of battle ceased, 
 The victor's soul was not appeased : 
 The naked and forlorn must feel 
 Devouring flames and conquering steel ! 
 No strains hut those of sorrow flow, 
 And nought is heard but sounds of woe ; 
 MTiilst the pale phantoms of the slain 
 Glide nightly o'er the silent plain." 
 
 Now, it was in tliis history that the infant spirit of Walter Scott was 
 nursed ; and it is no marvel that thus was kindled iu his breast a fervid 
 Scottish feeling, that went out only wdth the flame of life. It entered 
 into his chUdish games, as described in one of the poetical epistles pre- 
 faced to " Marmion :" — 
 
 " Wliile, stretch'd at length upon the floor, 
 
 Again I fought each battle o'er ; 
 
 Pebbles and .shells in order laid 
 
 The mimic ranks of war display'd ; 
 And onicard still the Scottish Lion bore, 
 And still the scatter'd Southron fled before." 
 
 From his childhood "Walter Scott was trained to be in all his heart a 
 Scotchman. There was much tlie same feeling as kindled the early 
 aspirations of Bums :' — 
 
 " E'en then a wish (T mind its power), 
 A wish that to mj' latest hour 
 
 Shall strongly heave my breast, — 
 That I for poor auld Scotland's sake 
 Some usefu' plan or book could make. 
 
 Or sing a sang at least." 
 
 Walter Scott's poetry is full of this spirit of nationality, — a mixture 
 of national pride and that peculiar feeling, tlie filial piety of her children 
 for "poor aidd Scotland." 
 
 Scott's love of natural scenery, especially when associated with his- 
 toric incidents, had its oi-igin, no doubt, when he was residing iu child- 
 hood at the farm-house amid the romiiutic localities at Sandy Knowe. 
 A part of )us boyhood was spent in another romantic neighbourhood, 
 within sight of the meeting of two superb rivers, — the Tweed and
 
 246 LECTUllE ELEVENTH. 
 
 Teviot, both renowned in song,— tlie ruins of an ancient abbey, and the 
 more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle. " To this period," he writes, 
 " I can trace distinctly the awaking of that deliglitful feeling for the 
 beauties of natural objects wliich has never since dcsserted nie. The 
 romantic feelings predominating in my mind naturally rested upon and 
 associated themselves with these grand features of the landscape around 
 me, and the historical incidents or traditional legends connected with 
 many of them gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression of re- 
 verence which at times made my heart feel too big for my bosom. From 
 this tune the love of natural beauty, more especially when combined 
 with ancient ruins or remains of our fathers' piety or splendour, became 
 with me an insatiable })assiou, which, if circumstances liad ])ermitted, 1 
 would wiUiugly have gratified by travelling over half the globe." 
 
 Such were the dawuiugs of the genius of the last and greatest of the 
 border minstrels. It had long been Scott's dehght to gather, wherever 
 he could glean them, the traditions and fragments of the ancient ballads 
 of his own laud. These researches, carried on without any definite 
 xdterior object, were storing his inuigination with the wealth he was at 
 a future day to pay back a thousand-fold mcreascd. One of his com- 
 panions in excursions througli the region of the Border describes the 
 process well in sayuig, "lie was making himself all the time, but didna 
 ken, may be, what he was about, till years had passed. At first he 
 thought of little, I dare say, but the queerness and tlie fun." The ac- 
 cumulation of these relics at length led to the conception of the min- 
 strelsy of the Scottish border, and that work decided Scott's whoU- 
 career : it was the impulse which moved his genius ; it made liim a 
 ])oet ; it made him the magician of the Waverley Novels. While engaged 
 in the task— no task, but a dehght— of editing the legendary ballads, he 
 gathered about him the materials on which his imagination was to dwell 
 during a career of authorsliip as astonishing as any tlu; world lias known. 
 One of the critics of the day pro))hctically said that tlie minstrelsy con- 
 tained the elements of a hundred romances ; and afterwards, at tlie time 
 when Waverley was anew book and the autliorship was a mystery. Pro- 
 fessor Wibon exclaimed, " I wonder what all these people are ]jerplexing 
 themselves with : have they forgotten tlie prose of the minstrelsy ? " No 
 one acquainted with that ancient poetry, now accessible in various col- 
 lections, can fail to appreciate the influence it must have exercised in 
 tlic development of Scott's powers,— a point on which we may avail our- 
 selves of the opinion of one of the calmest and most philosophical critics 
 of the age. ]\Ir. llallam, in his recent invaluable work on the literature 
 of Europe, remarks : — " The Scoltisli ballads of an lii.s|orical or legendary
 
 SCOTTISH RALLADS. 21-7 
 
 character, especially the former, are ardently poetical : the naineless 
 minstrel is often inspired with an Homeric power of rapid narration, 
 bold description, lively or pathetic touches of sentiment. They are 
 familiar to us through several pviblications, and chiefly tliroucjh the 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, by one whose srenius those indiE^onons 
 lays had first excited, and whose own writings, when the whole civilized 
 world did homage to his name, never ceased to bear the indelible impress 
 of the associations that had thus been generated." 
 
 Scott's first purely original ballads M'ere much more in the vein of 
 (Tcnnan than of Scottish poetry, being highly coloured with the super- 
 natural. The compilation of the Minstrelsy brought him home to his 
 true path. It was not a work of mere compilation and collection ; for 
 the imperfect traditions often required remodelling and renovation, — a 
 process of great delicacy and difficulty. It demanded original imagin- 
 ative power, combined with a modest subordination to the tone of the 
 ancient song. This was an admirable school for the training of such 
 talent as Scott was gifted with. It even encouraged a bolder and more 
 vivid strain of composition than he would have ventured on in his early 
 avowedly original writings ; for, assuming the position of the ancient 
 minstrel, he spoke with an ancient freedom and fervour. Many of the 
 ballads were completed by him where lines or stanzas were wanting, but 
 the skill with wliich Scott adopted the style and spirit of an earlier age 
 is especially shown in one which may be considered almost entirely as a 
 modern imitation from his pen, for he speaks of it as not being of un- 
 mixed antiquity, but written from the remnant of a few stanzas current 
 upon the border in a corrupted state. The exploit which forms the 
 subject of it has been told also in Scott's agreeable prose. In the 
 reign of Charles I., when the moss-trooping practices were not entirely 
 discontinued, a borderer called Christie's Will was taken on some ma- 
 rauding party and imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Jedburgh. The Earl 
 of Traquair, hearing of it, inquired the cause of his confinement ; to 
 which Will replied he was imprisoned for stealing two tetliers. On 
 being more closely questioned, he acknowledged an omission in his first 
 confession, — the fact of there having been a delicate colt at the end of 
 each tether. The joke amused the earl and gained the prisoner's re- 
 lease. Some time after, a lawsuit came on in which it was known that 
 the opinion of the presiding judge was unfavourable to Lord Traquair's 
 interests. The point to be gained, therefore, was to keep the judge 
 out of the way ; and the earl had recourse to Christie's Will, who at 
 once offered his services to kidnap Lord Durie, the obnoxious justiciary. 
 This was accomplished by Will's suddeuly seizing the judge from his
 
 248 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 horse wliile riding ou the sands of Lcilh, muffling him in a large cloak, 
 and then escaping into a secluded quarter, where he deposited his weary 
 and terrified burden in an old castle in Annandale. During his confine- 
 meut in the vault of the castle the only sounds he heard were a shep- 
 herd calling his dog and an old woman talking to her cat, — sounds he 
 mistook for the invocations of spirits. The judge's horse being found, 
 it was concluded the rider had been thrown into the sea ; Jiis friends 
 went into mom-uing, and a successor was appointed ou the bench. 
 Lord Traquair gained his lawsuit, and Christie's Will was ordered to 
 set the judge at liberty. This was eft'ectcd in a manner equally mysteri- 
 ous, so that the judge and his friends were fully persuaded that he had 
 been spirited away by witchcraft. Scott, taking these facts and the 
 very imperfect fragments of the lost ballad, has given one of the most 
 successful of the modern imitations : — 
 
 " Traquair has ridden up Chapelhope, 
 
 And sae has he down by the Grey Mare's Tail, 
 He never stinted the light gallop 
 Until he speer'd for CJhristie's Will. 
 
 " Now Christie's Will pccp'd frae the tower, 
 And out at the shot-hole keeked he ; 
 ' And ever unlueky,' quo' he, ' is the hour 
 That the warden comes to speer for me ! ' 
 
 " ' Good Christie's Will, now have nae fear ! 
 Nae harm, good Will, shall hap to thee ; 
 I saved thy life at the Jeddart air, 
 
 At the Jeddart air frae the justice tree. 
 
 " ' Bethink how ye swarc, by the salt and the bread, 
 By the lightning, the wind, and the rain, 
 That, if ever of Christie's Will 1 had need, 
 He would pay me my service again.' 
 
 " ' Gramercy, my lord,' quo' Christie's Will, 
 ' Gramercy, my lord, for your grace to me ! 
 When I turn my cheek and claw my neck 
 I think of Traquair and the Jeddart tree' 
 
 " And he ha.s open'd the fair tower-gate 
 To Traquair and a' his eompanie ; 
 The spule o' the deer on the board he has set, 
 The fattest that ran on the Hutton Lee. 
 
 " ' Now, wherefore sit ye sad, my lord ? 
 And wherefore sit ye iiiournfuUic ? 
 And why eat ye not of the venison I shot 
 At the dead of night on Ilutton Lee ? '
 
 STORY OF CHEISTIe's WILL. 219 
 
 " ' 0, weel may I stint of feast and sport, 
 And in my mind be vexed sair ; 
 A vote of the canker'd Session Court 
 Of laud and living will make me bare. 
 
 " ' But if auld Durie to heaven were flown, 
 Or if auld Durie to hell were gane. 
 Or .... if he could be but ten days stoun, 
 My bonny braid lands would still be my ain.' 
 
 " ' 0, mony a time, my lord,' he said, 
 
 ' I 've stowu the horse frae the sleeping loon ; 
 But for you I '11 steal a beast as braid. 
 
 For I '11 steal Lord Durie frae Edinburgh town. 
 
 " O, mony a time, my lord,' he said, 
 
 ' I've stown a kiss frae a sleeping wench ; 
 But for you I '11 do as kittle a deed. 
 For I 'U steal an auld lurdane aff the bench.' 
 
 " And Christie's Will is to Edinburgh gane ; 
 At the Burrough Muir then enter'd he ; 
 And, as he pass'd the gallow-stane, 
 
 He cross'd his brow and he bent his knee. 
 
 " He lighted at Lord Durie's door. 
 
 And there he knock'd most manfullie ; 
 And up and spake Lord Durie sae stour, 
 ' What tidings, thou stahvard groom, to me : * 
 
 " ' The fairest lady in Teviotdale 
 
 Has sent, maist reverent sir, for thee ; 
 She pleas at the session for her land, a'haill. 
 And fain she wad plead her cause to thee.' 
 
 " ' But how can I to that lady ride 
 With saving of my dignitie ? ' 
 ' O, a curch and mantle ye may wear. 
 And in my cloak ye sail muffled be.' 
 
 " Wi' curch on head and cloak ower face. 
 He mounted the judge on a palfrey fyne ; 
 He rode away, a right round pace, 
 
 .\nd Christie's Will held the bridle-reyn. 
 
 " The Lothian edge they were not o'er. 
 When they heard bugles bauldly ring. 
 And, hunting over Middleton Moor, 
 They met, I ween, our noble king. 
 
 " When Willie look'd upon our king, 
 I wot, a frighted man was he ! 
 But ever anld Durie was startled mair. 
 For tyning of his dignitie.
 
 250 LKCTUUE ELlCVESin. 
 
 " The king he cross'd himself, I wis, 
 When as the pair came riding bye ; 
 An uglier crone and a sturdier loon, 
 I think, were never seen with eye. 
 
 " Willie has hied to the tower of Greremo, 
 And he took auld Uuric on his back ; 
 He shot him down to the dungeon deep, 
 
 Which garr'd his auld banes gie mony u ciac k. 
 "For nineteen days and nineteen nights. 
 Of sun, or moon, or midnight stern, 
 Auld Durie never saw a blink, 
 
 The lodging was sae dark and dern. 
 
 " He thought the warlocks o' the rosy cro>s 
 Had fang'd him in their nets sae fast ; 
 Or that the gyi)sies' glamour'd gang 
 Had lair'd his learning at the last. 
 
 " ' Hey ! Botty lad ! far yaud ! far yaud ! ' 
 
 These were the morning sounds heard he , 
 And ever ' Alack ! ' auld Duiie cried; 
 ' The dcil is hounding his tykes on rae ! ' 
 
 " And whiles a voice on Baudrons cried, 
 
 With sounds uncouth and sharp and hie, 
 ' I have tar-barrell'd mony a witch. 
 
 But now, 1 think, they '11 clear scores wi'me ! ' 
 " The king has caused a bill be wrote, 
 And he lias set it on the Tron : — 
 ' He that will bring Lord Durie back 
 Shall have five hundred merks and one.' 
 " Traquair has written a privie letter. 
 And he has seal'd it wi' his seal ; 
 ' Ye may let the auld brock out o' the poke ; 
 The land 's my ain, and a 's ganu weel.' 
 
 " O, Will has mounted his bonny black, 
 
 And to the tower of Grea.'nie did trudge ; 
 And once again, on his sturdy back, ' 
 
 Has he hente up the weary judge. 
 
 " He brought him to the council stairs. 
 And there full loudly shouted he, 
 ' Gie me my guerdon, my sovereign liege, 
 .And take ye back your auld Durie ! ' " 
 From tlie minstrelsy of the border uaturally grew the " Lay of the 
 Last ]\Iinsti-el,"— the first of Scott's important poeins, with wliich hLs 
 career of ijroliGe and prosperous authorshij) began. It is a ])(jcni wliicli 
 waa due, like " Cowper's Task," to a woman's suggestion. I am very 
 
 II
 
 NIOUT-RIUE OF WILLIAM OF DELOEAINE. 251 
 
 much d!S|K)s('(l to rank it first in merit as well as time of Scott's poetical 
 productions. (Jcrtaiidy it at once presented tlie prominent traits of his 
 cliuracler as a poet. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Manniou," 
 and the " Lady of the Lake," all won a speedy and wide popularity. 
 There was an animation about them which gave to all readers delight ; 
 but after a while it began to be discovered that it was a pleasure not to 
 be sustained at its lirst elevation: the poems did not bear that I'cpeated 
 and repeated rcperusal which the highest order of poetry always admits 
 of. Then people were begging back the fame they had given M^ith sueli 
 open hand. 
 
 This makes it necessary to judge more carefully of the real character 
 of Scott's poetry. Certainly it has no pretensions to be classed with the 
 greatest productions of the art. Admirable as M'cre his pow(>rs, he did 
 not possess that sage and meditative imagination — the rare endowment 
 of " the vision and the faculty divine " — which alone constitutes the in. 
 spiratiou of the greatest poets. But, having taken the true measure of his 
 own strength, that which he attempted he achieved ; and his poems have 
 set him beyond the reach of rivalry as the descriptive bard of a period 
 of history and legend rich in adventure and romance. They are full of 
 the martial spirit which was a predominant passion with him ; and to no 
 one could be more aptly appropriated the Hues of a bard of ancient 
 Greece, — 
 
 If the glory of Iheir days, 
 
 Their strength of arm, their steely war, 
 
 Be the chosen theme of praise, 
 
 Let any score a leap for me afar ; 
 
 And he shall see 
 
 With what a lightsome knee 
 
 My bounding sinew springs ; 
 
 The mighty eagle beats his wings, 
 
 And, lo ! he is beyond the sea. 
 
 The character of Walter Scott's poetry admits of a very specific and 
 express statement. Its chief merit lies in its power of description and 
 narrative. Beyond this it does not pass into the region of the deejt 
 ])assions of human nature. He is the descriptive poet of the manners 
 and society of some former ages. Numerous passages of the most vivid 
 description might be cited. One may be mentioned, — as iine a piece of 
 descriptive poetry of its kind as could be found in the whole range of 
 poetry : — the night-ride of William of Deloraiue to Melrose Abbey, in tlu; 
 •' Lay of the Last Minstrel." It is something of a risk to break th<; 
 continued flow of the passage ; but I must venture one or two fragments 
 uf it :—
 
 l-yl LECTUEE ELEVENTH. 
 
 " Uncli;illenged thence, past Deloraine 
 To ancient Riddel's fair domain, 
 
 Where Aill, from mountains freed, 
 Down from the lakes did raving come. 
 Each wave was crested with tawny foam 
 
 Like the mane of a chestnut steed. 
 In vain ; no torrent deep or broad 
 Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road ; 
 At the first plunge the horse sunk low. 
 And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow ; 
 Above the foaming tide, I ween, 
 Scarce half the charger's neck was seen, 
 For he was barded from counter to tail, 
 And the rider was arm'd complete in mail ; 
 Never heavier man and horse 
 Stcmm'd a midnight torrent's force. 
 The warrior's verj' plume, I say, 
 Was daggled by the dashing spray ; 
 Yet, through good heart and our Ladye's grace, 
 At length he gain'd the landing-place " 
 
 The midnight opening of the grave of the wizard, Michael Scott, is 
 riven witli line effect : — - 
 
 " Full many a scutcheon and banner riven 
 Shook to the cold night-wind of heaven, 
 Around the screened altar's pale ; 
 And there the dying lamps did burn 
 Before thy low and lonely urn, 
 
 gallant chief of Otterburne, 
 
 And thine, dark Knight of Liddesdale I 
 0, fading honours of the dead ! 
 O, high ambition lowly laid ! 
 
 ♦ » « * 
 
 An iron bar the warrior took, 
 
 And the monk made a sign with his wither'd hand 
 The grave's huge portal to expand. 
 With beating heart to the task he went ; 
 His sinewy frame, o'er the gravestone bent. 
 With bar of iron heaved amain. 
 Till the toil-drops fell from his brow like rain. 
 It wiis by dint of p;issing strength 
 That he moved tlie massy stone at length. 
 
 1 would you had been there to see 
 How the light broke fortli so gloriously, 
 Stream'd upward to the chancel roof. 
 And, through the galleries, far aloof, 
 
 « • • « 
 
 And, issuing from the tomb,
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE FKEKCK EEVOLUTIOir. 253 
 
 Show'd the monk's cowl and visage pale, 
 Danced on the dark-brow'd warrior's mail. 
 
 And kiss'd his waving plume. 
 Before their eyes the wizard lay 
 As if he had not been dead a day. 
 * * * * 
 
 ' Now, speed thee what thou hast to do, 
 Or, warrior, we may dearly rue ; 
 For those thou maycst not look upon 
 Are gathering fast round the yawning stone ! ' 
 Then Deloraine, in terror, took 
 From the cold hand the mighty book, 
 AVith iron clasp'd and with iron bound ; 
 He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown'd : 
 But the glare of the sepulchral light 
 Perchance had dazzled the warrior's sight." 
 
 The escape of the soldier from the supernatural spot into the fresh 
 moniing air fitly closes the description -. — 
 
 " The knight brcath'd free in the morning wind. 
 And strove his hardihood to find. 
 He was glad when he pass'd the tombstones grey 
 Which girdled round the fair Abbaye ! 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Full fain was he when the dawn of day 
 
 Began to brighten Cheviot grey ; 
 
 He joy'd to see the cheerful light, 
 
 And he said Ave Mary as well as he might." 
 
 Scott's second poem showed another influence at work upon his mind. 
 Although just entering mauliood when Europe was startled by the out- 
 break of the French Revolution, he appears not to have been much 
 affected by that great conviJsion. With the times that succeeded it 
 was widely different. 
 
 The mighty military genius of Buonaparte was sweeping in every 
 direction with the swiftness of a destroying wind. In evei-y quarter of 
 Europe — to borrow a figurative illustration from a usage in times of 
 danger in ancient Greece — might be seen on the walls of the towns the 
 signal of torches waved in tumultuous consternation. It is an interest- 
 ing fact in Scott's history that his authorship began when the military 
 fervour was at its height. Napoleon's meditated invasion of Great 
 Britain was stirring the latent energies of tlie nation. Among his own 
 countrymen Scott saw the ancient martini spirit of their ancestors — tlie 
 decline of which he had mourned over — reanimated, and, like the spectre 
 of the elder Hamlet, bursting its cerements and starting from the tomb 
 in arms. Edinburgh was converted into a camp ; citizens of all classes
 
 254 LECTUKE ELEYEXTH. 
 
 v'oiT the milif ary dress, and upwards of ten thousaud volunteers were 
 constantly under arms, and bcaeon-lircs were kept in readiness idong 
 the coast and through the mountains. In all this Scott took a large and 
 active part. The zeal with which he shared in the military movements 
 of his countrymen suggested to him afterwards that spirited chapter at 
 the close of "The Antiquary," describing the. false alarm from the 
 mistaken firing of one of the beacons. The notes added to that fine 
 novel, after the lapse of many years, si ill manifest the same deep feel- 
 ings in recording some iulerestiug recollections of that agitating 
 period : — 
 
 "Through the border counlicsthe alarm spread witli rapidity ; and 
 on no occasion, when that country Avas the scene of perpetual and un- 
 ceasing war, was the summons to arms more rapidly obeyed. In Berwick- 
 shire, Roxburghshire, and Selkirkshire, the volunteers and militia got 
 under arms with a degree of rapidity and alacrity which, considering the 
 distance individuals lived from each other, had something in it very 
 surprising : they poui'cd to the alarm-posts on the sea-coast in a state so 
 well armed and so completely appointed, vrith baggage, provisions, &c., 
 as was accounted by the best military judges to render them fit for 
 
 instant and effectual service Two members of the Selkirkshire 
 
 yeomanry chanced to be absent from their homes and in Edinburgh on 
 private business, when that corps made a remarkable march. The lately- 
 married wife of one of these gentlemen, and the widowed mother of the 
 ofjier, sent the arms, uniforms, and chargers of the two troopers, that 
 they might join their companions at Dalkeith. The author was very 
 much struck by the answer made to him by the last-mentioned lady, 
 when he paid her some compliment on the readiness which she showed 
 in equipping her son with the means of meeting danger, when she might 
 luive left him a fair excuse for remaining absent. ' Sir,' she replied, 
 with the spirit of a Roman matron, 'none can know better than you 
 that my son is the only proj) by wliieli, since his father's death, our 
 family is supported. But 1 would rather see him dead on that heai-th 
 Than hear he had been a horse's length behind his companions in the 
 defence of liis king and country.' The writer mentions what wjus 
 immediately under his own eye and within his own knowledge ; but the 
 spirit was universal, wherever the alarm reached, both in Scotland aiut 
 England." * 
 
 This was the period of tlie eompo^'^ilion of " ^Vlarmion." Many of (he 
 most energetic descriptions were conceived while he was in quarters 
 with the cavalry; and it was his delight-, wliilc composing, to walk his 
 * Notes to " The Anfi(jii;ii-y."
 
 MAKMIO^r. 255 
 
 pcwcrful steed up and down upon the Porto Bello sands, within the 
 htatincf of tlie surge, and now .and tlien plun^nng in his spurs, to go off 
 its at the charge, with the spray dashing about hiin. This was the hot 
 (iiihusiasni of a soldier-poet ; and the fruit of it was the most stirring 
 description of a battle that ever was realized by a poet's imagination 
 to tlie imagination of his reader. The passage is too well known for me 
 to quote from ; but observe the admii-able representation in these four 
 (It five lines of the approach of the Scottish army : — 
 
 " Nor martial shout nor minstrel tone 
 
 Annoimeed their march : their tread alone. 
 At times one warning trumiiet blown, 
 
 At times a stifled hum, 
 Told England, i'rom his mountain-throne 
 
 King James did rushing come ! " 
 
 But the single stroke of description which, more than any other, shows 
 Scott's mastery in this department of poetry, is that vivid appeal to the 
 imagination in the first intimation of Marmion's fate. As a matter of 
 fact, nothing is told of him ; as a matter of imagination, everything is 
 tokl in the lines, — 
 
 " Fast as shaft can fly, ^ 
 
 Bloodshot his eyes, his nostrils spread, 
 The loose rein dangling from his heiiil, 
 Housing and saddle bloody red, 
 Lord Marniiou's steed rusli'd by." 
 
 In noticing the martial tone of Scott's poetry, I am reminded of a 
 tribute paid to one of his poems which is one of the finest acknowledg- 
 ments on record to the power of verse. Wlun the " Lady of the Lake " 
 was published, Scott's friend, Captain Adain Ferguson, was serving in 
 the Peninsular War. When a copy of the poem reached him, he was 
 posted on a point of ground somewhere on the lines of Torres Vedras, 
 exposed to the enemy's artillery. " Tiie men were ordered to lie prostrate 
 on the ground. While they kept that attitude, the captain, kneeling at 
 their head, read aloud the description of the battle in the sixth canto, and 
 the listening soldiers interrupting him only l)y a joycms huzza whenever 
 the Preneh shot struck the banks close above them." 
 
 Was ever poem recited under such circumstances ? — enough of danger 
 for pleasui-ablc excitement, with enougli of security for attention. 
 
 What a subject for the painter, — i'or Wilkie, for instance, a friend both 
 of Scott and Ferguson, familiar, too, as he chances to be, both with 
 Scottish character and Spanish landscape. The Highlanders, not unused
 
 2o0 LECTUEE ELEVEXXn. 
 
 to a minstrelsy, grouping around the reader, interchanging looks of sym- 
 pathy and deliglit; the sturdy soldier casting off a tear, half angry at 
 his inability to check the proverbial sympathy of a mountaineer at the 
 mention of his distant home, the hiUs and the lakes of Scotland brought 
 before him by the poet's question, — 
 
 " Where shall he fiud, in foreign land, 
 So lone a lake, so sweet a strand ? " 
 
 Some one, perhaps, waving his arm at the same time with a lialf-uttered 
 huzza, as the shot from the enemy's battery scatter the broken branches 
 of the olive-tree over the group ; others, more impetuous, starting from 
 theii' recumbent postm-e as the array of Scottish standards is called up 
 by these Hues : — 
 
 " Is it the thunder's solemn sound 
 
 That mutters deep and dread ? 
 Or echoes from the groaning ground 
 
 The warrior's measured tread ? 
 Is it the lightning's quivering glance 
 
 That on the thicket streams ? 
 Or do they Hash on spear and lance 
 
 The sun's retiring beams ? 
 I see the dagger-crest of Mar, 
 
 1 see the Moray's silver star 
 Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war 
 
 That up the lake comes winding fiir. 
 To hero bound for battle-strife, 
 
 Or bard of martial lay, 
 'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, — 
 
 A glance at th.it array ! " 
 
 After the " Lady of the Lake," Scott found his popularity waning, 
 and perhaps his poetic resources exhausted ; for he was not a man to 
 recognise a poet's solemn responsibility of cultivating Jiis imagination 
 by laborious meditation. The power lie had employed witli sucli brilliant 
 success never left him. He was the minstrel still, even in his later 
 years, when calamities weighed licavily upon him. On one occasion, 
 amid his commercial difficulties, lie chanced to be reading the historical 
 account of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee's, leaving Edinburgh, in 16SS, 
 and making a last and dying cflbrt to rally the Highlanders in support 
 of the house of Stuart. It inspired the animated stanzas of " Bonny 
 Dundee." " I know not," he wrote in his diary, " what could have in- 
 duced me to take a frisk so uncommon of late as to write verses. I suj)-
 
 BONNY DUNDEE. 257 
 
 pose the same impulse that makes the birds siug after the storm is blown 
 over" 
 
 " To the Lords of Convention 't was Claver'se who spoke ; — 
 ' Ere the king's crown shall fall, there are crowns to be broke ; 
 So let each cavalier who loves honour and me, 
 Come follow the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! ' 
 
 Come, fill up my cup ; come, fill up my can ; 
 
 Come, saddle your horses and call up your men ; 
 
 Come, open the west port and let me gang free. 
 
 And it 's room for the bonnets of bonny Dundee ! 
 
 " Dundee he is mounted and rides up the street, 
 The bells are rung backwards, the drums they are beat, 
 But the provost, douce man, said ' Just e'en let him be ; 
 The gude town is well quit of that deil of Dundee ! ' 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 " As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, 
 Ilk carline was living and shaking her pow ; 
 But the young plants of grace they look'd couthie and sice. 
 Thinking ' Luck to thy bonnet, thou bonny Dundee ! ' 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " With sour-featured Whigs the Grass-market was cramm'd. 
 As if half the West had set tryst to be hang'd ; 
 There was spite in each look, there was fear in each ee. 
 As they watch'd for the bonnets of bonny Dundee! 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " The cowls of Kilmarnock had spits and had spears, 
 And lang-hafted gullies to kill cavaliers ; 
 But they shrunk to close heads, and the causeway was free 
 At the toss of the bonnet of bonny Dundee I 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " He spurr'd to the foot of the proud castle-rock. 
 And with the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke : — 
 ' Let Mons Meg and her marrows speak twa words or three, 
 For the love of the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! ' 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " The Gordon demands of him which way he goes : 
 ' Where'er shall direct me the shade of Montrose ! 
 Your Grace in short space shall hear tidings of me, 
 Or that low lies the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " ' There are hills beyond Pentland, and lands beyond Forth; 
 If there's lords in the Lowlands, there 's chiefs in the North : 
 'rticre are wild Dunnics wassals three thousand times three 
 AVill cry ' hoif/h ' for the bonnets of bonny Dundee ! 
 
 Come, till up my cup, &c. 
 8
 
 258 LKCTURE ELEA'ENTII. 
 
 " ' There's brass on the target of barkcn'd bull-hide ; 
 There 's steel in the scabbard that dangles beside ; 
 The brass shall be burnish'd, the steel shall iiash free, 
 At a toss of the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " ' Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks, 
 Ere I own a usurper I '11 couch with the fox : 
 And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee : 
 You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me ! ' 
 
 Come, fill up my cup, &c. 
 
 " He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown, 
 The kettle-drums clash'd, and the horsemen rode on. 
 Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee 
 Died away the wild war-notes of bonny Dundee ! 
 
 Come, fill up my cup ; come, fill up my can ; 
 
 Come, saddle the horses ; come, call up the men ; 
 
 Come, open your gates, and let me go free. 
 
 For it 's up with the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! ' 
 
 It is curious to observe how, when beneath their enormous loail 
 Scott's mind began to fail, his memory clung to the ancient minstrelsy, 
 riUhough it lost its hold of some of his own compositions. On hearing 
 tJie verses from "The Pirate," set to music, — 
 
 " Farewell ! farewell ! The voice you hear 
 Has left its last soft tone with you ; 
 Its next must join the seaward cheer. 
 
 And shout among the shouting crew ! " — 
 he said, " Capital words ! Whose are they ? Eyron's, I suppose." But, 
 on visiting the ruined castle of Douglas, he repeated his favourite of the 
 old ballads, — " The Battle of Ottcrburnc ; " and the closing stanza left 
 liim in tears : — 
 
 " ' My wound is deep ; I fain would sleep ; 
 Take thou the vanguard of the three. 
 And hide me beneath the bracken-bush 
 
 That grows on yonder lily lee,' 
 This deed was done at the Otterburne 
 
 About the dawning of the day : 
 Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken-bush. 
 And the Percy led captive away." 
 A more striking proof of the tenacity to the strains which had been 
 familiarized to his ear in childhood occurred on liis hopeless pilgrimage 
 to Italy. There were pointed out to him the Lake of Avemus, the 
 Temple of Apollo, the Lucrine Lake, Baite, Miscnum, and the surround- 
 ing monuments : and what was the reply ? Tiie fragment of a Jacobite 
 ditty. "1 found," says his companion, "that something in the place
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO ITALT. 259 
 
 had inspired recollections of his own beloved country and the Stuarts ; 
 for he immediately repeated, with a graA^e tone and with great em- 
 phasis, — 
 
 ' Up the craggy mountain and down the mossy glen, 
 We canna gang a milking for Charlie and his men.' 
 
 I coidd not help smiling at this strange commentary on my dissertation 
 <m the Lake of Avernus." 
 
 There are many traits of Scott's character as a man, — especially iu 
 his calamitous years, — many as a writer, the notice of which does not 
 belong to this course of lectures. It is, however, not inappropriate that 
 the existence of the last and the greatest of the Border ^linstrels closed 
 in the centre of that region which his genius has peopled with spiritual 
 creations, and not far away from that spot where his young imagination 
 was early fed with the traditions of Scottish song. 
 
 s 2
 
 LECTUEE XII. 
 
 Colcribgt. 
 
 AUVANTAGj; OF CONNECTING CRITICAL WITH HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS— SPEN- 
 SER AND HIS AGE-SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION— CONTRAST BETWEEN 
 THE AMERICAN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS — ITS INFLUENCE OVER 
 THOUGHT AND ACTION— COLERIDGE'S "FR;U>fCE"— NATURE OF LYRICAL FOKTRV 
 — EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF COLERIDGE'S GENIUS — HIS PHILOSOPHY — HIS 
 CRITICAL PAPERS— HIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS OWN POETICAL ENDOWMENT- 
 HIS BOYHOOD AT CHRIST'S CHURCH HOSPITAI^MONODY ON CHATTERTON— HIS 
 LOVE OF NATURE— ODE ON DEJECTION- TRANSLATIONS OF SCHILLER'S TRAGE- 
 DIES— " THE ANCIENT MARINER" — "CHRISTABEL" — ITS METRICAL REAUTY — 
 HIS EPITAPH. 
 
 IN tracing the progress of English poetry from its early eras, I have 
 sought in this course of lectures so to connect critical with historical 
 considerations as 1o give, I trust, some assistance in forming an idea of 
 the intellectual and moral altitude of each of the illustrious poets whose 
 characters we have been contemplating. Tliis has been attempted 
 under a conviction that it was part of the duty whicli is resting upon 
 me ; for I regarded the process as weU. nigh essential to a true apprecia- 
 tion of the genius of the poets. How, for instance, could there be a 
 just, or at least an adequate, sense of the glory of that matchless allegory, 
 •' The Fairy Queen," if the student M^ere not drawn to some knowledge 
 of the age in which Spenser flourished ? — if I may apply such a woi-d to 
 a life closing early and in neglect and sorrow. Extraneous as history 
 is to literature, it is the framework which is important to give due effect 
 to the portraiture of men who have earned distinction in the annals of 
 letters. It is thus that the proportions and colours are better realized. 
 Eancy, for one moment, some one perusing the wonderful poem just 
 alluded to, — that majestic fragment of Spenser's imagination ; fancy it 
 read with some confused and false notion that it was a production of the 
 times of Charles II., — that detested and ()])probrious period of English 
 history, which all the language of loathing I could heap upon it was not 
 strong enough to stigmati'/,e : and what a feeling of incongruity would 
 come over the reader as he found himself following the spotless moral 
 poet tlirough the limitless land of Fairy ! The poet, thus ignorantly 
 misplaced, would seem as if he had alii^'litcd upon tiic wrong jjlanct.
 
 Sl'IRTT OF THE FniCNClI REVOLUTION. 201 
 
 JRiit when yon appropriate Spenser to his owv. age, — Ihat thoughtful and 
 adventurous age, philosophical and chivalrous, of whose representative 
 men it might be said, as it was said of one of them, that they were so 
 contemplative you could not believe them active, and so active you could 
 not believe them contemplative : — place the poet, I say, in that age, and 
 how true, how natural, is liis position, and what a light is reflected on 
 the character of his inspirations! Or, again, how almost inexplicable 
 would be the {)roduction of tlie " Paradise Lost " in a generation \m- 
 worthy of it, did we not consider the mighty ordeal through whicli 
 Milton's mind had been passing in the times of the Commonwealth and 
 the Protectorate ! and how inadequately would the reader judge of the 
 poetry of Pope, did he not remember the characteristics of those times, 
 an age peculiarly of wits and freethinkers ! Poetic inspiration is, in- 
 deed, one light, for it is light derived from heaven ; but, like the starlight, 
 it has its many magnitudes, its various phases in the cloudless ether or in 
 the haze of the horizon. 
 
 " The stars preeminent in niagiiitude, 
 Anil they that from the zenith dart their beams, 
 Visible though they be to half the earth, 
 \ Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness, 
 
 Are yet of no diviner origin, 
 No purer essence, than the one that burns 
 Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge 
 Of some dark mountain, or than those which seem 
 Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps, 
 Among the branches of the leafless trees : 
 All are the undying offspring of one Sire." 
 
 It has been my aim to show the poetry of each age shining in its own 
 region of time and its own atmosplicre ; but, on bringing the course 
 down to what may be considered contemporary literature, there is less 
 occasion for historical illustration. One influence, however, requires to 
 be noticed. I refer to the general agitation of Europe consequent to 
 the French Revolution. The closing years of the last century were years 
 of change. Things which had endured for ages were perishing, not by 
 slow gradations of decay, but by quick and unlooked-for violence. Time- 
 honoured institutions were not suffered to attain the limit of their 
 natural existence and then to sink under the gradual accumulation of 
 years, but were swiftly swept away by a new force. The clenched hand 
 of prescriptive tyranny was forced to quit its grasp ; and, more than 
 that, if it had been the fond tradition;!', belief of other generations that 
 " Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king," —
 
 2()2 LECTURE TWi;i;¥TlI. 
 
 it. ^vas found that tlie outpoured blood from the severed neck of an 
 anointed king could wash the balm from oif his brow. Tlie people in 
 one of the central monarchies of Europe had suddenly started uj), and, 
 casting away respect to grey-haired prerogative, boldly questioned the 
 authority of the power which so long had trampled on them. Men began 
 to ask why the bounties of heaven should be accumulated, reserved, and 
 wasted for the bloated and ingrate luxury of the few, while the many 
 were pining, hungry and heart-stricken. The sympathies of Christendom 
 viere enlisted : the pulse of other nations began to beat quicker. The 
 French Eevolution assumed the aspect of a general European revolution. 
 Ancient opinions and rules of life were abandoned, and new modes of 
 thought and feeling began to predominate. The political revolution be- 
 came an intellectual and moral one ; for so entire was the subversion of 
 old institutions, that in reconstructing society men were of necessity led 
 to speculate on its very elements and on the principles and destiny of 
 human natui'e, — speculations which, from a revolutionary forsaking of 
 The old paths, unhappily fostered a self-sufficient and faithless philosophy. 
 And here let me notice where seems to me to lie the important difi'crence 
 between the French Revolution and the great British and American 
 iievolutions, besides the difference in tlie genius and temperament of the 
 two nations. In the latter the struggle was to vindicate and secure old 
 jtrinciples ; to guard the Constitution; not to manufacture new schemes 
 of government ; to save the good old cause, as it was styled. lu the 
 American Revolution, for instance, the war was in truth a mighty consti- 
 tutional dispute. It was a question of law ; and the claim of our fathers 
 was simply for old British rights, — rights as ancient as the Great 
 Cliarter; and it was this that made them so strong, so consistent, so 
 indomitable. They were seeking nothing new — at first, not even in- 
 dependence, which was not aspired to till it became an indispensable 
 means for the security of tlieir end, — civic freedom. Indeed, the mother- 
 country had thrust her children away from her, and, ridding herself of a 
 ])avent's responsibility, had given them many of the privileges of raan- 
 liood. When afterwards she wished to call them back again to her lap, 
 they were too stout to come there, and they claimed to be British men, 
 entitled to ancient British rights. The Revolution was characterized 
 by the composure of men acting with a consciousness of having the right 
 with them. How free from all excess and licentiousness ! how pure, 
 in the memory of after-times, alike from reproach and regret ! It was a 
 strife actuated and impregnated with a spirit of magnanimity, — a sense 
 of duty and law — of religious responsibility. I si)eak of the American 
 Revolution only for the sake of the contrast m ith that of France, which
 
 SPIRIT OF THE TRENCn RETOLUTIOK. 2G3 
 
 was much more stimulant to the minds of men, and, consequently, to 
 literature. The Trench Revolution was no contest of the Constitution 
 or of law, for both were swept away, and everything was to be re- 
 modelled, — in fact, made anew. New creeds of liberty were taught, new 
 doctrines of the rights of man ; the human heart Mas anatomized ; 
 Christianity, with its blessed day of sanctity and rest, sacred from the 
 creation, was banished to make way for a sensual, brutalizing philosophy, 
 with its tenth-day Sabbaths and its idolatry of human reason. Theories 
 of ecclesiastical, political, and social regeneration were propagated with 
 apostolic zeal to all lands, — doctrines which cast a cloud on the glitter- 
 ing spire of every village church, which made the husbandman tremble 
 in the tenure of his little property of a few acres, — a patrimony, perhajjs, 
 and an ancient homestead from one generation after another, — and 
 which struck dismay where the domestic virtues were grouped at the 
 once secure and hapjiy fireside. It was a commotion of the very primal 
 elements of society. The scene was a new one — suddenly a new one — 
 in the drama of civilization : the power of strange rights was thrust 
 into the hands of men ; the weight of strange duties was harnessed 
 on their backs. Ancient landmarks covered with the moss of a long 
 tract of years were torn up ; and thus it became necessary alike for those 
 who hailed and those who abhorred the change to acquaint themselves 
 with the power, the will, and the destiny of man. The guidance of 
 principles, drawn not from any customary or conventional authority of 
 constitution or law, but from the depths of human nature, was needed. 
 Men, long accustomed to float on the placid waters of a river within sight 
 and reach of safe and smiling shores, found themselves suddenly driven 
 out upon a stormy and shoreless sea; and in their peril some were 
 earnestly gazing for a beacon-light from the lost shore, some were idly 
 gazing at the flashing fires which crest the dark billows of the decj), and a 
 few were looking upward hopefully for a licaven-lit ray from some star 
 in the clouded sky. To express myself less imagiuativcly, the agitation 
 of the Trench Revolution forced men, whether the political and social 
 changes were congenial to them or not, into deeper moods of thought 
 and fiu-ther-reachiug sentiments. Absolute authority had lost its suffi- 
 ciency. With so wide-spread a spirit of freedom, too often miserably 
 degenerating into lieentiousuess, suijcrficial precepts, whether in govern- 
 ment, philosophy, or literature, were not enough. The influence, cither 
 direct or indirect, of that convulsion was far extended over all depart- 
 ments of thought and action. No such agency is to be attributed to the 
 American Revolution, which was achieved so much less tumultuously, so 
 much more hajDpily — more lastingly. There was no such turmoil, such
 
 20 i LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 heaving of the very- earth by the agitation of the deep-seated clemcots of 
 goveinment and of society. It was comparatively a tranquil process, for 
 it was a revolution that always kept the law on its side. Observe the 
 different effect of the two revolutions upon a mind like Burke's. 
 When the British colonial contest arose, it called from him his states- 
 manly speeches on taxation and conciliation ; but these were only parlia- 
 mentary arguments upon questions of the Constitution and law and 
 policy. When the Trench l-{evolution came on, a discussion more pro- 
 found was demanded ; and Burke, feeling that the crisis called for some- 
 thing more than even a statesman's argument, gave to the world his 
 celebrated " Beflections," which are the expressions of philosophy scan- 
 ning the fundamental principles of political society, the texture of social 
 life, and the universal elements of human nature. 
 
 I have dwelt on this subject much more than I intended, and more 
 perhaps than even the discursive character of lectui-es will quite justify, 
 because I have been often impressed with the thought that there are few 
 topics of more vital interest to the American mind than to understand 
 and appreciate the essential differences between the American and French 
 Bevolutions. There is a moral gulf between them as wide as the 
 Atlantic, as might be shown on a fitting occasion. My present purpose, 
 however, is with the Bevolution of France, and with it an account of irs 
 influence on European literature, and especially on English poetry. I 
 have been reminded of this influence on approaching the poetry of 
 Samuel Taylor Colei'idge. Upon his genius it was powerful ; for, hoping 
 impetuously of human nature, he was an enthusiast in the cause of 
 freedom. It was by the intense interest and impassioned zeal tlius in- 
 spired that his powers were chiefly called into action. In dedicating 
 some of his poems to his brother, he recalls the time 
 
 " When with joy of hope thou gav'st thine ear 
 To my wild firstling lays. Since then my song, 
 Hath sonnded deeper notes, such as beseem 
 Or that sad wisdom folly leaves behind, 
 Or such as, tuned to these tumultuous times, 
 Cope with the tempest's swell ! 
 
 These various strains, 
 Which I have framed in many a various mood, 
 Accept, my brother ! and (for some perchance 
 Will strike discordant on thy milder mind). 
 If aught of error or intemperate truth 
 Should meet thine ear. think thou that riper age 
 Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it! " 
 
 Coleridge's enthusiasm in the promise of the French Bevolution was
 
 ODK OK franct;. 2G5 
 
 in no way hurtfnl to tlu; moral tone of his genius. Miserably as the 
 hope was fnistrated, when tyranny and eruelty were busy in disguise 
 and the word "revolution" began to acquire a fearfvd meaning, the 
 poet's spirit repudiated the adulterous cause, but cherished with as 
 strong a fervour the love of freedom. These feelings form the theme of 
 one of his odes, — that entitled " France," which is said to have been 
 pronounced by Shelley the finest English ode of modern times. This 
 opinion is rather too strong a one ; but certainly the finest specimens of 
 the higlier order of English lyrical poetry have been produced by the 
 poets of our own times. I know of none to be mentioned in the same 
 range of the same department of poetry, unless it be Milton's " Ode on 
 the Nativity," and some of the odes of CoUius and Gray. Under the 
 title of lyrical poetry are included the song, the ballad, the elegy, the 
 hymn, and, above all, the ode, which especially calls for the poet's power 
 and his temperament, with the best mastery over the metrical music of 
 the language and knowledge of the subtle laws of harmony. It was 
 lyrical poetry which, as the name indicates, was once considered that 
 species of verse composed with an adaptation to musical accompaniments. 
 It was well said by Charles Lamb that Milton almost requires a solemn 
 service of nmsic to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings 
 his music, to which who listens had need bring docile thoughts and 
 purged ears. The observation has recurred to my miud in turning to 
 the subject of lyrical poetry ; for it seems to me that, in reading any 
 great ode, something of the preparation that music gives to the im- 
 agination and feelings is wanted to set us in right tune, as it were, for 
 the articulate cadences. There is no more varied metrical construction 
 than that which the true lyrical poets adopt as the fit expression for 
 the ebb and flow of the imaginative passion. This ode of Coleridge's 
 embodies in a ime poetic shape the best emotions inspired by those 
 momentous years of European history. The lofty opening invocation of 
 the elements, the first flush of enthusiasm for the French cause, tht; 
 sorrow for England's adversity to it, ihc clinging to the catise in spite 
 of the first misgivings, the recantation and the plea for forgiveness 
 when the cause proved an unworthy one, France assailing freedom in 
 her ancient mountain-home of Switzerland, and (he fine close of the ode, 
 closing, as it began, by rising above the strife of nations and the false- 
 hood of mankind to the tokens of liberty in the elements, the " guide of 
 homeless -wands and playmate of the waves," — all these passages go far 
 to sustain the high eulogy pronounced by Shelley. 
 
 " Ye clouds ' that far above me float and pause, 
 Whose patlik'ss march no mortal may control !
 
 266 LECTURE TWELFTir. 
 
 Ye ocean waves ! that, wheresoe'er yo roll, 
 Yield homage only to eternal laws ! 
 Ye woods ! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 
 Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, 
 Save when your own imperious branches, swinging, 
 Have made a solemn music of the wind ! 
 Where, like a man beloved of God, 
 Through glooms which never woodman trod, 
 
 How oft, pursuing fancies holy. 
 My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, 
 
 Inspired beyond the guess of folly 
 By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound ! 
 
 ye loud waves ! and O j'e forests high ! 
 And ye clouds that far above me soar'd ! 
 Thou rising sun ! Thou blue rejoicing sky ! 
 Yea, everything that is and will be free ! 
 Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be. 
 With what deep worship I have still adored 
 
 The spirit of diviuest Liberty. 
 
 " When France in wrath her giant limbs uprear'd, 
 And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, 
 Stamp'd her strong foot, and said she would bo free, 
 Bear witness for mc how I hoped and fear'd, 
 With what a joy my lofty gratulation 
 Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band ; 
 And when, to whelm the disenchanted nation, 
 Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, 
 
 The monarchs march'd in evil day, 
 
 And Britain join 'd the diro array, 
 
 Though dear her shores and circling ocean. 
 Though many friendships, many youthful loves, 
 
 Had swolnthe patriot emotion. 
 And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves, 
 Yet still my voice, nnalter'd, sang defeat 
 To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance. 
 And shame too long delay'd and vain retreat ! 
 For ne'er, O Lilxrty, with jiartial aim 
 
 1 dimm'd thy light, or damjj'd thy holy flame. 
 But bless'd the picans of deliver'd Franco, 
 
 And hung my head, and wept, at Britain's name. 
 
 " ' And what,' I said, ' though Blasphemy's loud scream 
 With that sweet music of deliverance strove ? 
 Though all the tierce and drunken passions wove 
 A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream ? 
 Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, 
 'i'he sun was rising, though he hid his light ! '
 
 ODE ON FRANCE. 26" 
 
 And when, to soothe nij- soul, that lioped and trembled, 
 The dissonance ceased, and all seem'd calm and bright, — 
 AVhen France her front, decp-scarr'd and gory, 
 Conccal'd with clustering wreaths of glor}', — 
 
 When, insupportably advancing. 
 Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp, — 
 While, timid looks of fury glancing, 
 Domestic treason, crush'd beneath her fatal stamp, 
 Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore, — 
 Then I rcproach'd my fears that would not flee ; 
 ' And soon,' 1 said, ' shall Wisdom teach her lore 
 In the low huts of them that toil and groan, 
 And, conquering by her happiness alone. 
 Shall France compel the nations to be free. 
 Till Love and Joy look round and call the earth their own.' 
 
 " Forgive me. Freedom ! Oh, forgive those dreams ! 
 I hear thy voice ; I hear thy loud lament 
 From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent ; 
 1 hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams. 
 Heroes that for your peaceful countrj- perish'd. 
 And ye that fleeing spot your mountain-snows 
 With bleeding wounds, forgive me, that 1 cherish'd 
 One thought that ever bless'd your cruel foes ! 
 
 To scatter rage and traitorous guilt 
 Whci-e Peace her jealous home had built ; 
 
 A patriot race to disinherit 
 Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear, 
 
 And with inexpiable spirit 
 To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer. 
 O France, that mockest heaven, adulterous, blind, 
 And patriot only in pernicious toils. 
 Are these thy boasts. Champion of human kind ? — 
 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway. 
 Yell in the hunt and share the murderous prey ? 
 To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
 From freemen torn ? to tempt and to betray r 
 
 " The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, 
 Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 
 They burst their manacles, and wear the name 
 Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain ! 
 O Liberty ! With i)rofitless erideavour 
 Have I ])ursued thee m:uiy a weary hour ; 
 But thou nor swcU'st the victor's strain, nor ever 
 Didst breathe thy S(ml in forms of human power, 
 Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee 
 (Not prayer nor boastful name delays thee),
 
 268 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 Alike from Priestcraft's harpj- minions 
 And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves 
 Tliou speedest on thy subtle pinioiis, 
 The guide of homeless winds and playmates of the waves. 
 
 " And there I felt thee ! on that sca-clifT's verge 
 Whose pines, scarce travell'd by the breeze above, 
 Had made one murmur with the distant surge ! 
 Yes ! while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, 
 And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, 
 Possessing all things with intensest love, 
 O Liberty, my spii-it felt thee there." 
 
 In considering the literary influences of the French Kcvohition, and 
 the expression oi' feelings awakened at the time, I have passed over the 
 earlier development of Coleridge's genius. If ever mortal could he said 
 to have been endowed supereminently with genius as distinguished from 
 talents, it was that frail though pure and tender-hearted, aspiring, way- 
 ward being, the poet, the philosopher, Coleridge. He is one of the 
 poets who, like Milton and Cowper and Southey, are honourably known 
 also by their prose writings. Indeed, it will probably be to the philoso- 
 phical works of Coleridge that a deeper gratitude will be due than to 
 his poetry, while whatever popular fame may attach to his memory will 
 be the acquisition of his poems. One spirit, indeed, pervades all his 
 productions ; one intellectual character is stamped upon them all, only 
 modified by the subjects. The great moral element of his genius was a 
 perpetual thirsting after truth, — ideal truth. The most striking traits 
 of his intellectual character- are imaginative powers of wonderful ori- 
 ginality combined with habits of profound meditation. These powers 
 were unhappily under the government of only an undisciplined will, and 
 the movements of his mind were fitful, wayward, and incomplete. His 
 wisdom is scattered in fragments, in rccollectious of his eloquent dis- 
 course, and often in notes written on the margins of books ; and from 
 these various quarters it has been gleaned by tiic dutiful and affectionate 
 hands of his disciples. His life was alllictcd with almost life-long disease, 
 the wretchedness of wliich first drove him to a remedy wliich soon 
 multiplied many-fold his burdens, a suicidal use of opium, — a long-con- 
 tinued habit, at last, however, conquered ; and it has been said by those 
 who best knew him, that his long and passionate struggles and final 
 victory over this infirmity are among the brightest as well as most in- 
 teresting traits of the moral and religious being of this huml)le, this 
 exalted Christian. In his personal -career he enjoyed as little of worldly 
 prosperity as he possessed little of worldly wisdom ; but it resembled 
 poor Cowper's course of lil'cin this: — that one kind I'licnd wa.s raised
 
 coleuidge's piiiLOSoruY. 269 
 
 up after anotlici' aflectionately to shelter and cherish a man who, with 
 all his grasp of intellect, with all his tenderness of feeling, was sadly un- 
 fitted for many of the responsibilities of life. When he placed himself, 
 in the almost-despairing hope of breaking his opium habits, under the 
 care of a physician, being received an inmate in his family, this comiec- 
 tion, beginning in little more than a professional visit, lasted for near 
 twenty years, — in fact, dui'ing the remainder of his life ; for he spent 
 the rest of his years under the roof of his magnanimous friend, his 
 medical adviser. The great purpose to which he conceived that the 
 faculties of his mind were dedicated was his philosophy, an end always 
 in his view, and in his hopes always reached after but never attained, — 
 the reconciliation of philosophy with Christian religion. It was one of 
 his last regrets that his life and strength were not spared to him to com- 
 plete his philosophy. " Eor," said he, " as God hears me, the originating, 
 continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart '^as to exalt the 
 gloiy of his name ; and, which is the same thing in other words, to pro- 
 mote the improvement of mankind." It is not for me now, even if I 
 possessed the ability, to dwell upon the philosophical writings of 
 Coleridge ; and I pass from them, therefore, with this one remark : — 
 that when I recall the many passages adorned with rich and verdant 
 imagery, their enthusiastic, and, as it were, triumphant eloquence, miglity 
 not only in self-communion and a profound reverence for God's written 
 word, but in the long-sustained flow of his sonorous sentences, and all 
 consecrated to the cause of Christianity, thoughts and images and words 
 come across the spirit, not as if from one man, but rather like the waving 
 of the palm-branches and the many -toned voice of an adoring multitude. 
 The prose writings of Coleridge which are more appropriate for me 
 to allude to before resuming the consideration of his poetical character 
 are his critical papers. I know of no English writer who has given his 
 thoughts to the criticism of imaginative literature, combining so much 
 al)ility to the task. It is in the spirit of poetry that poetry must be 
 criticised ; the might of imagination and its laws are best realized and 
 expounded by imagination itself: indeed, the perfect enjoyment of 
 poetry arises only where there is an active sympathy between the imaguia- 
 tion of the poet and the reader. It is the dearth of imaginative energy 
 that makes so much of criticism mere lifeless disquisition. When the 
 l)oets fall into the guardianship of some unimaginative, fancyless critic, 
 he sets them before you like so many caged birds, their eyes dinuned 
 with the loss of their native freedom, and wings drooping or beating 
 against their bars, or even like the stuiTed dead forms in glass cases, 
 instead of pointing to the imagination of the poet resting on some lofty
 
 270 LECTURE TWELlTir. 
 
 perch that nature gives, or " soaring the air," winging its flight athwart 
 the blue sky, " as full of gladness and as free of heaven," and thus a 
 portion of the poet's owoi vision is caught, and, the beholder's 
 
 " Senses gradually wrapt 
 In a half sleep, he '11 dream of better worlds, 
 And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark, 
 That singest like an angel in tlie clouds." 
 
 To the arduous work of poetical criticism Coleridge brought a mind 
 at once poetical and philosophical, — all the original instincts of poetry, 
 creative power with an exquisite sense of the rhythm of language, and 
 deep reflection on the principles of the art. The best criticism on 
 Shakspeare is tliat which Coleridge has left ; for he ''' had," as has been 
 well said, " for understanding the great dramatist the two powers which 
 are scarcely less mighty in our intellectual than in our moral and spiritual 
 Ufe, — faith and love : — a boundless faith in Sliakspeare's trutli, and a 
 love for him akin to that with which philosophers study the works of 
 nature, shrinking from no labour for the sake of getting at a satisfactory 
 solution, and always distrusting themselves until they Lave found one, 
 in a firm confidence that wisdom will infallibly be justified of her 
 children." There is a passage of his prose — a very high-wrought piece 
 of fancy- — in which Coleridge expresses his modest consciousness of his 
 own poetical endowment, and his reverential homage to those whose 
 imagination he contemplated as bearing them on higlier and longer-sus- 
 tained flights. It is a singularly imaginative piece of prose composition, 
 and very characteristic of the author : — 
 
 " I have too clearly before me the idea of a poet's genius to deem my- 
 self other than a very humble poet ; but, in the very possession of the 
 idea, I know myself so far a poet as to feel assured that I can under- 
 stand and interpret a poem in the spirit of poetry and with a poet's 
 spii-it. Like the ostrich, I cannot fly ; yet I have wings that give me 
 the feeling of flight, and, as I sweej) along the plain, can look >ip towards 
 the bird of Jove, and can follow him and say, ' Sovereign of the air, who 
 descendest on thy nest in the cleft of the inaccessible rook, who makest 
 the mountain-pinnacle thy perch and halting-place, and, scanning with 
 steady eye the orb of glory right above thee, imprintest thy lordly talons 
 in the stainless snows that shoot back and scatter round his glittering 
 shafts, I pay thee homage. Thou art my king. I give honour due to 
 the vulture, the falcon, and all thy noble baronage ; and no less to the 
 lowly bird, the skylark, whom thou pcrmittcst to visit thy court and 
 chant her matin song within its cloudy curtains : yea, the linnet, the 
 thrush, the swallow, arc my brethren. But still I am a bird, though
 
 BOYHOOD AT CHRIST CUUKCH HOSPITAL. 271 
 
 but a bird of the earlh. Monarch of our kind, I am a bird even as 
 thou ; and 1 have shod plumes which have added beauty to tlie beautiful 
 and grace to terror, waving over the maiden's brow and on the helmed 
 head of the warrior chief; and majesty to grief, drooping o'er the car 
 of death ! " 
 
 The juvenile poems of Coleridge were remarkably prophetic of his 
 future powers. In fact, his whole character was typified in his youth : 
 the child was indeed the father of the man. The wild imagination, the 
 mastery over metrical melody, the thoughtfulness, the magic powers of 
 discourse, all were there. His schoolmate and lifelong friend, Charles 
 Lamb, recalling the days spent many years before in that famous 
 London school, the noble foundation of good King Edward VI., thus 
 apostrophizes the " inspired charity-boy." " Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 Logician, Metaphysician, Bard : — how often have I seen the casual 
 passer tlirough the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration to 
 hear thee unfold in thy deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of 
 lamblicus or Plotinus, or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, whil(^ 
 the walls of the old Grey -Friars' echoed to the accents of the inspired 
 charity-boy" The day-dreams that filled so large a portion of the vi- 
 sionary Coleridge's existence, — they too began in early life. The story 
 is told of him when quite a child, going down the Strand (a crowded 
 London thoroughfare), he was very earnestly thrusting his hands out, so 
 as to come in contact with a person walking before him, who seized 
 him and accused him of an attempt to pick liis pocket. The little 
 dreamer sobbed out his protestations of innocence, and, to the astonisii- 
 ment of the bystanders, explained how he thought himself Leandtr 
 swimming across the Hellespont. 
 
 I may cite an instance of the early force of Coleridge's imagination 
 from his monody on the death of Chatterton. The wondi'ous career of 
 that young poet, and the melancholy close of it by suicide in boyhood, 
 were then fresh recollections. Nature had beautifully endowed him, 
 and the world by a wicked harshness extinguished all light in a spirit 
 already darkened with somewhat of the gloom of hereditary insanity. 
 This earth was no home for him ; and it is a fine stroke of imagination 
 when Coleridge associates the chance knell from any distant steeple with 
 the mother-voice of nature calling back the young and earth-hapless 
 poet. 
 
 " (111, -whrit a wonder scfins the fear of death, 
 Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep, 
 Bahcs, children, youths, and men. 
 Night following night, for threescore years and ten.
 
 272 LECTUEE TWELETH. 
 
 But doubly strange where life is but a breath 
 To sigh and pant with up Want's rugged steep. 
 ***** 
 " Lo ! by the grave I stand of one foi* whom 
 A prodigal nature and a niggard doom 
 (That all bestowing, this withholding all) 
 Made each chance knell, from distant spire or dome, 
 Sound like a seeking mother's anxious call : — 
 Return, poor child ! home, weary truant, home ! " 
 
 Wheu Coleridge's genius was developing itself, he avowed a high 
 admiration and gratitude to a poet somewhat his senior, though still 
 surviving him, — one whose reputation has never been a general one, the 
 poet Bowles, — perhaps chiefly known by his controversy with Lord 
 Byron on the subject of the poetry of Pope. Coleridge's admiration 
 of Bowles's poems is not to be accounted for by any of that intensity of 
 imagination which w"as eminently his own characteristic, but because 
 he found in them something more real, more true and mauly, than in 
 most of tlie poetry then in fashion, — a combination of uatm-al thoughts 
 with natural diction. I can digress from my main subjects no longer 
 than to give one short specimen of Bowles's poetry, — what strikes me 
 as a well-told recollection of childhood, and what all who have expe- 
 rienced it will recognise as truly recording the impression made on the 
 imagination on the occasion of a first approach to the ocean : — 
 
 " I was a child when first I heard the sound 
 
 Of the Great Sea. 'T was night, and, journeying far, 
 
 We were belated on our road, 'mid scenes 
 
 New and unknown,— a mother and her child. 
 
 Now first in this wide world a wanderer. 
 
 My father came, the pastor of tlie church 
 
 That crowns the high hill-crest above the sea ; — 
 
 When, as the wheels went slow and the still night 
 
 Came down, a low, uueertuin sound was heard, 
 
 Not like the wind. ' Listen ! ' my mother said, 
 
 ' It is the sea .' Listen ! it is the sea ! ' 
 
 "My head was resting on her lap ; I woke; 
 
 I hoard the sound, and closer j)rest her side. 
 
 Much of the sea, in tearful wonderment, 
 
 1 oft had heard, and of the shipwrcck'd man 
 
 Who sees, on some lone isle, day after day. 
 
 The sun sink o'er the solitude of waves. 
 
 Like Crusoe; and the tears would start afresh, 
 
 Whene'er my mother kiss'd my hair and told 
 
 The story of that desolate wild man. 
 
 And how the talking bird, when he return 'd.
 
 COI.lCKIDGi: S LOVE OV NATUP.E. 273 
 
 After long absence, to his forlorn cave, 
 Spoke as in tones of human sympathy, 
 ' Puor Robin Cruaoc,' 
 
 Thoughts like these arose 
 When first I heard at night the distant sound, 
 Old ocean, of thy everlasting voice ! " 
 
 There are no passages of Coleridge's poetry in which the peculiar 
 traits of his genius are more distinct than those of a descriptive cast . 
 He shared that which belongs to all poetic minds, — a genuine and iiu- 
 alfected love of nature. lu the lines of one of his poems, — 
 
 " I know 
 
 That nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure. 
 
 No plot so narrow, be but nature there, 
 
 No waste so vacant, but may well employ 
 
 Each f;\culty of sense, and keep the heart 
 
 Awake to love and beauty ! " 
 
 But the predominant habit of his genius was sclf-commimion, w?.-looking 
 rathei" than o«if-Iooking, so wrapt in meditation as perhaps often to 
 preclude that open submissive susceptibility to impressions from the 
 outward world of sense. Tiiis, however, led him tinely to proclaim that 
 great tenet of the poetic creed, tliat the influences of inanimate nature are 
 dependent on the shaping faculty of imagination : — 
 
 " That outward forms the loftiest still receive 
 Their finer influences from the life within." 
 
 Unhappily, Coleridge did not steadily possess that genial mood of 
 imagination by which the poefs song 
 
 " Should make all miture lovelier, and itself 
 Be loved like nature. 
 
 He tells of this very unhappinoss — tliis morbid torpor of the imagina- 
 tion — in some of the stanzas in his ode on " Dejection -. " — 
 
 " A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
 A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief, 
 "Which finds no natural outlet, no relief 
 In word, or sigh, or tear. 
 O lady, in this wan and heartless mood. 
 To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, 
 All this long eve, so balmy and serene. 
 Have I been gazing on the western sky 
 And its peculiar tint of yellow green. 
 And still I gaze ; and with how blank an eye 1 
 And those thin cloiuls above, in Hakes and bars. 
 That give away their motion to the stars ; 
 T
 
 274 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 Those stars, that gHde behind them or between, 
 
 Now sparkling, now bcdimm'd, but always seen ; 
 
 Yon crescent moon, as fix'd as if it grew 
 
 In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue ; 
 
 I see them all so excellently fair ; 
 
 I see, not feel, how beautiful they are. 
 
 " My genial spirits fail ; 
 
 And what can these avail 
 To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? 
 
 It were a vain endeavour. 
 
 Though I should gaze for ever 
 On that green light that lingers in the west. 
 I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 The passion and the life, whose fountains are within." 
 
 In another strain of the same ode the important imaginative truth is 
 sot forth : — 
 
 " From the soul itself m\ist issue forth 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
 
 Enveloping the earth. 
 And from the soul itself must there be sent 
 A sweet and potent voice of its own birth. 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element." 
 
 When Coleridge's poetry gives forth 
 
 " This light, this glory, this fair, luminous mist, 
 This beautiful and beauty-making power," — 
 
 the purport of his descriptions is to discover " religious musings in 
 the forms of nature." " Let me," he exclaims in an admirable passage 
 of his prose, "digress for a few moments from the written word 
 to another book, likewise a revelation of God, — the great hook of his 
 servant nature. Tliat in its obvious sense and literal interpretation it 
 declares the being and attributes of the Almighty leather none but the 
 fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. But it has been the music of 
 gentle and pious minds in all ages ; it is the poetry of all human nature, 
 to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein corre- 
 spondencies and symbols of the spiritual world." Tiiis disposition to 
 consider the perishable material world as the shadow of an eternal 
 spiritual reality is sublimely expressed in one of his poems, with an 
 allusion perliaps to Plato's hypothesis of the cave wherein we are placed 
 with our backs to the light and behold reflections in its arch : — • 
 
 " What is freedom but the unfetter'duse 
 Of all the powers which God for use had given ? 
 But chiefly this, him first, him last to view
 
 TUE AXCIKNT MAKIXER — CHRTSTABEL. 27t) 
 
 Through meaner powers and secondary things 
 Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his hlaze. 
 For all that meets the bodily sense I deem 
 Symbolical, one mighty aljjhabet 
 For infant minds ; and we in the low world 
 Placed with our backs to bright reality, 
 That we may learn with young unwounded ken 
 The substance from its shadow." 
 
 I pass by Coleridge's dramatic poems and liis remarkable translations 
 of Schiller's tragedies — remarkable as perhaps the only versions of 
 which it was ever said that the translation was even superior to the 
 original — and proceed to the two poems which are most characteristic 
 of the poet's genius, and on which his poetic fame chiefly rests, — " The 
 Ancient Mariner " and " Christabel." These extraordinary poems — 
 neither of them of any great length — are the highest proofs of the 
 <n-iginality of Coleridge's imagination. Their origm is traced by him 
 to some conversations with Wordsworth, turning, as he describes them, 
 on the two cardinal points of poetry, — the power of exciting the sym- 
 pathy of a reader by a faitliful adherence to the truth of nature, and the 
 j)0wer of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colour of im- 
 agination. Tlie sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which 
 moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, 
 appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are 
 the poetry of natui-e. Tlie thought suggested itself that a series of 
 poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, subjects were to 
 be chosen from ordinary life, in the other, the incidents and agents were 
 to be supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to con.sist in 
 interesting the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as 
 would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. The 
 supernatural fell to the share of Coleridge ; and his endeavour, he tells 
 us, was to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a 
 semblauce of truth sufficient to procure for the shadows of imagination 
 that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes 
 poetic faith. This has been accomplished with wonderful skill. Both 
 the poems are essentially, absolutely, imaginative. They are pm-e 
 originals. They are extraordinary manifestations of the magic power of 
 imagination in blending together the natural and supernatural, — spectral 
 creations with emotions of common Immanity. They are the work of a 
 wild and wondrous Avitchery. The veil is rent asunder which separates 
 the mortal bodily life from the ghostly inunaterial life of phantoms, — the 
 world of sense from the world of s])irit. Tlie argumeut of the ^' Ancient 
 
 X 2
 
 27G LKCTUEE TWELFTU. 
 
 Mariner " was originally set forth in these few words : — how a ship, 
 having fli'st sailed to tlie equator, was then driven by storms to the cold 
 country towards the South Pole ; how the ancient mariner cruelly and 
 iu contempt of the laws of hospitality killed a sea-bird ; and how he was 
 followed by many and strange judgments, and in what manner he came 
 back to his own country. 
 
 " It is an ancient mariner ; 
 
 And lie stoppeth one of three : — 
 ' By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, 
 
 Now, wherefore stopp'st thou me ? ' " 
 
 It is a wedding guest that he holds by the fascination of his eye. The 
 seafaring man's escape from supernatural dangers has left him the victim 
 of a mysterious and woeful agony, to be calmed only by travelling from 
 land to land and recounting his fearfid adventures : — 
 
 " Since then, at an uncertain hour 
 
 That agony returns, 
 And till my ghastly talc is told 
 
 This heart within me burns. 
 I pass, like night, from land to land ; 
 
 I have strange power of speech. 
 That moment that his face I see, 
 i know the man that must hear me : 
 
 To him my tale I teach." 
 
 This narrative o]X'ns with the ship passing out from the placid atmo- 
 sphere of actual life, losing sight of the church-steeple, of the highlands, 
 and of tlie light-house. Quicldy struck by the storm-blast, it is borne 
 far away to the soutli and entangled among islands of ice and the ac- 
 cumulated snow of the polar latitudes. In the desperate dang-er there 
 comes an albatross, that huge bird of the Southern seas : it is hailed as 
 a bird of good omen, and a way is found to steer the ship through the 
 ice. The bird follows, alighting on mast or shroud and fed by the 
 grateful crew, but in a wicked and luckless moment is killed by the 
 ancient mariner. His shipmates become parties to his guilt, for, with a 
 fickle superstition, they ascribe thcii- ill-luck to the bird, and justify the 
 wanton death of one of God's mute creatures. The mysterious 
 vengeance begins with the misery of a dead calm jjeneath a^torrid sky : — 
 
 " The fair breeze blew ; the white foam Hew 
 The furrow foUow'd free: 
 V.'c were the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea.
 
 THE ANCIENT MARTXEn. 277 
 
 " Down dropi)"(l the breeze ; the sails dropp'd down ; 
 'T was sad as sad could be : 
 And we did speak only to break 
 The silence of the sea ! 
 
 " All in a hot and copper sky 
 The bloody sun at noon 
 Right up above the mast did stand, 
 No bigger than the moon. 
 
 " Day after day, day after day, 
 
 We stuck : nor breath, nor motion : — 
 As idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean. 
 
 " Water, water, everywhere, 
 
 And all the boards did shrink ; 
 Water, water, everywhere, 
 Nor any di-op to drink." 
 
 The ship lies bccahned a weary time, and the crew have dark assur- 
 ances in their di-eams that invisible fiends are pnrsuing and plaguing: 
 them. At length, afar oif, between them and the sun, there is beheld n. 
 something in the sky, seen at tirst, as a little speck, then a mist, and 
 then the strange skeleton-shape of a spectral bark. As it nears them, 
 hideous figures are discerned upon the deck, and frightful voices and 
 noises are sounding across the waters of the sluggish sea. It vanishes ; 
 but death has struck the crew of the becalmed ship, and the ancient 
 mariner alone is left in the central solitude of a motionless ocean, with 
 dismal haunt ings of remorse and the memory of supernatutal terrors, and 
 with the open-eyed dead lying in groups around liis feet : — 
 
 " The stars were dim, and thick the night ; 
 The steersman's face by liis lamp gleam'd white ; 
 * » * * 
 
 " One after one, by the star-dogg'd moon. 
 Too quick for groan or sigh. 
 Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang 
 And cursed me with his eye ! 
 « * « « 
 
 " Alone, alone, — all, all alone, — 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea; 
 And never a saint took pity on 
 My soul in agony ! 
 
 " The many men, so beautiful ! 
 And they all dead did lie ; 
 And a thousand thousand slimy things i 
 
 Lived on ; and so did I !
 
 278 LECTUIIE TWELFTU. 
 
 " I look'd upon the rotting sea, 
 And drew my eyes away ; 
 I look'd upon the rotting deck, 
 And there the dead men lay ! 
 
 " I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray, 
 But, or ever a prayer had gusht, 
 A wicked whisper came, and made 
 My heart as dry as dust ! 
 
 " I closed my lids and kept them close. 
 
 And the balls like pulses beat ; 
 For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky. 
 Lay like a load on my weary eye, 
 
 And the dead were at my feet. 
 
 " The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 
 
 Nor rot nor reek did they ; ' 
 
 The look with which they look'd on me 
 Had never pass'd away. 
 
 " An orphan's curse would drag to hell 
 
 A spirit from on high ; 
 But, oh ! more horrible than that 
 
 Is the curse in a dead man's eye. 
 Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, 
 
 And yet I could not die ! " 
 
 In his loneliness and wTeteliedness and perpetual wakefulness, the 
 ancient mariner's heart, touched by a skyey influence, yearneth towards 
 the tranquil motions of the heavenly bodies : 
 
 " The moving moon went up the sky, 
 And nowhere did abide ; 
 Softly she was going up. 
 And a star or two beside." 
 
 He looks beyond the enchanted shadow of the slup, and beholds the 
 bright creatures of the deep ; and, as the wanton murder of the bird 
 had brought the mysterious affliction upon himself and his companion.s, 
 the spell begins to break when there springs in his heart a sudden 
 sympathy with the happiness of the animals floating in his sight ; and 
 when from his lips breaks a blessing upon them, — 
 
 " O happy living things ! no tongue 
 Their beauty might declare. 
 A spring of love gush'd from my heart, 
 
 And 1 bless'd them unaware. 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
 And I bless'd them unaware : 
 " The selfsame moment I could pray ! "
 
 THE ANCIENT MAUINEIl. 279 
 
 The utterance of prayer brings to the mariner's wasted spirit tlie 
 blessing of sleep, rain upon the parched planks of the ship, and the help 
 of a troop of angelic spirits, which, incarnated in the dead bodies of the 
 crew, man the ship. Wild commotions and sirange sights fill the sky 
 and the elements, and soft spiritual music and voices soothe the lone; 
 human being into a trance. When that is abated, the penance is re- 
 newed for a brief space ; but the curse is at last expiated : — 
 
 " I woke, and we were sailing on 
 As in a gentle weather : 
 'T was night, calm night ; the moon was high : 
 The dead men stood together ! 
 
 " All stood together on the deck 
 For a charnel-dungeon fitter ; 
 All fix'd on me their stony eyes, 
 That in the moon did glitter. 
 
 " The pang, the curse, with which they died, 
 Had never pass'd away : 
 I could not draw ray eyes from theirs, 
 Nor turn them up to pray. 
 
 " And now this spell was snapt : once more 
 I view'd the ocean green, 
 And look'd far forth, yet little saw 
 Of what had else been seen. 
 
 " Like one that on a lonesome road 
 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. 
 And, having once turn'd round, walks on 
 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 
 Doth close behind him tread. 
 
 " But soon there breathed a wind on me, 
 Nor sound nor motion made : 
 Its path was not upon the sea, 
 In ripijlc or in shade. 
 
 " It raised my hair ; it fann'd my cheek 
 Like a meadow-gale of spring : 
 It mingled strangely with my fears ; 
 Yet it felt like a welcoming. 
 
 " Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship ; 
 Yet she sail'd softly too. 
 Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze ; 
 On me alone it blew." 
 
 The wild voyage, haunted by fiends and blessed by good angels, is 
 drawing to a close. There dawns upon the mariner's eye the liglit-house
 
 280 LECTURK T'R'ELFTri. 
 
 top, the hill, and the church, — happy visions of his native land ! At the 
 same time he looks to the lifeless bodies which had risen up to do the 
 service of the ship, and, lo ! the angelic spirits are leaving them, and the 
 last guardian act is the waving of their seraph-hands across the waters 
 of the calm harbour-bay, as signals to the pilot and to the hennit who 
 dwells in the wood on the seashore, thus giving the mariner over to the 
 care of his fellow human beings : — 
 
 " Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat ; 
 
 And, by the holy rood ! 
 A man all light, a seraph-man, 
 
 On every corse there stood. 
 
 " This seraph-band, each waved his hand : 
 It was a heavenly sight ; 
 They stood as signals to the land. 
 Each one a lovely light. 
 
 " This sei-aph-band, each waved his hand : 
 No voice did they impart, — 
 No voice ; but, oh ! the silence sank 
 Like music on my heart." 
 
 The poem of " Chi-istabel" is a more pleasing production than the 
 " Ancient Mariner." There is less wildness of imagination, though 
 quite as high an eifect of it. It has more of human interest, presenting, 
 however, the same remarkable combination of the natural and super- 
 natural. It is a story of witchcraft, but not the witchcraft of ugly hags 
 like the weird-sisters in Macbeth, but the magic power of a beautiful 
 sorceress. It is a story of the alliance of the strength of goodness and 
 prayer with the guardianship of the sainted dead, potent against the 
 demoniac power of evil. The heroine, Christabel, is as lovely a creation 
 as ever poet's imagination formed. Orplianed of her mother, the pride 
 and sole prop of her aged father, the betrothed of a knightly lover, — 
 gentle, innocent, pious, and beautiful,^she is the fairest victim witch- 
 craft ever struck at. It must also be noticed that the poem is one of 
 the most remarkable specimens of versification in the language, and 
 shows Coleridge's great powers in that important branch of his art. 
 To the eye it has the appearance of very irregular verse ; to the ear and 
 to the feelings no such effect is produced, for the variations it presents 
 accord with some transitions of the imagery or the passion, and the 
 rhythm throughout may be said to be faultless. The i)oem was recog- 
 nisc^d as a perfect specimen of musical versillcalion by Sir Walter Scott 
 and Lord Byron, and imitated by tliem both. It was the acknowledged 
 model of metre of the " Lny of the Last Minstrel." 
 
 Tue scene of " Christabel" is laid in an ancient baronial castle, at
 
 CIIRISTABEL. 281 
 
 niidnic;ht, when the only sounds arc the hoothigs of the owls and the 
 liowling of the old mastiff, answering the striking of the clock :— 
 " Is the niglit chillj' and dark ? 
 
 The night is chilly, but not dark ; 
 
 The thin gray cloud is spread on high ; 
 
 It covers but not hides the sky. 
 
 The moon is behind, and at the full, 
 
 And yet she looks both small and dull ; 
 
 The night is chill, the cloud is gray ; 
 
 'T is a month before the month of May, 
 
 And the spring comes slowly up this way. 
 
 " The lovely lady, Christiibel, 
 Whom her father loves so well, 
 What makes her in the woods so late, 
 A furlong from the castle-gate ? 
 She had dreams all yesternight 
 Of her own betrothed knight. 
 And she in the midnight wood will pray 
 For the weal of her lover that '.s far away. 
 
 " She stole along ; she nothing spoke ; 
 The sighs she heaved were soft and low, 
 And nought was green upon the oak 
 But moss and rarest misletoe : 
 She kneels beneath the huge oak-tree. 
 And in silence prayeth she. 
 The ladj- sprang up suddenly, 
 The lovely lady, Christabel ; 
 It moan'd as near as near can be. 
 And what it is she cannot tell ; ' 
 On the other side it seems to be 
 Of the huge, broad-breasted old oak-tree. 
 
 " The night 13 chill, the forest bare ; 
 Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ? 
 There is not wind enough in the air 
 To move away the ringlet-curl 
 From the lovely lady's cheek ; 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan. 
 That dances as often as dance it can. 
 Hanging so light, and hanging so high. 
 On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. 
 
 " Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! 
 Jesu, Maria, shield her well. 
 She folded her arms beneath her cloak. 
 And stole to the other side of the oak : 
 What sees she there ? "
 
 282 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 Wliile the innocent Christabel is thinking her prayers from the deptlis 
 of her pure and loving heart, the witch is close by, in the shape of u 
 woman richly clad and exceedingly beautifnl. She asks for pity on her 
 distress, telling that her name is Geraldine, and giving a deceitful story. 
 The tender heart of Christabel is touched, and she bids the witch 
 welcome to share her couch with her. The supernatural thickens as 
 they enter into the castle, and the victim is getting entangled in the 
 meshes of sorcery. According to the popular superstition, the witch 
 sinks, as if in sudden pain, at the threshold, and is lifted over by 
 Christabel, who devoutly proposes a thanksgiving for theii" safety ; but 
 the evil spirit eludes it : — • 
 
 " ' Alas, alas ! ' said. Geraldine ; 
 ' I cannot speak for weariness.' " 
 
 As they move along, the sleeping mastiff utters an angry moan, and 
 the dying embers on the hearth dart forth a tongue of flame, while a 
 beautiful relief is given to the supernatural by an impulse of simple 
 nature, in Christabel's tender thoughtfulness for her aged parent : — 
 
 " They pass'd the hall, that echoes still 
 Pass as lightly as you will ! 
 The brands were flat ; the brands were dying. 
 Amid their own white ashes lying ; 
 But when the lady pass'd, there came 
 A tongue of light, a fit of flame. 
 And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 
 And nothing else saw she thereby, 
 Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leolinc tall, 
 Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. 
 ' Oh, softly tread,' said Christabel ; 
 ' My father seldom slecpcth well.' " 
 
 Christabel speaks, too, of her departed mother, when, lo ! at her 
 child's fond and innocent wish, echoed mysteriously by the witch, the 
 "uardian spirit of the mother is at hand, invisible except to the spectral 
 sight of tlie sorceress ; and a conllict ensues between the good and evii 
 spirits : — 
 
 " ' mother dear ! that thou wcrt hero ! " 
 
 ' I would,' said Geraldine, ' she were ! ' 
 
 But soon with altcr'd voice said she, 
 
 ' Off, wandering mother ! Peak and pine ! 
 
 I have power to bid thee flee' 
 
 Alas ! what ails poor Geraldine ? 
 
 Why stares she with unsettled eye ? 
 
 Can she the bodiless dead espy ?
 
 CHRISTABEL. 283 
 
 And wliy with hollow voice cries she, 
 ' Off, woman ! ofi' ! this hour is mine, 
 Though thou her guardian spirit be ; 
 Off, woman ! off! 't is given to me ! ' 
 
 " TJien Christabcl knelt by the lady's side. 
 And raised to heaven her eyes so blue, 
 ' Alas ! ' said she, ' this ghastly ride. 
 Dear lady! it hath wilder'd you.' 
 The lady wiped her moist, cold brow. 
 And faintly said, ' 'T is over now ! ' " 
 
 The power of witchcraft goes on iiiereasing. Geraldiue's silken roi)i; 
 falls ; and, lieautifiil and stately lady as slie shone before, there is now 
 disclosed to the heart-strieken Christabel an untold sight of some hidden, 
 hideous deformity, some superhuman stump, such as could only belong 
 to a witch's body. The poor maiden sinks into a trance, and her power 
 of speech is scaled up by the incantation that is uttered over her by the 
 demon drawdng close to her side : — 
 
 " In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell 
 "VVTiich is lord of thy utterance, Christabel." 
 
 I cannot trace the story of the poem without too much impairing the 
 effect, and shall therefore only notice one or two passages in the remainder 
 of it. The most striking of these is the apostro])he to the friends, and tlie 
 sublimest image of a broken friendship to be found in the wliole range 
 of poetry -. — 
 
 " Alas, they had been friends in youth : 
 But whispering tongues can poison tnitli. 
 And constancy lives in realms above. 
 And life is thorny, and youth is vain : 
 And to be wroth with one we love 
 Doth work like madness in the brain. 
 And thus it chanced, as I divine. 
 With Roland and Sir Looliue. 
 Each spake words of high disdain 
 And insult to his heart's best brother ; 
 They parted, ne'er to meet again ! 
 But never either 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."
 
 284 LECTUKE TAVELFXn. 
 
 The admirable skill in the versification of the poem, and its cxaot. 
 ruiaptatiou to the spirit of different passages, may be shown by observing, 
 in contrast with any of the passag(;s I have recited, the sound of the 
 spirited lines containing the command given by the knight to one of his 
 retainers : — 
 
 " Bard Bracy, bard Bracy ! your horses are fleet; 
 Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet, 
 More loud than your horses' echoing feet ! 
 And loud and loud to Lord Roland call, 
 ' Thy daughter is safe in Langdale Hall ! 
 Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free : 
 Sir Leoline greets thee thus through mc. 
 He bids thee come without delay, 
 With all thy numerous array, 
 And take thy lovely daughter home ; 
 And he will meet thee on the way, 
 With all his numerous array, 
 White with their panting palfreys' foam.' " 
 
 The bard tlicn narrates a dream wliich had distressed his sleep, in which 
 he had seen a beautiful bird — the pet dove of the castle — fascinated in 
 the forest by a serpent, and fluttering and writhing in its toils. The 
 dream needs no interpretation for either Geraldinc or the spell-bound 
 (!hristabel. When the witch hears it, she stealthily turns a look of 
 withering fascination on her mute victim. The shrinking up of her eyes, 
 and the large dilating of them when she assumes an air of innocence, 
 are given with great power, as well as the effect on Christabel, who 
 passively imitates the serpent-look that had appalled her : — 
 
 " A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, 
 And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head ; 
 Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 
 And with somewhat of malice and more of dread. 
 At Christabel she looked askance : 
 One moment — and the sight was fled ! 
 But Christabel in dizzy trance. 
 Stumbling on the unsteady ground, 
 Shudder'd aloud with a hissing sound ; 
 And Geraldine again turn'd round, 
 And, like a thing that sought relief. 
 Full of wonder and full of grief, 
 She roll'd her large bright eyes divine 
 Wildly on Sir Leoline. 
 
 " The maid, alas ! her thoughts are gone ; 
 She nothing sees,— no sight but one !
 
 CHEISTABEL. 285 
 
 The maid devoid of tjiiile and siu, 
 
 I know not how, in fearful wise, 
 
 So deeply had she drunken in 
 
 That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
 
 That all her features were resign'd 
 
 To this sole image in her mind ; 
 
 And passively did imitate 
 
 That look of dull and treacherous hate ! 
 
 And thus she stood in dizzy tranee, 
 
 Still picturing that look askance, 
 
 With forced unconscious sympathy, 
 
 Full before her father's view, — 
 
 As far as such a look could be 
 
 In eyes so innocent and blue ! 
 
 And when the trance was o'er, the maid 
 
 Paused a while, and inly pray'd ; 
 
 Then, falling at the baron's feet, — 
 
 ' By my mother's soul do I entreat 
 
 That thou this woman send away ! ' 
 
 She said : and more she could not say ; 
 
 For what she knew she could not tell, 
 
 O'ermaster'd by the mighty spell." 
 
 It IS that description of the serpent-look of the witch's eyes which, 
 on being read in a company at Lord Byron's, is said to have caused 
 Shelley to faint. 
 
 The poem of " Christabel " is a fragment. It was so left by the poet. 
 Other writers have aspired to complete it, but their imitations have proved 
 adventures as vain as presumptuous. Coleridge himself meditated its 
 completion ; but, like other of his poems, it was a work of to-morrow — 
 aud to-morrow — and to-morrow. And his petty pace of life crept away 
 without it. 
 
 In my lectvire on Burns, I quoted to you the stanzas which the 
 peasant-poet in fancy appropriated as the epitaph for his own tomb. It 
 was an admonition to the living, and a touching plea for a little charity 
 to the memory of the poor inhabitant below. The deeply-meditative im- 
 agination of Coleridge was busy too in taking the measure of an unmade 
 grave, aud dictated his own epitaph. His mind had roamed through 
 the vast regions of human learning, and trod the highest places of 
 speculative philosophy ; his imagination had taken the boldest and most 
 limitless flights ; but this late elfusion of liis genius — probably his last 
 verses — has its best beauty in its simplicity and its perfect Christian 
 humility. The initials will be recoguised as his customary designation 
 of his name : —
 
 286 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 " Stop, Christian passer-by ! Stop, child of Goil, 
 And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod 
 A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he. 
 Oh, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C, 
 That he who many a year, with toil of breath, 
 I'ound death in life, may here find life in deatli ! 
 Mercy for praise — to be forgiveu for fame — 
 He ask'd and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the vjime. 

 
 287 
 
 LECTUEE XIII. 
 
 .Youthen. 
 
 (with notice of CHAllLES LAMB.) 
 
 CHARLES LAMB, THE FRIEND OF COLERIDUE AND SOUTHEY— "THE OLD FAMILIAR 
 FACES '-"ELI A "—ROBERT SOUTHEY— CHARACTER OF HIS PROSE-HIS COMPLETE 
 POETICAL WORKS-HIS MENTAL DERANGEMENT— PERSONAL INTEREST OF HIS 
 POEMS— SATIRICAL POWER—" WAT TYLER "— " JO.\N OF ARC "—THE PRODUCT OF 
 IMAGINATION IS OFTEN TRUTH — "MADOC" — " RODERIC" — " TH.^LABA " — " THE 
 CURSE OF KEH.\MA " — SCRIPTURAL CHARACTER OF " THAL-^BA " — KEBLES 
 "CHRISTIAN YEAR"— STORY OF " THALABA AND ONEIZA " — SOUTHEY'S ODES- 
 "THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW "—" THE TALE OF PARAGUAY" — HIS PIAYFUL 
 POETRY— ODE ON THE PORTRAIT OF BISHOP HEBER. 
 
 IN the last lecture it was my intention to give a few words, at the 
 close, to an author whom I wished to notice briefly ; but I became 
 entangled in the witchery of " Christabel," and the glittering eye of " the 
 Ancient Mariner " held me too long to let me accomplish my purpose. It 
 was a life -long friend of Coleridge's I was anxious to speak of; and I 
 must find room for him now, before proceeding to the chief subject of 
 the present lecture. Let me, therefore, present Charles Lamb between 
 his two friends Coleridge and Soulhey. His intimacy with Coleridge 
 began within the venerable precincts of Christ's Hospital, when they 
 were blue-coat boys together in that time-honoured school. The friend- 
 ship of boyhood, as is not usual, lasted into manliood and during life, — ■ 
 their minds, in many respects dissimilar, closely associated and identified. 
 Coleridge died ; and, in the brief interval of only a few months that Lainb 
 survived, he was constantly reiterating, in a kind of soliloquy, and that 
 confused state of feeling before we realize the absence in death of one 
 whose presence has long been familiar, — he was reiterating, " Coleridge 
 is dead ! Coleridge is dead ! " A poet who knew and loved them both 
 has coupled their names in the same stanzas of his elegy on his brother- 
 bards : — 
 
 " Nor has the rolling year twice measured 
 
 From sign to sign its stedfast course, 
 Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
 
 Was frozen at its marvellous source.
 
 288 LECTL'KE TUIRTEENTH. 
 
 " The rapt one of the godlike forehead, 
 
 The heaven-eyed creature, sleeps in earth ; 
 And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, 
 Has vanish'd from his lonely hearth. 
 
 " Like clouds that rake the mountain-summit, 
 Or waves that own no curbing hand, 
 How fast has brother follow'd brother 
 From sunshine to the sunless laud ! " 
 
 The early poetical pieces of Lamb were first published with Cole- 
 ridge's ; and it was Coleridge, he said, who first kindled in him, it' not the 
 power, yet the love, of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness. Poetry was 
 gradually given up by them both. " You," said Lamb to his friend, now 
 devoted to his philosophy, " now write no ' Christabels' nor ' Ancient 
 Mariners,' and I have dwindled into prose and criticism." One of the 
 most pleasing pieces in the small collection of Lamb's poems may illus- 
 trate both the depth and tenderness of his feelings and the peculiarity 
 of his way of thought. The verses have the merit of giving currency 
 to a very feeling phrase, — one of those happy combinations of words 
 which poetry frequently incorporates into the language, serving to 
 express some universal seutinient, and, therefore, soon acquiring the 
 familiarity of a proverb. It cannot fail to be recognised, I thuik, as an 
 expression of a feeling which has been experienced probably by every one 
 who is now listening to me, — that painfully hollow sense of destitution 
 when there comes across us the memory of faces familiar to some former 
 ]jeriod of life — tliat desolate craving after the departed, — the missing of 
 something wliich had been a portion of our very selves. Several of the 
 stanzas go on to mention the memory of what lias been and never more 
 will be, and in language as simple as possible, — ^just such words as the 
 feeling would expi'ess itself in, finding natural utterance in earnest con- 
 versation ; but, as it is dwelt on, suddenly the imagination expands, and, 
 as the shadowy recollections of childhood — memories of the old familiar 
 faces — throng around him, the living man, moved by a stronger sympa- 
 thy with the past than with the present, — nearer of kin, as it were, to 
 the dead than to the living, — feels spectre-like visiting the scenes of his 
 childhood, and, in tlie intensity of his loneliness, the earth becomes a 
 very desert to lum. The allusion in the latter part of the verses is to 
 Coleridge : — 
 
 " I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
 In my days of cliildhood, in my joyful school-days : 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces !
 
 HESTER. 289 
 
 " I have been laughing, I have been carousing. 
 Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! 
 
 '' I loved a love once, fairest among women ; 
 Closed are her doors on me ; I must not see her ; 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 " I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ; 
 Like an ingrate I left my friend abruptly, — 
 Left him to muse on the old familiar faces ! 
 
 " Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood ; 
 Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse, 
 Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 
 
 " Friend of my bosom ! thou more than a brother ! 
 Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling ? 
 So might we talk of the old familiar faces ! 
 
 " How some they have died, and how some they have left mo, 
 And some are taken from me : all are departed : 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! " 
 
 There is another set of verses of Lamb's, which very gracefully and 
 feelingly, and with admirable truth and a certain indescribable sort of 
 playful pathos, express the emotion, not amounting to strong grief, 
 occasioned by the death of one who had been pleasantly known, and the 
 perplexity of mind in associating the lately living with the grave :— 
 
 " When maidens such as Hester die, 
 Their place ye may not well supplj'. 
 Though ye among a thousand try 
 With vain endeavour. 
 
 " A month or more hath she been dead ; 
 Yet cannot I by force be led 
 To think upon the wormy bed 
 And her together. 
 
 " A springy motion in her gait, 
 A rising step, did indicate 
 Of pride and joy no common rate 
 That flush'd her spirit. 
 
 "I know not by what name beside 
 I shall it call, if 't was not pride ; 
 It was a joy to that allied 
 She did inherit. 
 
 " Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
 Which doth the human feeling cool ; 
 But she was train'd in nature's school : 
 Nature had blest her.
 
 290 LECTURE TUIKTEE>"T1T. 
 
 " A ■waking eye, a piTing mind, 
 A heart that stirs, is hard to bind ; 
 A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind ; 
 Ye could not Hester. 
 
 " My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore, 
 Shall we not meet, as heretofore, 
 Some summer morning ? 
 
 " When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
 Hath struck a bliss upon the day, — 
 A bliss that would not go away, — 
 A sweet forewarning." 
 
 The prose and criticism into which Lamb describes himself as haviuy 
 dwindled are those dehghtful essays which have given such a pleasant 
 popularity to his assumed title of "EHa." I know of no essay-writing 
 comparable to them, so fuU are they of an irdmitable blending of thought- 
 fulness and playfulness, — that half-serious, half-sportive habit of mind, 
 far more agreeable than wit, described by our word, — without, I believe, 
 any equivalent in other languages, — our Englisli word, hiunour. 
 
 I pass now to a name of higli worth in English literature, — the poet- 
 laureate, Robert Southey. His life has been one of extraordinary literary 
 industry, — a career of most honourable authorship, actuated by the most 
 ardent impulses, and never lowered to the flattery of mean tastes or 
 temporary fashions, but steadUy devoted to the purpose of instructing^ 
 improving, and innocently pleasing his fellow -beings. I am not able to 
 recall the name of any autiior who has accomplished so many, such varied, 
 and such laborious literary plans. In prose he will .be remembered as 
 tlie historian of JBrazd, of the Peninsular War, of the Church of England, 
 as the biographer of Nelson, of Wesley, and of Cowper, and as \\w. 
 writer of various miscellaneous works and essays and translations. The 
 excellence of his prose style is distinguished : sucii is its native purity 
 and ease, that you may read J)age after page with scarce atliought of 
 the transparent veil of words interposed between your mind and liis. 
 But my present duty is with liis poetry alone. 
 
 Three or four years ago Mr. Southey, at the age of sixty -three, 
 undertook what he regarded as a kind of testamentary task, — the 
 collecting, arranging, and editing his complete poetical Avorks. The 
 task lias been well fulfilled, with becoming modesty and an equally- 
 becoming manly spirit of self-assurance. More than forty years had 
 passed over some of tlie early poems ; and, with the memory of the 
 distant days revived and the jjrcsent thought of the ajipi-oach of the
 
 SOITTHEY's WOIIKS. 201 
 
 rvenhig ol' liis life, tnily does he exclaim, "WHiat is this task but to 
 bring iu review before me the dreams and aspirations of my youth, and 
 the feelings whereto I had given that free utterance which by the 
 usages of the world is permitted to us in poetry, and in poetry alone ? 
 Well may it be called a serious task thus to resuscitate the past. But, 
 serious though it may be, it is not painful to one who knows that the 
 end of his journey cannot be far distant, and by the blessing of God 
 looks on its termination with sure and certain hope." The honourable 
 ambition of occupying a permanent place in the literatui-e not only of 
 his own country, but of all lands where the English language is spoken, 
 could not fail to animate the breast of one whose gratitude was as deep 
 as Southey's to the wise and good of other ages who had bequeathed 
 their recorded thoughts and inspirations. The strong and placid feel- 
 ings of the true-hearted man of letters were never better told than bv 
 him : — 
 
 •' My days among the dead are past : 
 Around me I behold. 
 Where'er these casual eyes are cast. 
 
 The mighty minds of old : 
 My never-failing friends are they. 
 With whom I converse day by day. 
 
 " With them I take delight in weal, 
 
 And seek relief in woe ; 
 And, while I understand and feel 
 
 How much to them I owe. 
 My checks have often been bedew "d 
 With tears of thoughtful gratitude 
 
 " My thoughts are with the dead ; with thorn 
 
 I live in long-past years ; 
 Their virtues love, their faults condemn. 
 
 Partake their hopes and fears. 
 And from their lessons seek and find 
 Instruction with an humble mind. 
 
 " My hopes are with the dead ; anon 
 
 My ])lace with them will be ; 
 
 And 1 with them shall travel on 
 
 Through all futurity. 
 Yet leaving here a name, I trust. 
 That will not perish in the dust." 
 
 That trust will not be frustrated : the name of Southcy will not 
 j^erish in the dust, whatever clouds may have gathered round the 
 evening of liis days. If his strength has departed from him, it lias not 
 
 u 2
 
 292 LECTURE TJIIKTEEXTII. 
 
 been wasted by slothful neglect or by unworthy uses. A life of un- 
 wearied and unintcrmitted industry and of pure and honourable aim has 
 been his ; he has done a giant's work in his generation ; and it is a 
 very sad thing to think that now, Avhen he has not quite reached the 
 limit of liis threescore years and ten, powers so wcU cultivated and so 
 wcU employed should, by an inscrutable visitation, be impaired. I do 
 not know of any piece of literary intelligence that has grieved me more 
 than that the faculties of Southey's line mind have been shattered. 
 
 " What sight can sorrow find 
 
 Sad as the ruins of the human mind ? " 
 
 The poetical fire inborn in Southey's heart began to make the motions 
 of its first flames very early. Ardent in his feelings, and of a happy, 
 buoyant temper, literary ambitions began veiy early to cross his mind. 
 His passion for poetry happily took a foi'tunate and safe direction. At 
 an age when it was thought the antiquated diction of the " Fairy Queen" 
 must be unintelligible to him, he obtained a copy of that poem, on wliich 
 his imagination at once fastened as most congenial ; and from that early 
 day Spenser was the acknowledged master of his poetic life. The taste 
 tlius acquired was confii-mcd by the reading of Chaucer and Sliakspeare 
 and the old ballads, and the study of Homer and the Bible. He is well 
 justified in adding, significantly, " It was not likely to be corrupted 
 afterwards." 
 
 Southey's poetic impulses were strong in childhood, and the quickness 
 'of his ai)prehcnsions raised high and flattering hopes of his success in 
 life, as he tells us in the lines on Ids miniature-picture taken in very 
 early life : — 
 
 " They augur'd happily 
 
 That thou didst love each wild and wondrous talc 
 
 Of fairy fiction, and thine infant tongue 
 
 Lisp'd with delight the godlike deeds of Greece 
 
 And rising Rome ; therefore they deem'd, forsooth, 
 
 That thou shouldst tread preferment's pleasant paths. 
 
 Ill-judging ones ! They let thy little feet 
 
 Stray in the pleasant paths of poesy, 
 
 And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd, 
 
 There didst thou love to linger out the day. 
 
 Loitering heneath the laurel's harreu shade. 
 
 Spirit of Spenser, was the wanderer ^^Tong ? " 
 
 There is scattered throughout Southey's poetry much of that personal 
 interest which is communicated when tlic poet employs his imagination 
 to express liis own individual thoughts and fceUngs, speaking in his own 
 person, and not with the more purely-imaginative voice of his creations.
 
 SATIRICAL POWEE. 293 
 
 There is one of his smaller poems — a pleasing one, entitled the "Ee- 
 Irospeet" — full of this kind of personal interest. It was snggested by 
 a visit to the village of Corston, where he had spent some part of his 
 boyhood, under the harsh tyranny of a boarding-school clouding the 
 rightful gaiety of those blithe early years. The stern look and voice 
 of his old teacher rise up to his memory, and the recollections of the 
 dismal feelings of his entrance into the school : — 
 
 " Even now, through many a long, long year, I trace 
 The hoiir when first with awe I vicw'd his face ; 
 Even now recall my entrance at the dome : 
 'T was the first day I ever left my home ! 
 Years intervening have not worn away 
 The deep remembrance of that wretched day." 
 
 But what I chiefly notice this poem for is an expression of the fiD(^ 
 satirical power which is a trait of Southey's genius, well chastened, 
 however, for it never tempted him into the indulgence of a vicious 
 mockery. He is describing the interview between his parents and the 
 proprietors of the school, and closes it with a significant allusion to the 
 master's short-lived civility to his pupil : — 
 
 " Methinks ev'n now the interview I see, — 
 The mistress's glad smile, the master's glee. 
 Much of my future happiness they said, 
 Much of the easy life the scholars led, 
 Of spacious play-ground and of wholesome air, 
 The best instruction and the tcnderest care ; 
 And when I foUow'd to the garden door 
 My father, till through tears 1 saw no more, 
 How civilly they soothed my parting pain ! 
 And never did they speak so civilly again." 
 
 Some sad feelings come over him, as after the lapse of some years he 
 finds the spot the same, yet different, and the people estranged, — him- 
 self unknowing and unknown ; but, after yielding to a momentary de- 
 jiression, he bids his spirit rise to worthier feelings, and closes the poem 
 with a self-admonition, which, considering it was an effusion of his early 
 manhood, is a fine indication of that upright manliness which has hon- 
 ourably characterized Southey's whole Life : — 
 
 " Thy path is plain and straight ; that light is given. 
 Onward in faith, and leave the rest to Heaven." 
 
 This deep, confiding spirit seems never to have deserted him. Living 
 in one unbroken mood of faith, he carried forward with him as he grew 
 older not only the buoyancy of boyish years, but a steadier cheerfulness, 
 for ever brightening his own heart and liis own home. In one of his
 
 294 LKCTUUE TIlIllTEKNTII. 
 
 CLirly pieces, couceived quite in the spiiit of old George Korbcrt's 
 poetical moralizing, and with somewhat of its sound, he touches very 
 Ijleasiugly on the moral discipline of his temperament : — 
 
 " O reader ! hast thou ever stood to see 
 
 The holly-tree ? 
 The eye that contemplates it well perceives 
 
 Its glossy leaves, 
 Order'd 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 this wisdom of the holly-tree 
 
 Can emblenis see 
 Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, — 
 One which may profit in the after-time. 
 
 '•Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear 
 Harsh and austere, — 
 To those who on my leisure would intrude. 
 
 Reserved and r\idc,- 
 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 a sober hue display 
 Less bright than they, — 
 But when the bare and wintry woods wc see, 
 What then so cheerful as the holly-tree r — 
 
 " So serious should my youth appear among 
 
 The tluMightless throng, 
 So would I seem, among the young and gaj-, 
 
 More grave than they ; 
 That in my ago as cheerful I might be 
 As the greeu winter of the holly-tree."
 
 ■WAT TYLEU. 295^ 
 
 It is a part of the history of Southey's mind, that, as he descrihcs it, in 
 his youth, wlieii his stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaint- 
 ance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a 
 reguhir scholastic education, when his heart was full of poetry and 
 romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at his tongue's end, he fell into 
 t he polit ical opinions which the French Revolution was then scattering 
 t hroughout Europe ; at that time, and with those opinions — or rather 
 leelings — he wrote the dramatic piece entitled " Wat Tyler," which was 
 so often and so reproachfully coupled with his name. It was assailed 
 on the floor of the House of Commons as seditious, and in various ways 
 gained a notoriety remarkable in literary history for the crude production 
 of a boy. Written hastily in three mornings, it was never given by the 
 author himself to publication, till recently he has placed it in the collec- 
 tion of his works, just as it was first printed, when a stolen copy found 
 its way to the press. It detracts nothing from the truth of Southey's 
 ])ure and high-spirited review of his long literary career, when he records 
 an author's best pride : — " lu aU that I have written, whether in prose 
 or verse, there has never been a line, which, for any compunctious reason, 
 living or dying, I could wish to blot." " Wat Tyler " had been written 
 under the influences of an enthusiasm which hoped that the immutable 
 division of society into rich and poor might be abolished. The author 
 had taken up revolutiouai-y notions in his youth ; conscientiously he 
 wrote what he sincerely thought and felt ; and when he outgrew them 
 t hey were left behind and frankly disavowed, in the same straightfor- 
 \vard and manly spirit. 
 
 Southey's young ardent genius was busy with poetical plans as well 
 as with schemes of political and social regeneration. He was thus 
 hurried into the execution of his early literary day-dreams when his 
 l)0wers should rather have been gradually maturing by such cautious 
 development as the genius of his illustrious model, Spenser, had pi-e- 
 sci-ibed to itself. Southey first made himself known as a poet by a 
 production in the fashion of an epic poem, — his " Joan of Arc," the 
 l)old enterprise of a youth of nineteen years of age, and composed in the 
 short space of six weeks. This poem, as Southey himself has since very 
 candidly described it, crudely conceived, rapidly executed, rashly pre- 
 faced, and prematm-ely hurried to pu])lication, was nevertheless favour- 
 ably received, — a success which, with equal candour and good sense, he 
 attributes chiefly to adventitious circumstances. It was a work of 
 greater pretensions than had appeared for some time, and, being com- 
 posed in somewhat of a political spirit, at a period of political excitement, 
 attracted more attention and favoiu- than usually fall to the share of
 
 296 LECTURE TIIIKTEENTII. 
 
 juvenile pcvfoitnanccs. Happily no one sooner discovered its deficiencies 
 and faults than the young poet himself ; and his vigorous good sense 
 never suffered his early success to betray hiiu into the fatal error of 
 supposing that it gave him a dispensation from t he careful cultivation 
 of his natural endowment and the thoughtful study of the principles of 
 liis art. One single passage in the poem I wish brietly to notice, for the 
 sake of a coincidence illustrative of the beauty-making power of imagin- 
 ation. The Maid of Orleans describes the death of a loved friend and 
 playmate of her peasant-days, closing with these liues,^ — 
 
 " I remember, as her bier 
 Went to the grave, a lavk sprung up aloft. 
 And soared amid the sunshine, caroling 
 So full of joy, that to the mourner's ear 
 More mournfully than dirge or passing bell 
 The joyous carol came, and made us feel 
 That, of the multitude of beings, none 
 But man was wretched." 
 
 At the opening of this course of lectures I had occasion to speak of 
 what I have often since sought to illustrate, — imaginative truth, — such 
 truth as poeti^ makes )nanifest, — better, brighter, and ])urer than what 
 we commonly see around us, and therefore designed to elevate and refine 
 our thoughts and feelings. That the product of imagination is still truth 
 is sometimes forced upon our conviction when actual life presents that 
 which equals the poet's inventions. I have just referred to an incident 
 wliich existed only in Southey's imagination, — the caroling of the l;u-k 
 over the. grave of one of the imaginary beings in his early poem. At 
 The burial of Mrs. Lockhart, the favourite child of Sir Walter Scott, 
 ])recisely the same incident actually occurred, — the notes of the jocund 
 lark heard in the air above the mournful company, and mingling with 
 the sounds of the solemn services for the dead. That wliich had been 
 seen and heard by the imaginative sense of one poet was now witnessed 
 by the bodily senses of another. One had recorded an imagination ; the 
 other has recorded a fact ; but does not every one feel that each is a 
 record of truth, and hold unimportant that one is imaginative and the 
 other actual? The ofliciating clergyman over Mrs. Lockhart's grave 
 was that chaste and excellent poet — deserving more than this casual 
 allusion — Milman. He has told, in some stanzas as true in feeling as 
 in poetry, of the incident, when the " Minstrel's darling child " was 
 placed in earth : — 
 
 " thou Wght-loving and melodious bird ! 
 
 At every sad and solemn fall 
 
 Of mine own voice, each interval
 
 EODERTC THE GOTII. 297 
 
 In tnc soul-clovating prayer, I hoard 
 
 Thy quivering descant full and clear, 
 * Discord jiot inharmonious to the ear ! 
 
 I watch'd thee lessening, lessening to the sight, 
 
 Still faint and fiiinter winnowing 
 
 The sunshine with thy dwindling wing,^ 
 A speck, a movement in the ruffled light, — 
 
 Till thou wert melted in the sky, 
 An undistinguish'd part of the bright infinity- 
 
 " Meet emblem of that lightsome spirit thou I 
 
 That still, wherever it might come, 
 
 Sheds sunshine o'er that happy home, 
 Her task of kindliness and gladness now, 
 
 Absolved with the element above, 
 Hath mingled, and become pure light, pure joy, pure love." 
 
 To resume the poetry of Soatbey : his works are remarkable for in - 
 ehiding a greater number of elaborate poems than I remember in the 
 volumes of any other of the English poets. " Joan of Arc," " Madoc," 
 " Thalaba," " The Curse of Kehama," and " Roderic the Goth," are the 
 iive extended poems which Southey completed amid all his nmltifarious 
 literaiy work. His fame would perhaps have been greater had he 
 written less ; for the estimate of his poetical character is almost dis- 
 tracted by these numerous works of such variety and scope, and the 
 occurrence of passages deficient in imaginative animation has depreciated 
 t he real value of other portions of his writings, distinguished for many 
 of the highest qualities of poetry. The least interesting of his long 
 poems seems to me to be the poem of "Madoc," founded on the tradi- 
 tion of tlie early voyages of the Welsh to America; and its failure to 
 win (he sympathies of the reader woidd be very apt to discourage further 
 acquaintance with Southey's poetry, "lloderic" is a noble heroic 
 luirrative poem, founded on a grand historical period, the dowTifal of 
 the Gothic monarchy in Spain, and filled with the lofty actors in that 
 great national drama. It is a very spirited poem, the story conducted 
 Avith all the interest of a romance, and not only abounding in passages 
 l)oth of beauty and sublimity, but finely sustained throughout. To 
 resort to that very inadequate mode of illustrating the character of a 
 j>oem, by giving isolated quotation, how true and how beautiful a 
 description is in such a passage as this, — one of many like it -. — 
 
 " The morn had risen o'crcast. 
 And, when the sun had rcach'd the height of heaven. 
 Dimly his pale and beamless orb was scon 
 Moving through mist. A soft and gentle rain.
 
 298 LECTUEE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 Scarce heavier than the summer's evening dew, 
 Descended, — through so still an atmosphere, 
 That every leaf upon the moveless trees 
 Was studded o'er with rain-drops, bright and full, 
 None falling, till, from its own weight o'erswoll'u, 
 The motion came." 
 
 One of the noblest passages (and it is one of true sublimity) is tliat 
 in which Roderic, his royalty put ofl", disguised, and present in the 
 priestly character, receives the vow pronounced by prince and people 
 to the Lord of Hosts, upon the eve of war, and silently motions a bless- 
 ing over the multitude : — 
 
 " Ne'er in his happiest hours had Roderic 
 With such commanding majesty dispensed 
 His princely gifts as dignified him now. 
 When with slow movement, solemnly upraised, 
 Towards the kneeling troop he spread his arms, 
 As if the expanded soul diffused itself. 
 And carried to all spirits, with the act. 
 Its effluent inspiration. Silently 
 The people knelt, and, when they rose, such awe 
 Held them in silence, that the eagle's cry. 
 Who far above them — at her highest flight, 
 A speck scarce visible — gyred round and round, 
 Was heard distinctly ; and the mountain stream. 
 Which from the distant glen sent forth its sounds 
 Wafted upon the wind, grew audible 
 In that deep hush of feeling, like the voice 
 Of waters iu the stillness of the night." 
 
 The most signal proof of the energy of Southey's imagination is the 
 fact of his having, when a school-boy, conceived the design of exhibit- 
 ing the most remarkal)le forms of mytliology which have at any time 
 oljtaincd among mankind, by making each the groundwork of a narrative 
 ))()em. The conc(q)tic)n was a grand one, worthy of tlie strength and 
 far-reaching vision of a mature imagination, and, if successfully executed, 
 competent to eidarge the domains of poetry. It proved more than a 
 dream of juvenile ambition ; for lie realized his plan in two important 
 l)ocms, founded on two of the mythologies, — that of the Arabs and of 
 the Hindoos, — " Thalaba " and " The Curse of Kehama." The wildest 
 of tliese poems is that which has for its framework the religion of 
 Hindostan, — the most monstrous, perhaps, of all false systems iu its 
 fables and in its rites. The highest efforts of Southey's genius were 
 called forth by this Indian ])oem, "The Cnrso of Kehama;" and, 
 Avhile the extravagant fictions of the superstition arc not suffered to
 
 T1IAL\BA. 299 
 
 transcend his reach, and while the wonderful wildness and power of the 
 work raise a niing-led feelin<^ of admiration and amazement, i iind a 
 perusal of the poem raises a sympathy with Charles Lamb's friendly 
 criticism, when he said to Mr. tSouthey, "I confess the power of 
 Ivehania with trembling; but it puts me out of the pale of my old 
 sympathies : my imagination goes sinking and floundering in the vast 
 spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths." 
 
 The Arabian tale of " Thalaba " is, in this respect, different. It is 
 not only an admirable poem, but one that lies within the range of our 
 sympathies, — indeed a wild and wondrous song, but full of all emotions 
 that have their home in every huuuiu heart. It is the finest acliieve- 
 ment of what has been well styled Southey's judicious daring in the 
 de})artment of supernatural poetry. The one pervading moral of the 
 poem is as pure and precious a one as the imagination of poet has ever 
 glorified, — the war and victory of faith, the triumph over the world 
 aud evil powers. The unaginative lesson is"ftonveyed through the types 
 and forms of the Mahommedan reUgion purified and spiritualized ; and 
 it was on this point that an apprehension was entertained by the late 
 Mr. Wilberforee that the poem conveyed a false impression of that 
 religion, and that the moral sublimity which he admii-ed in it was 
 owing to that flattering misrepresentation. In this instance — as I am 
 inclined to believe happens very often — that good man's imagination 
 and feelings anived at true conclusions ; but, when he came to speculate 
 and to criticize, his understanding misled him. With the moral sub- 
 limity of the poem he was impressed ; nor is it possible that such impres- 
 sions could have been attended for one instant with any misdirected 
 feeling of admiration for a false religion. If the poem had the effect of 
 misappropriatuig to a superstition that sentiment wliich is the rightful 
 tribute to the faith of a true believer, an Israelite or a Christian, it 
 would be as dangerous as delusive. But the truth takes no injury at 
 the poet's hands. Indeed, " Thalaba " is one of the finest sacred poems 
 iu the language. It is not so much Mohammedanism on which it is 
 founded, as something purified by the poet's imagination from the 
 abominations of the false prophet, — a system such as we may conceive 
 to have been developed under the covenant of Ishmael, a remnant of 
 the patriarchal faith preserved by the pure and the faithful in Ai'abia. 
 Instead, therefore, of discovering any reason for apprehension in the 
 groundwork of " Thalab^," it is its v;lorj that the poet has, by the might 
 of imagination, spiritualized and Christianized Moliaunnedauism, nnich 
 in the same way that Spenser hallowed the institution of chivalry, 
 disfigured as it often was in actual life by martial aud aristocratic
 
 300 LECTURE TniHTEE>JTir. 
 
 atrocities. Sonthey's poem is a splendid exhibition of faith,— its 
 spii-itual birth, its might, its trials, and its victorj- : — a portraiture none 
 hut a Christian poet could have conceived. Let the poem be read with 
 the belief that such is the principle of it ; and, as you follow the hero 
 along his wondrous career to its sublime and pathetic close, the only 
 i'eeling your rapt imagination will return will be a deep sense of the 
 majestic strength given to the soul of man when God breathes intg it 
 the spirit of faith. Indeed I do not doubt that the imaginative impres. 
 sion is better than if the narrative of the poem had been taken from 
 Scripture history, — a consideration demanding, however, more of argu- 
 ment for its development than I can now attempt. Let me only say 
 that there seems to me much force in a remark of Mr. Southey's, in 
 another connection, on the subject of poems or fictions founded on 
 themes dra^^^^ from Scripture : — that when what is true is sacred, what- 
 ever may be added to it is so sm-ely knowai to be false that it appears 
 profane. A poem conceived and executed with so spiritual a purpose 
 and so fanciful a form is, in truth, an illustration how pure a thing is 
 the fire of genuine poetic inspu-ation, no matter what it touches. True 
 to its natui-e, it is beyond the reach of contamination, shining like the 
 suidight upon the eathcdral-roof or the cliurcli-spire, and not less 
 brightly on mosque or minaret. The poem of " Thalaba" accomplishes 
 its lofty design of elevating and adorning the reader's idea of fait,h ; and 
 what matters it that it reaches his imagination through the innocent 
 superstitious of mythology? What object is there so harmless to the 
 sun, as it moves along his path in the skies, and indeed so gloriously 
 attendant upon him, as a sunUt cloud ? The Christian believer will find 
 nothing in this Ai'abiau tale that can wound his sense of truth, and 
 much that can fortify the spirit of faith. Let him not regret — let him 
 rather rejoice— that poetry, Christian poetry, has shed its light, its 
 glory, upon the liarmless superstitions of the once faithful Arabia. It 
 beams upon them like the angel's face upon the fugitive bondwoman, 
 when he bade her turn her wandering footsteps home again, or when he 
 spoke a blessing to her and the outcast Ishmael, opening a fountain to 
 them in the desert. Admirable skill and taste arc shown in the manner 
 in wbich the poet causes a Bible strain to pass occasionally over the 
 wild fancies of his Arabian story. This scriptural character is impressed 
 upon the poem in the beautiful opening stanzas : 
 
 " How beautiful is nifjht ! 
 A dewy freshness fills the silent air ; 
 No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, 
 Breaks the serene of heaven.
 
 THA.LABA. 301 
 
 In fuU-orb'd glory, yonder moon divine 
 
 Kolls through the dark blue depths. 
 
 Beneath her steady ray 
 
 The desert circle spreads, 
 Like the round ocean, girdled with tlu- sky. 
 
 How beautiful is night ! 
 
 " Who, at this untimely hour, 
 
 Wanders o'er the desert sands ? 
 
 No station is in view, 
 Nor palm-grove, islanded amid the waste. 
 
 The mother and her child. 
 The widow'd mother and the fatherless boy, — 
 
 They, at this untimely hour. 
 
 Wander o'er the desert sauds 1 
 
 " Alas ! the setting sun 
 
 Saw Zcinab in her bliss, — 
 
 Hodeirah's wife beloved. 
 
 Alas ! the wife beloved. 
 
 The fruitful mother late. 
 Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named, 
 
 They wish'd their lots like hers, — 
 She wandex's o'er the desert sands 
 
 A wretched widow now : 
 The fruitful mother of so fair a race 
 
 With only one preserved, — 
 She wanders o'er the wilderness ! 
 
 " No tear relieved ihe burden of her heart ; 
 Stunu'd with the heavy woe, she felt like one 
 Ilalf-waken'd from a midnight dream of blood. 
 But sometimes, when the boy 
 Would wet her hand with tears, 
 And, looking up to her fi.\'d countenance, 
 Sob out the name of ' mother ! ' then she groan'd. 
 " At length, collecting, Zeinab turn'd her eyes 
 To heaven, and praised the Lord, 
 ' He gave, he takes away ! ' 
 The pious sufferer cried ; 
 'The Lord our God is good.' 
 
 " She cast her eyes around ; 
 Alas ! no tents were there 
 Beside the bending sands ; 
 No palm-tree rose to spot the wilderness ; 
 The dark blue .sky closed round, 
 And rested like a dome 
 Upon the circling waste.
 
 302 LECTUEE TIIIRTEENTIT. 
 
 She cast lier eyes around : 
 Famine and thirst were there 
 And then the wretched mother bow'd her head, 
 And wept upon her child ! " 
 
 In vindicating the poem of " Thalaba " from a misapprehension re- 
 specting the impression caused by its Arabian framework, I have sought 
 to show that poetry — Christian poetry — has the power of rescuing fic- 
 tions and superstitions from the realms of error, aud bringing them into 
 the alliance of truth. This leads to a further reflection, which I deem 
 of sufficient importance to justify me in proceeding to it. It is that to 
 Christianity belongs the privilege of appropriating to itself — of taking 
 possession of — whatever is noble and grand and beautiful in the poetry 
 of even paganism. This is the vantage-ground of our faith ; and, stand- 
 ing there, tiie Christian imagination may look over all the earth, — over 
 all time, — and, wherever it discovers a sublime aspiration rising from 
 the human soul, even though that soul be not blessed with the light of 
 revelation, it may make that aspiration its own. Broken tones of truth 
 come to us from the odes of Pindar, and from the Greek tragedies, and 
 from the dark allusions in Roman poems to the SibyUine prophecies ; 
 aud when they strike upon the ear of Taitli, they arc tuned and har- 
 monized to some celestial melody, and the discords of error mingled 
 with them are lost in the air. It is thus the poetry of the heathen is 
 given to us for an inheritance. All that is good and beautiful in it is 
 ])art of the perfect truth of a true religion. This subject has been 
 linely treated by the imagination of a living poet, — the Professor of 
 Poetry in the University of Oxford. It is the theme of one of the 
 poems in Keble's "Christian Year." Faith made the jewels of ihe 
 Egyptians its own ; it made the fertile land of the Canaanites its own ; 
 and it has the power to make its own the imaginative wealth of heathen- 
 dom, — the rich domain of classic poetry: — 
 
 " See Lucifer like lightning fall, 
 
 Dash'd from his throne of pride ; 
 While, answering thy victorious call. 
 The saints his spoils divide, — 
 This world of thine, by him usurp'd too long, 
 Kow opening all her stores to heal thy servants' wrong. 
 
 " So, when the first-born of thy foes 
 Dead in the darkness lay, — 
 When thy redeem'd at midnight rose 
 And cast their bonds away, — 
 The orphan'd realm threw wide her gates, and told 
 Into freed Israel's lap her jewels and her gold.
 
 KEBLE's " CHEISTIAX YEAl?."' 303 
 
 " And when their wondrous march was o'er, 
 And they had won their homes 
 Where Abraham fed his flock of yore, 
 Among their fathers' tombs, — 
 A hand that drinks the rain of heaven at will, 
 AVhose waters kiss the feet of many a vine-clad hill ; — 
 
 " Oft as they watch'd, at thoughtful eve, 
 A gale from bowers of balm 
 Sweep o'er the billowy corn, and heave 
 The tresses of the palm, 
 Just as the lingering Sun had touch'd with gold, 
 Far o'er the cedar shade, some tower of giants old ; — 
 
 " It was a fearful joy, I ween. 
 
 To trace the Heathen's toil : — 
 The limpid wells, the orchards green 
 Left ready for the spoil. 
 The household stores untouch'd, the roses bright 
 Wreath'd o'er the cottage walls in garlands of delight. 
 
 " And now another Canaan yields 
 
 To thine all-conquering ark ; — 
 
 Fly from the ' old poetic' fields, 
 
 Ye Paynim shadows dark ! 
 
 Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays, 
 
 Lo ! here ' the unknown God ' of thy unconscious praise 1 
 
 " The olive wreath, the ivied wand, 
 ' The sword in myrtles drest,' 
 Each legend of the shadowy strand 
 Now wakes a vision blest ; 
 As little children lisp, and tell of Heaven, 
 So thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given. 
 
 " And these are ours ; Thy partial grace 
 The tempting treasure lends : 
 These relics of a guilty race 
 Arc forfeit to thy friends : 
 AVhat secm'd an idol-hymn now breathes of Thee, 
 Tuned by Faith's ear to some celestial melody. 
 
 " There 's not a strain to Memory dear, 
 Nor flower in classic grove. 
 There 's not a sweet note warbled here, 
 But minds us of thy Love. 
 O Lord, our Lord, and spoiler of our foes. 
 There is no light but thine : with Thee all beauty glows." 
 
 To rotiirn to "Thalaba: " it would be a (lclii,'li(fnl task to follo-vv l!io 
 roiirse of Uiis remarkable and beautiful poem ; but, cb-nving now Inwards
 
 304 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 the close of these lectures, I have learned, by repeated experience, some 
 little of the virtue of forbearance, and the necessity of passing over 
 many more things than the large demands I have made on your patience 
 would lead you to suppose. One or two passages I must allude to. No 
 poem is adorned with a more beautiful love-story tliau that of Thalabu 
 and Oneiza : — 
 
 " Oneiza call'd him brother, and the youth 
 More fondly than a brother loved the maid ; 
 The loveliest of Arabian maidens she. 
 
 How happily the years 
 
 Of Thalaba went by ! 
 
 In deep and breathless teudernes.s, 
 
 Oneiza's soul is centred on the youth, 
 So motionless, with such an ardent gaze, 
 
 Save when from her full eyes 
 She wipes away the swelling tears 
 
 That dim his image there. 
 
 " She call'd him brother : was it sister love 
 
 For which the silver rings 
 Round her smooth ankles and her tawny arms 
 Shone daily brighten'd ? for a brother's eye 
 
 Were her long fingers tinged, 
 
 As when she trimni'd the lamp 
 And through the veins and delicate skin 
 The light shone rosy ? that the darken'd lids 
 Gave yet a softer lustre to her eye ? 
 
 That with such pride she trick'd 
 Her glossy tresses, and on holy-day 
 Wreath'd the red flower-crown round 
 
 Their waves of glossy jet ? 
 
 How happily the days 
 
 Of Thalaba went by ! 
 Years of his youth, how rapidly ye fled ! '' 
 
 A drear winter was to close over this liappy spring, — a tragic ending 
 to this bright ])romise. The trial of his faith which most heavily crushes 
 the heart of Thalaba is when the angel of death invades the bridal 
 chamber ; and then follows that woeful description, — his ghastly wretch- 
 edness at Oneiza's grave : — 
 
 " By the tomb lay Thalaba, 
 In the light of the setting eve. 
 The sun, and the wind, and the rain, 
 Had rusted his raven locks ; 
 His cheeks were fallen in, 
 His face-bones prominent.
 
 THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. 305 
 
 Rccliaeil against the tomb he lay, 
 And. his lean fingers pluy'd, 
 Unwitting, with the grass that grew beside." 
 
 Wlien Tluilaba's unwearied faith approaches its consummation, — the 
 ^ ood fight nearly finished, tlie race nearly won, — the ministering spirits 
 come closer to his path, and he hears a spiritual welcoming from the 
 angel voice of his lost Oneiza : — 
 
 " Was there a spirit in the gale 
 That flutter'd o'er his cheek ? 
 For it came on him like the new risen sun. 
 Which plays and dallies o'er the night-closed flower, 
 
 '• And woes it to unfold anew to joy ? 
 l'"or it came on him as the dews of eve 
 
 Descend with healing and with life 
 
 Upon the summer mead ; 
 Or liker the first sound of seraph-song 
 
 And angel-greeting to the soul 
 Whose latest sense had shudder'd at the gi'oan 
 Of anguish, kneeling by a death-bed side." 
 
 It gives a Aavid impression of the versatility of Soutliey's genius to 
 turn from a spii-itual and wildly-su]ieruatural poem like " Thalaba" to 
 his poetical odes. The finest of these were written during the long 
 strife between his country and Napoleon. I cannot stop to characterize 
 that contest, or to say how far I consider the poet's strain against the 
 adversary to be justified. It is with the poetry, and not the politics, I 
 have to deal. This ordy let me say : that the war with the French Empire 
 is a grand chapter in British history, and that I know not where an 
 American or a republican can find just ground for any sympathy with a 
 military despotism. The trumpet-sounds of Southey's poetry came forth 
 from his mountain dwelling to cheer and fortify the hearts of his 
 countrymen. His heart never lost its faith that there is a moral strength 
 mightier and more enduring than tlie perishable power of armies. He 
 spake to the nation in the spirit of that uol)le line which he had spoken 
 to himself in early manhood : — 
 
 " Onioard in faith, and leave the rest to Heaven ! " 
 
 And it is a grand thing to behold the poet, like his own Thalaba, ever 
 faithful, hopeful alike in seasons of victory and of doubt, and to hear him 
 at last raising the exultant strain of triumph, as over the disa.strous 
 retreat from Moscow : — 
 
 " Witness that dread retreat, 
 When God and nature smote 
 Tlie tyrant in his pride ! 
 X
 
 306 LECTURE TIIIKTEENTU. 
 
 Yiutorious armies follow'd on his liijfht ; 
 
 On every side he met 
 
 The Cossack's dreadful spear ; 
 
 On every side ho saw 
 
 The injured nation rise 
 
 Invincible in arms. 
 What myriads, victims of one wicked will, 
 Spent their last breath in curses on his head ! 
 
 There where the soldier's blood 
 
 Froze in the festering wound, 
 
 iVnd nightly the cold moon 
 Saw sinking thousands in the snow lie down 
 
 Whom there the morning found 
 
 Stifi" as their icy bed !" 
 
 The liigliest and most impetuous of these strains is the oilc written 
 during the negotiations with Napoleon in 1814. Since Milton's tremend- 
 ous imprecation against the Papal tyranny on occasion of the Piedmontest; 
 massacre, I know of no piece of political invective eqrtal to it. It i.s 
 iiurled with the force and the fire of a thunderbolt, one burst of indigna- 
 tion following another, and closing with an accumulation of all the deeds 
 of blood identified with the name of him who had been at once the 
 terror and the wonder of Europe. Let me give the opening and ending 
 f-tanzas of the ode : — 
 
 " Who counsels peace at this momentous hour, 
 When God hath given deliverance to the oppreas'd, 
 
 And to the injured power ? 
 Who counsels peace when vengeance, like a flood. 
 Rolls on, no longer now to be repress'd ; 
 
 When innocent blood. 
 From the four quarters of the world, cries out 
 For justice upon one accursed head; 
 When Freedom hath her holy banners spread 
 Over all nations, now in one just cause 
 United ; — when, with one sublime accord, 
 pjurope throws off the yoke abhorr'd, 
 And loyaltj' and faith and ancient law."* 
 
 Follow the avenging sword ? 
 
 '' Woe, woe to England ! woe and endless shame, 
 
 If this heroic land, 
 False to her feelings and unspotted fame, 
 Hold out tlie olive to the tyrant's hand ! 
 Woe to the world if Kuonaparte's throne 
 
 Be suff'er'd still to stand !
 
 THE TxVLE OF rAUAOlTAY. 307 
 
 " France ! if thou lov'st thine ancient fame, 
 Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame. 
 By the hones which hleach on Jafla's hcach ; 
 By the blood which on Domingo's shore 
 Hath clogg'd the carrion-birds with gore ; 
 By the flesh which gorged the wolves of Spain, 
 Or stifien'd on the snowy plain 
 
 Of frozen Muscovy ; 
 By the bodies which lie all open to the sky, 
 Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the tyrant's flight ; 
 
 By the widows' and the orphans' cry ; 
 
 By the childless parents' misery ; 
 
 By the lives which he hath shed ; 
 
 By the vuin he hath spread ; 
 By the prayers which rise for curses on his head, — 
 Redeem, O France ! thine ancient fame ! 
 Revenge thy suflerings and thy shame ! 
 
 " Open thine eyes ! Too long hast thou been blind ! 
 Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind ! 
 
 By those horrors which the night 
 
 Witness'd when the torch's light 
 
 To the assembled murderers show'd 
 
 Where the blood of Conde flow'd ; 
 
 By thy murder'd Pichegru's fame; 
 
 By murder'd Wright, — an English name ; 
 
 By murder'd Palm's atrocious doom ; 
 
 By murder'd Hofer's martyrdom ; 
 Oh ! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt, 
 The Villain's own peculiar, private guilt, — 
 Open thine eyes ! Too long hast thou been blind ! 
 Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind." 
 
 From tlicse notes, tuned in tumultuous times, and fit to cope with 
 the tempest's swell, let me further illustrate the varied power of 
 Southcy's genius by turning to a passage in his pleasing poem, " The 
 Tale of Paraguay." It is an exquisite specimen of purely pathetic poetry, 
 — fuU of the truth of feeling and of fancy, — the description of the 
 death-bed of a young and innocent female. What can be more beautiful 
 or much touching than the line wliich actually pictures to your imugiu- 
 ation the sweet smde of the dying one ? — • 
 
 " Who could dwell 
 Unmoved upon the fate of one so young, — 
 So blithesome late ? What marvel if tears fell 
 From that goodfnan, as over her he hung. 
 And that the prayers he said came faltering from his tongv. ; ? 
 X 2
 
 308 LECTURF. TIIIRTEKXTIl. 
 
 " She saw him weep, and she could understand 
 The cause thus tremulously that made him speak. 
 By his emotion moved, she took his hand ; 
 A gleam of pleasure o'er her pallid cheek 
 Pass'd, while she look'd at him with meaning meek, 
 And for a little while, as loth to part. 
 Detaining him, her fingers lank and weak 
 Play'd with their hold ; then, letting him depart. 
 
 She gave him a sloio smile, that touch'd him to the heart. 
 
 " Mourn not for her ; for what hath life to give 
 That should detain her ready spirit here ? 
 Think'st thou that it were worth a wish to live, 
 Could wishes hold her from her proper sphere ? 
 That simple heart, that innocence sincere, 
 The world would stain. Fitter she ne'er could be 
 For the great change ; and, now that change is near, 
 Oh, who would keep her soul from being free ? 
 
 Maiden beloved of Heaven, to die is best for thee ! 
 
 " She hath pass'd away, and on her lips a smile 
 Hath settled, fix'd in death. Judged they aright, 
 Or suffer'd they their fiincy to beguile 
 The reason, who believed that she had sight 
 Of heaven before her spirit took its flight ? — 
 That angels waited round her lowly bed, 
 And that, in that last ert'ort of delight, 
 When, lifting up her dying arms, she said, 
 
 ' I come,' a ray from heaven upon her face was shed ? " 
 
 1 might exhibit yet another phase of Southey's poetry in his humorous 
 pieces. No man lias better shown that one trait of genins, — the carrying 
 forward the feelings of childliood into the powers of manhood : — 
 
 " My days have been the days of joy, 
 .\nd all ni)' paths are jiaths of pleasantness ; 
 And still my heart, as when I was a boy, 
 Doth never know an ebb of cheerfulness. 
 Time, which matures the intellectual part. 
 Hath tinged my hairs with grey, but left untouch'd my heart."' 
 
 Tliis natural and cultivated cheerfulness has vented itself in his jjlayful 
 poetry, to relieve his own exuberant feelings and to gladden his happy 
 household group. There is something (exceedingly fine in hearing him 
 at one time uttering strains that sound from vVrabia, or Gothic Spain, 
 or the wilds of America, or from the magic supernatural caverns under 
 the night of the ocean, — at another time sounding one of those tremend- 
 ous iin[)recations on the head of Buonaparte,— and then to find him
 
 SOUTHET's playful I'OETRT. 309 
 
 writing, from the fulness of a father's heart, poetic stories for liis children. 
 Tliis he deemed part of his vocation ; for, as he sings in one of liis sportive 
 lyrics : — 
 
 " I am laureate 
 To thciu aud the king." 
 
 No man ever clung with deeper or manlier devotion to his household 
 gods. For his childi-en's sake, and for the sake of his own moral nature, 
 he ever kept the young heart alive within him. There was wisdom in 
 t his, as he has shown in the plea that he has appended to one of his 
 wild ballads : — 
 
 " I told my tale of the Holy Thumb, 
 That split the dragou asunder ; 
 And my daughters made great eyes as they heard, 
 Which were full of delight and wonder. 
 
 " With listening lips and looks intent, 
 There sate an eager boy, 
 Who shouted sometimes and clapt his hands, 
 Aud could not sit still for joy. 
 
 " But when I look'd at my mistress' face, 
 
 It was all too grave the while. 
 And when I ceased, methought there was more 
 
 Of reproof than of praise in her smile. 
 That smile I read aright, for thus, 
 
 Reprovingly, said she: — 
 ' Such tales are meet for youthful ears, 
 
 But give little content to me. 
 l''rom thee far rather would 1 hear 
 
 Some sober, sadder lay. 
 Such as I oft have heard, well pleased, 
 
 Before those locks were grey.' 
 
 " ' Nay, mistress mine,' I made reply ; 
 
 ' The autumn hath its flowers, 
 Nor ever is the sky more gay 
 
 Than in its evening hours. 
 That sense which held me back in youth 
 
 From all intemperate gladness. 
 That same good i^istiuct bids me shun 
 
 Unprofitable sadness. 
 Nor marvel you if I prefer 
 
 Of playful themes to sing : 
 The October grove hath brighter tints 
 
 Than summer or than spring ; 
 For o'er the leaves, before they fall, 
 
 Such hues hath nature thrown,
 
 .310 LECTURE XniETEENTH. 
 
 Tliat the woods wear in sunless days 
 
 A sunshine of their own. 
 Why should I seek to call forth tears ? 
 
 The source from whence wc weep 
 Too near the surface lies in youth ; 
 
 In age it lies too deep. 
 
 " ' Enough of foresight sad, too much 
 Of retrospect have I ; 
 And well for me that I sometimes 
 Can put those feelings hy. 
 " ' From public ills and thoughts that else 
 Might weigh me down to earth ; 
 That I can gain some intervals 
 
 For healthful, hopeful mirth.' " 
 
 It only remains for me to show that that spirit of mirth was healthful, 
 — a help to his moral strength, and consistent with a profound spirit of 
 meditation. Let us turn, therefore, to the sublime closing strains of 
 the most spiiitual of his lyrical poems, — tiie noble ode on the portrait 
 of Bishop Heber. They had been friends ; and, when India's saintly 
 bishop was no longer upon the earth, Southcy's heart was strongly stirred 
 as he gazed upon his poi'trait : — 
 
 " O Reginald ! one course 
 Our studies and our thoughts, 
 
 Our aspirations, held. 
 
 * » * * 
 
 We had a bond of union, closely knit 
 In spirit, though in this world's wilderness 
 Apart our lots were cast. 
 
 « « « * 
 
 " iladst thou revisited thy native laud. 
 Mortality, and Time, 
 And Change, must needs have made 
 Our meeting mournful. Happy he 
 Who to his rest is borne. 
 In sure and certain hope, 
 13eforo the hand of age 
 llath chill'd his faculties, 
 Or sorrow reach'd him in his heart of he;. it* ! 
 Most happy if he leave in his good name 
 A light for those who follow him. 
 And in his works a living seed 
 Of good, prolific still ! 
 
 " Yes, to the ( hristian, to the heathen world, 
 llcber, thou art not dead,— thou canst not die,
 
 ODE ON UEBKK. 
 
 311 
 
 Nor can I think of thoc as lost. 
 
 A little jjortion of this little isle 
 
 At first divided us ; then half the glohe ; 
 
 The same earth held \is still ; hut when, 
 
 O Reginald ! wert thou so near as now : 
 
 'T is but the falling of a wither'd leaf. 
 
 The breaking of a shell, 
 
 The rending of a veil ! 
 
 Oh, when that leaf shall fall. 
 That shell be burst, that veil be rent, may then 
 
 My spirit be with thine I "
 
 LECTUEE XIV. 
 
 A CATHOLIC TASTE IN LITERATURE - DIFFICULTIES OF A COUK.SE OK CRITICAL 
 LECTURES— SOUTHEY AND BYRON— THE SPIRIT OF CRITICISM, THE SI'IKIT OF 
 CHARITY-ROGERS'S PLEA FOR BYRONS .MEMORY —POPULARITY OF HIS POETRY 
 —"ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REME^WERS ' — " CHILDE HAROLD"— HIS LOVE 
 OF EXTERN.AL NATURE— FORMATION OF HIS LITER.UtY CHARACTER— ADMIRA 
 TION FOR POPE— SUCCESS OF " CHILDE HAROLD '—HIS ORIEN^TAL TALES— LITE- 
 RATURE OF THE LAST CENTURY— STORY OF BYTION'S MAKRIAGE— NOCl'ES AM 
 BROSIAN.E — CONTRAST BETWEEN THE "CORSAIR" AND THE "PRISONER OF 
 CHILLON "— " THE DREAM "—MATERIALISM IN HIS POETRY— MANFRED— VENICE— 
 THE DYING GLADLVTOR- STRAINS FOR LIBERTY — BEAUTY OF ■WOMANLY HU- 
 MANITY—" SARD.VN-VP.ALUS "—BYRON'S SELFISHNESS— HIS INFIDELITY. 
 
 IN Que of the introductory lectures of this course I took occasion to 
 advert to the importance of cultivating a caf/iolic instc in literature, 
 and, in so doing, gave at least au implied pledge that it should be one of 
 my chief efforts to carry tlie same spirit into what I might wish to say to 
 you on the many and multiform productions of English poetry. A rash 
 or a mock originality lies not within my ambition ; and I have striven 
 bO to govern my voice that it should not convey to your ears old errors 
 or old truisms disguised as startling paradoxes, that you should not turn 
 from my opinions as prejudices or feel a wound given to your own 
 jireposscssions. Indeed, I have desired to introduce into these lectures 
 no more of iny own opinions than the very nature of my position made 
 necessary, and, avoiding the spirit of the judge or the advocate, simply 
 to set before your minds the poets as they have risen in succession on 
 the glorious registry we have been examining, to open and illustrate the 
 liidden nature of their genius, and then to leave you to know and to feel 
 the character and spirit of their poetry. Believing that every ])rofession 
 has its peculiar temptation and peril, and that the professional teacher 
 has most need to be on his guard against the insidious habit of dogma- 
 tizing, I have arrogated no authority for my opinions. Jiut when I have 
 felt assured that they had a root of truth, and brandling aspirations after 
 truth, I have given tlicm utterance, trusting that the sounds awakened 
 by the breath of i)oetic inspiration would prove sounds of truth.
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF CKITICAL LECTURING. 313 
 
 I have refrained from adverting at any time to the difficulties wliioh 
 may attend the prosecution of a course of lectures such as wc have been 
 t;ngaged in, for the simple reason that it belongs to the lecturer alone to 
 measure and meet them, and it is a matter of small moment whether they 
 are appreciated or not by his hearers. One difficulty may be made in 
 some measure an exception to the rule of silence, for partially it is 
 shared by both parties. I mean the difficulty, consequent on a rapid 
 succession of criticisms, of making the requisite transfer of the mind from 
 one subject to another. No one, whether for the purpose of forming a 
 critical opinion or of reading without any thought of criticism, can gahi 
 a real knowledge of an author, and, most of all authors, of a poet, without 
 entering into the spiiit of his writings, be that spirit a right spirit or a 
 wrong spirit. It is almost essential to stand upon his place of vision, and 
 1 hen, when it becomes necessary, to change that for the positionof another 
 poet, — to pass quickly from sympathy with one to sympathy with another, 
 the elements of sympathy being often in all respects different. Let me 
 say, without, I hope, subjecting myself to the imputation of seeking indi- 
 rectly to magnify the labours of my course, the task is no easy one. It 
 l)rings perplexity of mind with it. The transitions must often be sudden 
 and violent : one set of feelings must be laid down and another taken 
 up with a promptness and dexterity which, to employ a familiar illustra- 
 tion, may be likened to the attempt to acconmiodate our raiment to the 
 changes of a fickle climate with its hasty revolutions of heat and cold. 
 L'lach poet of original genius dwells in an atmosphere of his own, and he 
 who seeks to know him must learn to breathe it, whether it be pure or 
 noxious : he must needs live in it for a brief space. 
 
 But I can fancy that some of you are beginning to ask, Why this 
 unwonted preface ? Unwonted, because, whatever sins of tediousness 
 may rest upon me, there has been no introductory loitering; for the 
 first sentence of my lecture has, I believe, for the most part, taken you 
 straightway into the very subject of it. If a different style of introduc- 
 tion is given to the present lecture, it is because in no instance has the 
 transition been so toilsome to my mind. Between the requisite sympathy 
 with the genius of the poet I last parted with, and that with him I am 
 approaching, lies a wide and dreary gulf. What is it that I am passing 
 from ? and what is it I am coming to ? It was but a few days ago that 
 I was dealing with the faithful, pure, single-hearted, cheerful Southcy, 
 whose imagination seemed to have been strengthened and steadied by 
 the resolution in that admirable line, which lias been sounding to my 
 heart since I first found it : — 
 
 " Onward in faith, and lea:e the rest to Heaven ! " —
 
 314 LECTUKE FOURTEENTH, 
 
 SO that, as I followed his footsteps and his flights, I felt that there was 
 a path in wliich as firm a pace might be taken. From this I have to 
 turn away and enter on the faithless, hopeless, wayward, and wondrous 
 career of the darkened and distempered genius of Eyron. I have been 
 guided in the study of the various powers of the poets wlio have gone 
 before, by principles of the nature of poetry, its constituent properties^ 
 and its purposes, in which I have yet found no reason to believe my 
 confidence misplaced. Should they bring me to conclusions, respecting 
 the true measure of Byron's endowments, different from the general 
 estimate that has been formed of them, I cannot believe that his genius 
 transcends the reach of principles that serve for the measui-ement of 
 the poetry of Shakspeare and Spenser and MUton. The aberrations of 
 Byron's talents may perplex and baffle the application of those princi- 
 ])les ; but surely it is better to hold fast to them than, casting them aside, 
 to indulge in indiscriminate panegyrics or indiscriminate censure. If, 
 therefore, the tone of criticism in this lecture should sound differently 
 from what has preceded it, the source of that change may he sought in 
 the nature of the subject. 
 
 There may be among those who are listenhig to me not a few ardent 
 admirers of Lord Byron's poetry ; there may be some — a far smaller 
 number — who find in it ground only for reprobation. To both these 
 this lecture can scarce fail to prove unsatisfactory, but not more than 
 to a third party, — the lecturer himself. If I brought to the task powers 
 of criticism greater than any I can lay claim to, still the discussion 
 must be singularly imperfect, because there are qualities in Byron's 
 poetical character — essential characteristics in tlie very heart of it — 
 which I have not the audacity, even if I had the inclination, to speak 
 of. If, casting off all the restraints instinctively recognised by every — 
 1 will not say only gentleman, but every decent man, — I were to take 
 the fuU scope of his powers and attempt a complete discussion of the 
 subject, men would cry otit " Shame ! " and the cheek of every woman 
 would burn with crimson blushes ; and yet the off"ensive topics would 
 be unexceptionably appropriate to them. I have encountered no such 
 (liflieidty as this before, from the age of old Chaucer down ; for while, 
 indeed, the pages of the elder poets were sometimes defaced by im- 
 purities, the grossness of a gross age, they were extrinsic and, as it 
 were, accidental, and therefore might properly and justly be cast aside 
 as unimportant in the estimate of those jioets. In the present case, 
 however, you cannot escape from the impurities; fori put it to the 
 candour of those who are most thoroughly acquainted with Lord Byron's 
 writings, whether there is one volume of them in which you wiU not
 
 ROGERS's PLEA FOR RTRON'S MEMGKT. 315 
 
 eucourtcr cither iiifidelity, or profanity, or obscenity, or vulgarity, and 
 not unfrequcutly allot' them ? I make this remark, not because I am 
 going on thus to characterize Byron's character, but merely to suggest 
 how much the interest is impaired in the discussion of an author's 
 character when thei-e is impei-ative necessity of passing in silence over 
 some of its prominent features. I have no desire to say harsh things 
 of the poet and to repeat the often-repeated chai'ges against his works. 
 Far more pleasing would be the task of vindicating their errors, and of 
 showing that, like the frailties of Burns, they might be detached so as 
 to leave unimpaired and uncoutaminated the other and better aspirations 
 connected with them. I would gladly seek to save the glory of a true 
 poet ; for each one added to the list, already so rich in names, is so 
 much added to the glory and the value of the literature of our language. 
 I know, too, that the true spirit of criticism is the spirit of charity and 
 of candour ; and, where there are faults which do not enter into the 
 very constitution of an author's mind, it is far better to throw over 
 them the veil of silence and forgetfulness. I am not conscious that the 
 evil spirit of censoriousness has insinuated itself into my course, and 
 trust I shall not be regarded as suffering it now to get the advantage of 
 me. In entering upon some revision of Byron's poems for the prepara- 
 tion of this lecture, I chanced to encounter the touching plea for his 
 memory from the pen of a brother-poet who knew and loved him, that 
 kind-hearted veteran, the poet Rogers : — 
 " He is now at rest ; 
 And praise and blame fall on his ear alike, 
 Now dull in death. Yes, Byron, thou art gone, — 
 Gone like a star that through the firmament 
 Shot, and was lost in its eccentric course, 
 Dazzling, perplexing. 
 
 ****■» 
 
 " If in thy life 
 Not happy, in thy death thou surely wcrt, — 
 Thy wish accomplish'd ; djing in the land 
 Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire, — 
 Dying in Greece, and in a cause so glorious. 
 
 " Thou art gone : 
 And ho who would assail thee in thy grave, — 
 Oh, let him pau.se ! For who among us all, 
 ^ Tried as thou wert even from thy earliest years, 
 When wandnring yet, unspoilt, a Highland boy, — 
 Tried as thou wcrt, and with thy soul of fiame, — 
 Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy check, 
 Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
 
 3IG LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 
 
 Her charmed cup, — ah ! who among us all 
 
 Could say he had not err'd as much and more ? " * 
 
 The feeling which promp'^ed this appeal, and its source, entitled it to 
 a respectful consideration. It would indeed be unmanly and irrational 
 to assail the poet in his grave, especially when we remember his life 
 full of wretchedness and his death-bed clouded with spiritual darkness. 
 But his poems are living things : the sanctity of the grave does not 
 belong to them. They will live, though not in the full vitality of their 
 lirst fame. And equally unmanly and equally irrational appears to me 
 the habit of silencing the voice of even-tempered opinion by the sickly, 
 sentimental commiseration for poor Byron. 
 
 I shall make no attempt, in illustration of my subject, to foUow, 
 regularly, the irregidar course of the poet's life. It is a well-knowii 
 story, from his boyish rambles in the Scottish Highlands, his Loudon life, 
 with aU its metropolita,n pleasures, his adventurous wanderings on the 
 Continent, his years of Italian profligacy, down to the dismal expiring 
 amid tlie marshes of Missolonghi. The annals of English poetry present 
 nothing equal to the popularity which was gained by Lord Byi'on's 
 poetry. It was speedy, it was strong, it was wide-spread, and during 
 his life did not, perhaps, suffer a very serious decline. The literary 
 student well knows that mere popularity does not surely betoken an 
 aliiding fame. In the extraordinary reception of Byron's poetry, I am 
 disposed to think that there is proof of both the poetic virtues and 
 vices which characterize it. How could he have found entrance into so 
 many hearts if he possessed not some of those powers of imagination 
 which sooner or later find their path ? How, on the other hand, is it 
 possible that he could liave found that entrance so speedily, if the strains 
 he was uttering were strains of the loftiest and best poetry ? The world 
 never yet, in any of its ages, has been ready for the prompt and intel- 
 ligent reception of a great poet of original powers. It is not incredible 
 that the fourteen thousand copies of a poem like " The Corsair " might 
 be sold in one day, soon finding more, probably, than that number of 
 readers ; but, when poetry speaks in its mightiest tones, — those which 
 liave an echo of eternity in them, — the one living generation of man- 
 kind to whom they are addressed docs not, the first moment, the first 
 month, or the first year, open its lieart to the sounds. Poetry which is 
 addressed to the feelings, the fancy, and the imagination, in some of its 
 lighter moods, is listened to and admired in its earliest hour ; but that 
 jjoetry for which fame, as distinguished from mere popularity, is in store, 
 • " Italy."
 
 ENGLISH BARBS AND SCOTCH KEVIEWEKS. 317 
 
 as surely as it cojues from the depths of the poet's soul, so surely it 
 travels slowly, often toilsomely, sinking into the deep places of the souls 
 of men, — its resting-place for ages. A brilliant and rapid popularity 
 dazzles and misleads the judgment : a rocket-lire will leap up into the 
 heavens, outshining and outstripping the stars, while the steady orb of 
 a planet — its golden urn flUed at the fountain of the sun — is climbing, 
 imperceptibly and noiselessly, up the eastern region of the firmament. 
 The memory of an author's popularity— the recollection of the feebngs 
 with which he was once read — will continue to mislead. If, for instance, 
 any one desii'e to form a safe and permanent opinion of Byron's poetry, 
 let me warn him not to trust to the impressions remaining from former 
 intercourse with it ; but, examining it anew, more calmly, more cau- 
 tiously, and, if possible, with a judgment fortified by the study of those 
 masters of English song whose fame is undisputed, and then, but not 
 till then, whatever conclusion he may arrive at, will it be his right to 
 speak with coulidence. 
 
 The juvenile poems which introduced Lord Byron into literary life 
 gave little promise of his future career, and have their chief interest in 
 indirectly leading to his next publication, — one of a widely-difi'erent 
 character, — the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." The con- 
 temptuous treatment of his youthful verses by the " Edinburgh Review '' 
 wounded him deeply, and helped to injure a mind easily swayed by any 
 untoward influence. He felt a consciousness of more poetic power 
 than he had been able to express, which made him more sensitive to the 
 wrong and more ready to seek his revenge. The satirical poem he was 
 thus prompted to write served to fix on his character that splenetic and 
 malevolent liabit which it became more and more his delight to indulge 
 in ; and, in this instance, the shaft which had pierced him seems so to 
 have poisoned his heart, that he rushed forth to scatter his darts in an 
 indiscriminate warfare abke upon reviewers and his brother-poets. It 
 was the beginning of a system of hostilities such as no poet ever waged 
 before. Dryden and Pope had each of them laid a heavy hand upon 
 the poetasters and scribblers of their times ; but never before Byron 
 was a poet found who could seek to soil with bitter and contemptuous 
 insults the fair fame of his contemporaries, whose merits he was con- 
 strained, in some chance moods of better feelings, to recognise. His 
 youthful satire was a bold assault upon the citadel of criticism, and 
 served, no doubt, to prompt a very ready attention to his next work, 
 his first important poem and the one on which his general reputation 
 chiefly rests, — " The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold." 
 
 The first and second cantos of " Childe Harold " appeared, it will be
 
 318 LECTURE FOUETKENTH. 
 
 remembered, some years earlier than the third and fourth ; and, as they 
 gave him rank as a poet, let us brieily notice their relation to his 
 personal life . ^Vben Byron reached the limit of manhood, he had already 
 run. no short distance in his unbridled race of self-indulgence. He 
 revelled in the voluptuousness of the looser portion of the British 
 aristocracy ; and no wonder, therefore, that, to apply to him the words 
 of one of his own dramas, he was full of pride, — 
 
 " And the deep passions fiercely foster'd by 
 The uses of patricians." 
 
 He was not in habits of healthy intercourse with his fellow-beings. 
 The love of external nature, which became a passion with him, and which 
 he himself regarded, probably, as the predominant trait of his genius, 
 does not seem to have been developed by the famUiar prospect of his 
 own country. It was rather awakened by the more active stimulant of 
 the strange scenery presented by foreign travel. Previously his com- 
 munion with nature — that precious discipline for the poet's mind — was 
 little more than in the way of some of the strenuous bodily exercises, 
 the favourite and most innocent modes of excitement in which he 
 luxuriated, — the delight, for instance, of wrestling with the bUlows of 
 the sea, " borne, like its bubbles, onward," — or, as he has somewhere 
 said in a figure which seems an image of his life, with no mastery over 
 his passions, but hurried a helpless thing, wherever their tides might 
 drift him, — 
 
 " Swept like a weed upon the ocean waves ! " 
 
 The passionate pleasure of a lusty swimmer was a real emotion Avith 
 him, — an active emotion too, and not, like many of his feelings, unreal 
 and ending in empty and morbid affectations. The thought of it coming 
 over his mind had the power — for this was a thing of truth — to kindle 
 his imagination into the finest description ]50ctry has perhaps ever given 
 of a swimmer's intense and earnest delight. It occurs in one of liis 
 tragedies, and will be found a passage of more genuine poetry than the 
 more celebrated apostroplie to tlie ocean at the close of " Childe Harold." 
 It is superior both in imagination and expression: — • 
 
 " IIow many a time have I 
 Cloven, with arm still lustier, breast more daring, 
 The wave all rou^hcn'd with a swimmer's stroke ; 
 Flini^inff the billows back from my drcnch'd hair 
 And laughinf5 from my lip the audacious brine 
 Which kiss'd it like a wine-cup, rising o'er 
 Tlie waves as they arose, and prouder still 
 The loftier they uplifted me ; and oft,
 
 U\KO> S WANT Oi" STUDY. 319 
 
 In wantonness of spirit, plunging down 
 Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making 
 My way to shells and seaweeds, all unseen 
 By those above, till they wax'd fearful ; then, 
 Returning with my grasp full of such tokens 
 As show'd that I had search'd the deep, exultiug 
 With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep 
 The long-snspcnded breath, again I spurn'd 
 The foam that broke aroumi me, and pursued 
 My track like a sea-bird. I was a boy then." 
 
 This is a description full of imagination and truth, and well describing 
 the poet's o\\ti active communion with nature and the elements. 
 
 It is a consideration, in examining a poet's character, not to be over- 
 looked, how far his natural endoAvments have been cultivated b_v study 
 of the principles of his art as exemplified in the approved productions 
 of his predecessors. This cultivation no one, no matter what may be his 
 native gifts, can venture to despise ; indeed, the greater his powers the 
 more valuable is such discipliue, for it seems to chasten and to strengthen, 
 without the peril of servility of imitation. Every one of the greatest 
 poets in our language, holding an independent and majestic attitude of 
 originality, yet deemed it a worthy thing to study with a docile spirit 
 the inspirations of the mighty bards who had gone before. In the 
 formation of Byron's literary character this cultivation was grievously 
 wanting. His knowledge derived from books was no more than the 
 casual results of the light and piu-poseless reading of a gentleman of 
 the ordinary degree of accomplishment. Neither his habits of study, 
 nor his attainments, were calculated to invigorate his intellectual or 
 imaginative faculties. His acquaintance with English poetry was by 
 no means extensive, and his tastes singularly contracted. Of Chaucer 
 his only mention is in terms of strong and supercilious — and, let me add, 
 ignorant — contempt. There is no evidence of familiarity with either 
 Spenser, or Shakspeare, or Milton, and, indeed, proof that his sympathy 
 with their immortal works was small and sluggish. They had no place 
 in his affections. Now, some may be inclined to discover in this signs 
 of Byi-on's power and his originality ; but the history of the minds of 
 his most illustrious predecessors is an insuperable obstacle to all this 
 sophistry. Besides, this imperfect and careless cidtivatiou led to no sucli 
 independence. It did lead to literary bigotry and intolerance, narrow 
 tastes, and acrimonious opposition to whatever thwarted them. His 
 critical opinions were often so perversely pecidiar, that we miglit rather 
 attribute them to his habitual recklessness of truth, were there not 
 sufficient reason to believe him sincere in them. What but the doir-
 
 320 LECTUKE FOrETEENTlI. 
 
 niatisiu of a half-educatod and ill-discipliued mmd could Sfjeak in suc'i 
 words as these, to be found in one of Byron's prose pieces 'f — " I woidd 
 no more say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare and MUton, than 
 I would, in the mosque (once St. Sophia's), that Socrates was a greater 
 man than Mohammed. But, if any great natural or national convulsion 
 could or would sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earthy 
 and leave only that after all the most living of human things, a dead 
 language, to be studied and read and imitated by the wise of future and 
 far generations, ujion foreign shores, — if English literature should be- 
 come the learning of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary 
 fashions, and national pride and prejudices, — an Englishman, anxious 
 that the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such a 
 thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the preservation of 
 Shakspeare and Milton ; but the surviving world would snatch Pope 
 from the wreck and let the rest sink with the people. He is the moral 
 poet of all civilization ; and, as such, let us hope that he will one day 
 be the national poet of mankind." Was there ever such extravagance r 
 Shakspeare and Milton sinking with the people, and Pope, snatched by 
 the surviving world from the abyss of perishing England, be the national 
 poet of the whole Imman race ! But, so far was Byron's want of 
 cultivation from increasing his originality by separating hira from 
 other influences, that it was the very cause which impaired it ; for, un- 
 armed with settled principles of his art, no one more frequently lapsed 
 into unconscious imitations of his contemporaries, — the very poets 
 whom he reviled, but from whose influences he could not wholly isolate 
 himself. It was this, too, which may explain the changeable character 
 of his poetry. One while you meet with what may be pronounced 
 uncontrolled poetic inspiration ; another while it becomes with him a 
 tiling of mere art. His mind seems to have reeled from one system to 
 another, and never caught a steady view of the principle that poetry is 
 both an inspiration and an art, demanding, therefore, natural endowment 
 and studious cultivation. No art could ever give the poet's creative, 
 shaping faculty of imagination; but equally true is it that no great 
 poet has ever safely ventured to approach the principles of his art lightly 
 and carelessly. Strange indeed would it be if that, the most precious 
 talent intrusted to man, should multiply without the laborious cultiva- 
 tion which is a law to fallen humanity. The primal curse is upon the 
 poet not less than on other men. He must labour in his vocation ; for 
 the last sounds of spontaneous poetry, — the instinctive imaginations, 
 the natural melodies which made happy the heart of tlie new-created 
 man,— passed away witli the last gales that blew over Eden.
 
 SUCCESS OF CIITLUE HAROLD. 321 
 
 The merit of " Childe Harold" lies in the latter cantos ; and, on turninn; 
 at the present day to those which formed the first publication of the 
 poem, the reader cannot there find the brilliant success, which instantly 
 welcomed it, justified. "I woke," said Byron, "one morning and found 
 myself famous." He had made his name known by his earlier poems ; 
 he now had newly returned from his foreign travels in Spain and Greece. 
 Just entered into manhood, — a peer, — distinguished, too, for his per- 
 sonal beauty, — he had succeeded in throwing an air of romance around 
 himself which was greatly increased by a mystical correspondence with 
 the fictitious personage of the poem. There were flashes of scepticism 
 and misanthropy which heightened the fascination ; for they seemed 
 strangely to accord with the feelings of a young nobleman, surrounded by 
 wealth and fashion, returning from travels full of enterprise and an 
 activity undiminished by luxurious habits of sensuality, — returning to 
 take his seat in the House of Lords and to publish a poem which had 
 been conceived and executed in distant lands. There were all the 
 elements of a speedy and unbounded popularity. The form of the 
 poem — travels in poetry — was attractive ; and, making no demand upon 
 the reader for any great sympathetic effort of imagination or reflection, 
 it is not surprising that it Avas at once read and admired by thousands. 
 The finest passages in the early cantos are those which were inspired 
 upon the soil of Greece. The young poet's emotions awakened there 
 were strong, and they were real ; and with such impulse his imagination 
 rises to a vivid vision of the ancient battle-field: — • 
 
 " First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, 
 
 As on the morn, to distant glory dear. 
 
 When Marathon became a magic word, 
 
 Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear 
 The camp, the host, the flight, the conqueror's career ! 
 
 " The flj"ing Mede, his shaftless, broken bow; 
 The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear ; 
 Mountains above, earth's, ocean's plains below. 
 Death in the f.ont, destruction in the rear ! — 
 Such was the scene. What now remaineth here ? 
 What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground, 
 Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear .' — 
 The rifled urn, the violated mound, 
 
 The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger, spurns around." 
 
 In quick succession followed the Oriental Tales, every way fitted to 
 sustain and increase the poet's popularity, not less by passages of bril- 
 liant poetry than by the dazzling melodramatic effect resulting from the 
 frameworks of the poems, the pomp and circumstance of Eastern life, 
 
 T
 
 322 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 
 
 with names and ^TOl•ds knoM'n only in fanciful associations, — these, the 
 accidents, as 1 niaj^ call them, the costume and scenery, greatly enliauce 
 the interest of these productions. They fostered Eyron's propensity to 
 deal with exaggerations of depravity, — the moral monsters, like his 
 Corsair, " linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes." Surely it was 
 a small game for one gifted like Byron to be playing over again the 
 exploded extravagancies of the sickly romantic novel, by once more 
 bringing forward that unnatural, unmeaning race of imaginary beings, — 
 the sentimental villains. It had grown to be ridiculous in those prose 
 lictions which, imitating humanity so abominably, had given ^vay before 
 the true and maidier novel of the Waverley school ; but literary heresies, 
 like v/orn-out heresies in the church, often revive in a new disguise, to 
 be again welcomed by a morbid and uuchasteued taste, the appetite that 
 feeds on criminal records and the dying confessions of murderers, and 
 stories of inhuman and superhuman atrocity. The stock-players in the 
 worthless novels and romances which filled the circulating libraries of 
 the last century were bravos and bandits and assassins ; and Lord Byron 
 should have known that fictions, whether in prose or verse, with such 
 heroes, were the meanest elibrts of imagination, and addressed to a vulgar 
 as well as an undisciplined spii-it. It was a pitifid tiling for a man to 
 jjaudcr to and stimulate such tastes. 
 
 It lias been my determination to have in this lecture as little to do as 
 possible with Lord Byron's personal character, and to advert to it only 
 when absolutely necessai'y, and where it is illustrative of the spirit of his 
 writings. He has mingled the story of his marriage with his poetry. 
 It was no strange thing that that marriage was an unliappy one. There 
 was little, if any, love in it. It was one of those cool connections more 
 common in a highly-artificial state of society than, happily, they are 
 among us. I do not mean to say much about it ; not that there can be 
 doubt to whom the rupture and final separation were owing. The specific 
 causes of it have not been revealed ; but I want nothing more to satisfy 
 me where the guilt lay, than a few incidents that are known. The story 
 of Byron's life, as told by his friend and apologist, convicts him of that 
 which is a man's most unmanly and pitiful habit, — quarrelling with the 
 women. If any blind idolater of the poet can find in his heart to palliate 
 this dark spot, let him only contrast the conduct of the parties. Lady 
 Byron, with a womanly fortitude, preserving on the causes of their 
 separation an indomitable silence, which cannot be too highly respected : 
 he — the man with less than a man's sense of honour — assailing the 
 mother of his child Avith published verses, an unnatural compound of 
 sentiment and satire, proclaiming his boastful resolution never to touch
 
 byron'.s domestic infelicity. 323 
 
 a shilling of his wife's fortune, and then breaking through his vain 
 determination hy grasping all that he could reach of it, — sentimentalizing 
 about liis daughter, and then plunging into a career of debauchery which 
 left to that daughter the blackest of all legacies, — the memory of a 
 parent's worst guilt. 
 
 This epoch of Byron's life I touch upon chiefly for the sake of noticing 
 some of the matchless sophistry which has been employed in his apology. 
 The biography of the poet was intrusted to an amiable and accomplished 
 brother-poet, a writer overflowing with that fanciful style of feeling, 
 atyled " se>ii!ime>/fa/ifj/." According to Moore's theory, what was the 
 cause of BjTon's matrimonial infelicity ? His genius. For the sake of 
 veiling the moral deformities of the noble poet, the biographer has raised 
 a cloud of gaudy sophistry which casts a shade upon the grandest 
 endowments of the human intellect. He would teach the dangerous 
 fallacy that there is a dreary gulf between poetic power and domestic 
 virtue and happiness ; that genius of the higher order is a wild thing, 
 " not to be tamed and domesticated in society ; " that it must dwell in 
 what he calls " the lonely laboratory of self : " to take up his words, 
 that "genius ranks but low among the elements of social happiness; 
 that, in general, the brighter the gift the more disturbing its influence, 
 and that in married life particularly its effects have been too often like 
 that of the ' wormwood star,' whose light filled the waters on which it 
 fell with bitterness." " It is," he adds, " a coincidence no less striking 
 than saddening, that on the list of married poets who have been unhappy 
 in their homes there should already be found such illustrious names as 
 Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, and Drydeu, and that we should now have 
 to add as a partner in their destiny a name worthy of being placed beside 
 the greatest of them, — Lord Byron." 
 
 A passage like this calls for remark, not only for its owii sake, but 
 because it is a specimen of the systematic sentimental sophistry that 
 has been woven around Lord Byron's mcmoiy. There is an evil spirit 
 at work in it, confounding the sense of right and wrong, defacing and 
 mutilating the landmarks of virtue and vice : — " fair is foul, and foul is 
 fair." The doctrine is deliberately taught that the higher a man's 
 intellectual powers, the further they are rcMnoved from the best elements 
 of his moral being ; that tlie qu;ditics of the head and the heart travel 
 in difl'erent and opposite roads. It is the old and shallow but not 
 obsolete fidlacy that genius is privileged to claim exemption from moral 
 obligation ; as if a human being were any the less a man because he is 
 a poet ! — a lawlessness wliicli no tridy great poet ever dreamed of 
 arrogating. It is the fatal sophistry which would divorce genius froiii 
 
 y 2
 
 321 LECTURE FOURTEENTU. 
 
 its natural alliance -with all that is good and noble and spiritual, and 
 drive it to batten with the base, the selfish, and sensual. Moore brought 
 to his argument all the force of his brilliant fancj' ; but it has been swept 
 away by an answer, full not only of fancy but of truth, which was called 
 forth in one of that remarkable scries of papers, the " Nudes Ambrosi- 
 auee," * — witty, imaginative, and thoughtful. The vindication of genius 
 and its capacity for domestic happiness is put in the mouth of the 
 Ettrick Shepherd ; and, after a careful refutation, it closes with this 
 glowing prose rhapsody : — 
 
 " I have read Shakspeare and Milton many thousand times ; and. 
 Master Moore, you had no right, sir*, by your ipse dixit to place Byron 
 by the side of them two, — the greatest of all the children of men : he 
 must sit, in all his glory, far down beneath their feet." And then, as 
 10 the domestic virtues : — " Why, it is in the power of any one man of 
 the higher order of genius — say poetical genius — to lavish, in the pro- 
 digality of his soul, more love on his wife during any one day — ay, any 
 one hour — than it is in the capacity of a blockhead to bestow on his 
 during fifty years, beginning with the first blink of the honeymoon and 
 ending with the last hour that falls upon her coffin. Oh, what a fearful 
 lieap of passion can the poet cram into one embrace — one kiss — oiu; 
 smile — one look — one wliisper — one word — towards the partner of his 
 life, the mother of his weans ! What though the poet's marriage-life 
 be sometimes stormy ? — what though sometimes 
 
 ' Blackness comes across it like a squall 
 Darkening the sea' .-' 
 
 V<!t who can paint the glory and tlie brightness of the celestial calm, when 
 the world of tliem two — of him and his wife — may be likened to the 
 ocean and all her isles in the breezy sunshine, and them two, themselves 
 to consort-ships steering along with all their sails and all their streamers 
 — no fear of shoals or lee-shore rocks — on, on, on, together, towards the 
 Y haven of everlasting rest among the regions of the setting sun ! Or 
 when it may be likened — that is, the world of them two, of him and his 
 wife — to the blue lift all a-lilt with laverocks, and themselves, too, like 
 consort-clouds, now a wee way apart., and now melting into one another, 
 pursued by eyes looking up from below along their sky-course, of 
 wliicli the goal is set, by God's own hand, far away among the stars 
 of heaven ! " 
 
 Byrou, his home desolate and his popularity followed by public odium, 
 left his native land, never to revisit it. He found a dwelling for a time 
 in the region of the Alps, and then passed into Italy ; and this was the 
 * Blackwood's Magazine.
 
 THE DREAM. 32-5 
 
 period of his best poetry. Tlie tumultuous passions which had agitated 
 him not long before subsided into a gentler feeling tban marked any 
 other portion of his life. The tempest which had driven him from liis 
 domestic mooring was followed by a fitful calm. It is worthy of rc- 
 * flection that, in this mood of mind, his imagination displayed more 
 true power than in the seasons of its false and morbid energy. The one 
 Mas the vigour of health, the other, the force of fever. The mock and 
 exaggerated sentiment which lie dallied with in so many of his poems 
 made room for that which was genuine patbos. This will be understood 
 by all who are familiar with Byron's poetry, — and I am this evening 
 calcidating peculiarly on a general familiarity with the subject of the 
 lecture, — it will be understood by suggesting to your recollections 
 the contrast between "The Corsair" and that beautiful poem, "The 
 Prisoner of ChiUon." To this period also belongs one of his pieces 
 which seems to me to display more of genuine imagination, more chaste 
 and better sustained, than any poem he has left. 1 refer to that entitled 
 '• The Dream." The marked years of his life are brought together by 
 a fine imaginative effort, which blends also, with admirable effect, the 
 actual aud the spiritual. There is nothing counterfeit in it. The lights 
 and shadows, glimmer and gloom, pass over the spirit of this dream, with 
 all the reality of truth and imagination. The descriptions are worthy 
 of all praise. How pei-fectly picturesque is the Eastern scene ! — 
 " A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
 The boy was sprung to manhood : in the wilds 
 Of fiery climes ho made hiin.self a home. 
 And his soul drank their sunbeams ; he was girt 
 With strange and dusky aspects ; he was not 
 Himself like what he had been ; on the sea ' 
 
 And on the shore he was a wanderer ; 
 There was a mass of many images 
 Crowded like waves upon me ; but he was 
 A part of all : and in the last he lay 
 Reposing from the noontide sultriness, 
 Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade 
 Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names 
 Of those who rear'd them ; by his sleeping side 
 Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds 
 Were fasten'd near a fountain ; and a man 
 Clad in a flowing Rarb did watch the while, 
 While many of his tribe slumhcr'd around ; 
 And they were canopied by the blue sky, 
 So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful. 
 That God alone was to be seen in heaven \ " 
 It was now, too, that the poet's love of cxtenial nature expanded
 
 326 LECTUKE FOUKTEENTII. 
 
 more. No poet ever enjoyed finer or more various opportunities of com- 
 munion with the earth and the elements. He was a denizen of ocean 
 and of lake, 'of Alpiiie regions and of Greek and Italian plains. He 
 had a poet's quick susceptibility to the tumultous sublimity and the 
 placid beauty of the world of sense that smrounded him. There were 
 times when his heart was open to these natural influences, so that there 
 arose the true poetic sympathy between the inner world of spirit and the 
 outer world of sense. The finest passages of the " Cliilde Harold " are 
 those in which nature had her will with this wayward child : — 
 
 " Cloav, placid Lcinan ! thy contrasted lake, 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a tiling 
 Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
 Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 
 This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 
 To waft mc from distraction. Once I loved 
 Torn Ocean's roar; but thy soft murmuring 
 Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved 
 
 That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. 
 
 " It is the hush of night, and all between 
 The margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, 
 Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, 
 Save darkun'd Jura, whose capt heights appear 
 Precipitously steep ; and, drawing near. 
 There breatlies a living fragrance from the shore. 
 Of flowers yet fresh with childhood ; on the ear 
 Drops the light drip of the suspended oar. 
 
 Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. 
 « « * « * 
 
 The sky is changed !— and such a change ! O night, 
 And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 
 Yet lovely in your sti-ength, as is the light 
 Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along. 
 From peak to peak the rattling crags among, 
 Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, 
 But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
 And Jura answers, through her misty shroud. 
 Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud ! 
 
 ' And this is in the night. Most glorious night! 
 Thou wert not sent for slumber ! Let me be 
 A .sharer in thy fierce and free delight,— 
 A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 
 How the lit lake shines,— a phosphoric sea, 
 And the big rain comes dancing to the earth i 
 And now again 't is black."
 
 MATERIALISM OF CYUON's POETRY. 327 
 
 I wt)ulcl g-ludly break the quotation here, iu the middle of tlie stanza, 
 in order not to brealc the impression of a passage of such true i)'.)etry, 
 which I would always wish to leave unimpaired ; but (it vexes nic to be 
 obliged to use this qualifying particle but) there follows a striking 
 exemplification of those tumid exaggerations which are the weakness 
 mingled with the poet's power : — ■ 
 
 " And now the glee 
 Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth. 
 As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth." 
 
 The love of nature with Byron was passionate rather than either 
 thoughtfid or imaginative : 
 
 " A fcolincj, and a love. 
 That had no need of a remoter charm 
 By thought supplied, nor any interest 
 Unborrow'd from the eye." 
 
 He knew, however, that it was necessary to make it something more, 
 — tliat a great descriptive poet cannot rest contented with what is an 
 appetite and a rapture. One of poetry's grandest purposes — the show- 
 ing how the external world and the mind of man fitted to each other — was 
 before him. His strong poetic mstincts struggled towards it, but the 
 moral weakness of his genius perverted and lowered his asj)irations. 
 The blindness of idolatry came over him ; the world of sight and sound 
 became a divinity to him. That which was intended for only the means 
 for higher ends became all in all to him. The material world, whicli its 
 Creator formed to minister food not only to our bodily wants but to the 
 imaginative appetites, which feed on the grand and beautiful that meet 
 the senses, hemmed his faithless spirit in, not because of its strength, 
 which many have mistaken its turbulence for, but because of its weak- 
 ness. In this I do not fear to say the imagination of Byron failed : it 
 had not strength to extricate itself from the sophistries of materialism. 
 The strong passion for nature with whicli he was doubtless gifted, the 
 moment he strove to make it anything more tiiau a passion, spent itself 
 in misty, cloudy rhapsodies, meaningless of everything but the old errors 
 of a sensual philosophy. The days of fascination gone by, it is time to 
 understand that when Byron's poetry begins to utter materialism, it 
 begins to utter folly, and then it ceases to be poetry, for poetry is allied 
 to wisdom and madness. The poet had set up for his worship an idol as 
 helpless as the headless trunk of Dagon. Quenching the true and 
 spiritual love of nature, he talked of making the mountains his friends, 
 and boasted that it was man's noblest companionship ; but his heart told 
 him, " Miserable friends arc ye." It was his pride to love earth only for
 
 328 LECTURE rOL'ETEEIsTn. 
 
 its "earthly sake," and to talk unnicaiiiiigly of becoming " a portion of 
 that around i,im,'' of " high mountains being a feeling to him" and that he 
 could see 
 
 " Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be 
 A link reluctant in that tleshly chain, 
 Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, 
 And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain 
 Of ocean, and the stars, mingle, and not in vain. 
 
 ' ' And when at length the mind shall be all free 
 
 From what it hates in this degraded form, 
 
 Keft of its carnal life, save what shall be 
 
 Existent happier in the fly and worm, — 
 
 Where elements to elements conform 
 
 And dust is as it sliould be, — shall I not 
 
 Feel all I see, less dazzling but more warm ? 
 
 The bodiless thought, — the spirit of each spot, — 
 Of which even now I share at times the immortal lot ? " 
 
 Now, strip this, and the multitude of passages like it in Byron's 
 poems, of all that is fantastic ; measure it, as you please, either by the 
 practical rules of common sense, or by the ethereal standard of the im- 
 agination, and what is it but the perplexity and the folly of materialism ? 
 What natural instinct is there, let me ask, so strong in the human heart 
 as that which recoils from the dread anticipation that this living flesh 
 of ours, or the cherished features of those that are dear to us, will be 
 fed upon by worms in the grave r — a thought that would crush us down 
 in helpless abasement but for the one bright hope beyond. And then 
 to think of a poet exulting in the prospect of that remnant of his ciu-nal 
 life " existent happier in the worm " ! When Byron is honoui-ed as the 
 great poet of nature, 1 wish you to understand where he will lead 
 his disciple and where he ■will desert him. The material world has high 
 and appropriate uses in the building up of a moral being : Ihe study of 
 it in the right spirit is full of instruction, but worthless and perilous if 
 we lose sight of the great truth of the soul's .spiritual sujircmacy over 
 it, — that there is implanted in each human being an undying particle, 
 destined to outlive not this earth alone, but the universe. The poet 
 sent his materialized imagination to roam over the world of sense, ocean, 
 and mountain, seeking what the world could not give. " Where shall 
 irisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding ? The depth saith. 
 It is not in me ; and the sea saith. It is not with w/e." * 
 
 The frailty of Byron's imaginaticm is betrayed not only in his abandon- 
 ment of the spiritual principle wiihin him, instead of subordinating the 
 » Job, chap. XXVI. 2.
 
 MARATHON — VENICE. 329 
 
 world of sense to it, but also in the inability to aecomplish what he 
 undertook, of imaginatively identifying himself with the material objects 
 around him. This is a prime function of the faculty of imagination : — 
 to fuse together things in their nature different, giving them a har- 
 monious existence and making them as one. Remember how the passion 
 with which Shakspeare invests any of his creations shapes and colours 
 all it touches. When Byron labours to combine his own personal feel- 
 ings with the influences of nature, he throws the elements together, but 
 for the most part leaves them unmingled and in confusion. You find 
 \inconnected and incongruous sentiments, — the admiration of earth's 
 loftiest scenes, witli morbid and restless social passions : indeed, so 
 incoherent docs his imagination become that the chief element in liis 
 love of nature is hatred of mankind. The most strenuous effort of his 
 imagination was the dramatic poem " Manfred," where he shapes into a 
 visible form the beauty of inanimate foam, — the apparition of the 
 beautiful witch of the Alps rising from the sunlit spray of the cataract. 
 There is a passage in one of Byron's poems forming a splendid exception 
 to the absence of the perfect combining power of imagination in so much 
 of his descriptive poetry. It has the unaifected reality of true poetic 
 sublimity in all the simplicity of imaginative truth. The lofty range of 
 ir.ountains, the history-hallowed battle-ground, the vast space of the 
 ocean, are all vivified with the deep emotion of the one human being 
 standing in the midst of them. The associating harmonizing energy of 
 the poetic faculty blends all the elements in perfect union: — 
 
 " The ?noiintams look on Marathon, 
 
 And Marathon looks on the sea ; 
 And, musing there an hour alone, 
 
 I drcam'd that Greece might still be free ; 
 For, standing on the Persian's grave, 
 I could not deem myself a slave. 
 
 " A king sat on the rocky brow, 
 
 Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
 And ships by thousands lay below, 
 
 And men in nations ; all wore his ! 
 He countea them at break of day ; 
 And, when the sun set, where were they ? " 
 
 Italy opened to the poet her ancient cities and her glorious works of 
 sculpture, painting, and architecture ; and, in this world of art, his 
 imagination expatiated with more power and thought than in the world 
 of nature. He stood in tl.e Adriatic City, and its ancient splendour 
 rose to his vision . —
 
 fiSO LECTUEE FOTJKTEENTir. 
 
 " A thousand years thoir cloudy wings expand 
 
 Around me, and a dying^ glory smiles , 
 
 O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
 
 Look'd to the winged lion's marble piles, 
 Where Venice sat in state, throned ca her hundred isles ! " 
 
 lie belield t/ie Eternal City, the 
 
 " Childless and erownless, in her voiceless woe, 
 An empty urn within her wither'd hands, 
 AVhose holy dust was scattcr'd long ago." 
 
 He gazed upon llie marble of the world-renowned Apollo : — 
 
 " The lord of the unerring bow. 
 The god of life and poesy and light, — 
 The sun in human limbs array "d, and brow 
 All radiant from his triumph in the figlit : 
 The shaft hath just been shot, — the arrow bright 
 With an immortal vengeance ; in his eye 
 And nostril beautiful disdahi, and might. 
 And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
 Developing in that one glance the. deity." 
 
 He mused within the Coliseum ; and, though mingling with his 
 nuisings the spite of his petty quarrels, his weak hatred of man, and 
 the worse and weaker hatred of woman, — the swelling subterfuge of 
 moral littleness, — yet rising to the rapt vision of the dying athlete : — 
 
 " I see before me the gladiator lie : 
 
 He leans upon his hand ; his manly brow 
 
 Consents to death, but conquers agony ; 
 
 And his droop'd head sinks gradually low. 
 
 And through his side the last drops, ebbing .slow, 
 
 From the red gash fall heavy, one by one, 
 
 Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
 
 The arena swims around him : he is gone 
 Ere ceased the inhuman .shout that hail'd the wretch who won. 
 
 " He heard it, but he heeded not ; his eyes 
 
 Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
 
 He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, 
 
 But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
 
 There were his young l)arbarians, all at play ; 
 
 There was their Daciau mother, he, their sire, 
 
 Butcher'd to make a Uoinau holiday ; 
 
 All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he e.Kpire, 
 And unavenged ? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire! " 
 
 In this instance, tlie poet's morbid fecilings passed into a pure channel, 
 — the thought of his own separation from his child aw uk(ming, no doubt.
 
 STRAIKS roR LIBERTY. 331 
 
 a fine syiiipatliy with the gladiator's dismal dying emotions foi' his young 
 l)arbarians ou the distant Danu!)e. 
 
 Passing from Byron's claims as the poet of nature, he has been styled 
 the poet of freedom. Spirited lines have burst from him on this 
 theme :— 
 
 " Yet, Freedom ! j'ct thy baiinev, torn but flying, 
 Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind ; 
 Th)' trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying. 
 The loudest still, the tempest leaves behind." ^ 
 
 He harped upon the lost liberties of Italy and Greece, and the living 
 liberties of America. Let us look, before rashly welcoming the alliance. 
 The love of freedom with Byron was a sentiment, but it had no depth 
 beyond that ; and, when you come to analyze it carefully, its elements 
 are misanthropy aud lawlessness. I never hear his tributes to our 
 institutions quoted, without an instinctive regret that any countryman 
 of mine should, in his avidity for foreign flattery, be thus deluded. 
 The name of Washington is met with more than once in Byron's poems 
 in terms of praise : that name is beyond the reach of contamination ; 
 but still I recoij, as if it were profaned, when I contrast the manly, 
 dutiful, genuine spirit of freedom in which he was nursed, with the 
 spurious, fitful, sentimental licentiousuess of the poet. When the 
 tribute of a foreigner is rendered to our country or its men, I wish first 
 to know whether that foreigner's heart is true to his own country, aud 
 not poisoned with a counterfeit liberality and a morbid hostility to that 
 which nature and wisdom and truth all bid him hold dear. When a 
 man like Southey points to this country as the land 
 
 " Where Washutgton hath lejt 
 His awful memory 
 A light to after-times ! " 
 
 the tribute is worth something. But the spirit of freedom which 
 gave that light could not be truly reverenced by one whose heart had 
 grown hard in aristocratic licentiousness ; who, rumiing the wild career 
 of profligacy, sought the last stimulant of his morbid tastes in the 
 sentimental luxury of a romantic crusade. 
 
 " The sensual and the dark rebel in vain ; " 
 and I deny the sincerity of Byron's professions and his power of know- 
 ing a genuine freedom, from the whole story of his life and mind. Thi; 
 true and the manly part was not a share in petty Italian tumults or in 
 Greek revolutions, but to hold the responsible post at which his birth 
 had placed him ; for if, as he proclaimed, the liberties of England were
 
 332 LECTURE FOUETEEXTH. 
 
 in dan2:er, the plainer and the stronger was it tlie duty of one gifted like 
 him to battle for them to the last. That would have been indeed true 
 euergy, instead of its gaudy counterfeit in his sentimental recreancy. 
 
 If Lord Byron's descriptions of nature and his sense of freedom were 
 imperfect and unequal, his portraiture of human characters is marked 
 with the same imperfections. His imagination could not rise above the 
 range of his own individual and morbid impulses. All his creations 
 were of the same family, and all imaginatively kindred to himself, — 
 impersonations of the same moral disease iu some or other of its forms, 
 and all betrayed a woeful, wilful ignorance of the better elements of 
 human nature. Coloured by the poet's vivid fancy, they passed for 
 heroes ; but strip them of their disguise, their playhouse llnery, and 
 there is not one among them who rises — I will not say to the heroi(! 
 standard, but — even to the level of real manliness. How opposite, it 
 has been well said,* was Shakspeare's conception of a hero ! 
 
 " Give me that man 
 That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
 In my heart's core, — ay, in my heart of hearts.' 
 
 I need scarcely remark that a true idea of the strength and beauty of 
 womanli/ humanity had no place in Byron's mind. It was almost an 
 unknown world to him, abounding, at the sanu; lime, as his poems do, 
 witli bright romantic creations of fancy and sentiment. Of these, when 
 placed in situations calling for masculine energy, he gives some striking 
 images, as the description in " Sardanapalus : " — 
 
 " She urged on with her voice and gesture, and 
 Ilcr floating hair and flashing eyes, the soldiers 
 In the pursuit. * * * * j paused 
 'J'o look upon her, and her kindled check ; 
 Her large black eyes, that flash'd through her long hair 
 As it stream'd o'er her ; her blue veins that rose 
 Along her most transparent brow ; her nostril 
 Dilated from its symmetry ; her lips 
 Apart ; her voice that clove through all the din 
 As a lute's pierceth through the cymbal's ol;u>h, 
 Jarr'd, but not drown'd, by the loud brattling ; her 
 Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born whiteness 
 Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up 
 From a dead soldier's grasp ; — all these tilings made 
 Her seem unto the troops a prophetess 
 Of Victory, or Victory herself 
 Come down to hail us hers." 
 
 * See preface to Henry Taylor's " Philip Van Artaveldtc."
 
 bieok's infidelity. 333 
 
 What was the meaning of the fitful irregularity of Byrou's poetry, 
 which we have been passing over with praise and blame mingled, and, 
 perhaps, perplexed ? Wiiy is it that, with passages of true poetry 
 scattered through all his volumes, he produced no important poein for 
 which his most impassioned admirer can claim the fame of sustained 
 imagination ? And why, at last, miable either to quench or to feed the 
 flame of poetry, did he ignominiously retreat into that base production 
 in which, the very instant his better powers failed him, he could 
 exchange them for a vulgar ribaldry and all the vile elements of his 
 nature, — the leprosy rising up in his forehead while standing beside the 
 incense-altar ? Was there any mystery in his inequalities ? We are told 
 that it was owing to his genius. Let me say that weakness is no 
 attribute of genius. Here lies the grand fallacy respecting Byrou's 
 mind, — that which was its weakness mistaken for its strength, con- 
 founding the violence of his passions with power. Strength is shown 
 by the victory over them, and not by the defeat. Byron deluded him- 
 self in these respects, when he should have known that really it is 
 moral and intellectual weakness to be a misanthrope and a sceptic. It 
 is an easy thing to fall into the way of hating the world, and into that 
 confused, blind, stupid state of mind which is called unbelief. The 
 greatest of all weaknesses — the cancer which eat into the very heart of 
 Byron's genius — was his unmitigated seljishnesn. It weakened and 
 wasted him, and perverted and defiled his great endowments, and 
 brought him down to the grave, superannuated, at the age of thirty-six. 
 It was the foul fiend which haunted his existence, tearing him like the 
 wretched demoniacs who dwelt among the tombs and cried out words 
 of blasphemy and defiance. 
 
 I am not going now to qualify my language with exceptions and 
 reservations. That has been done, to the best of my ability, scrupulously 
 throughout the lecture ; and I am therefore justified in now saying that, 
 taking the whole spirit of Byron's poetry, — its sceplicism, its profanity, 
 its blasphemy, its lewdness, its warfare upon religion and social and 
 domestic morals, — it stands the blackest monument of iuiellcctiuil de- 
 pravity in the annals of our language. Never had our poetry been so 
 profaned. The same corrupt spirit had been known before ; it had 
 disguised itself in one generation in the stately robe of philosophy, — in 
 another it had snatched the myrtle wreath of political freedom ; but 
 never before had it worn the garland of poetic inspiration. There had 
 been one phase of infidelity with Bolingbroke and his disciples, and 
 another with Paine and his crew ; but the most insidious was that which 
 came from the bright, dark fancy of Byron.
 
 334 LECTTTBE FOURTEENTH. 
 
 W'itli all the -wrong he did, there was miuglcd, too, a bitter contempt 
 for poor, suflering humanity. Yes ; it is true, as he reproaclied his 
 I'ellow-mortals, that niaukiud is prostrate in his fallen natiu'e. Look 
 forth upon tiie human race, and, behold ! they are lying — the wounded, 
 the dying, and the dead — on the vast battle-plain, stricken by their 
 spirituiil enemies. But it ill became a poet to steal forth in the night, 
 like one of those wretches that dog the footsteps of an army and prowl 
 over the field fresh with the fight, plundering the expiring soldier, and 
 stripping the bloody raiment from the dead and the dying. 
 
 Above all, let me entreat that no one will yield to that poor fallacy 
 which teaches that Byron's infirmities and vice vrerc attributes of 
 genius : — 
 
 " If thou be one whose heart the holy forms 
 Of young iniiigination have kept pure, 
 Henceforth be warn'd, and know that pride, 
 Howe'er disguised in its own majesty. 
 Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt 
 For any living thing hath faculties 
 Which he has never used ; that thought, with him. 
 Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one 
 The least of Nature's works, — one who might move 
 The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
 Unlawful ever. Oh, be wiser, thou ! 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love ; 
 True dignity abides with him alone 
 AVho, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
 Can still suspect and still revere himself 
 In lowliness of heart." * 
 
 * Wordsworth, 
 
 »^iJLy<»"
 
 LECTUEE XV. 
 
 SEorbsborllj. 
 
 DIFFICITLTIES IN THE WAY OF A PROPER APPRECIATION OF CONTEMPORARY 
 GENIUS— CANDOUR RARE IN CRITICISM— CONTROVERSY IN REGARD TO WORDS- 
 AVORTHS SCHOOL OF POETRY— COMPARATIVE CRITICISM BETWEEN THE POETRY 
 OF WORDSWORTH AND RYRON— CORRESPONDENCE OF WORDSWORTH'S LIFE 
 WITH THE SPIRIT OF TRUE POETRY-CONTINUITY OF HIS MORAL LIFE— RE- 
 COLLECTIONS OF HIS CHILDHOOD— HIS LOVE -OF NATURE AND OF MAN— HIS 
 SYMPATHY WITH THE FRENCH REVOLUTION— HIS SECLUSION— COMMUNION 
 WITH HIS BROTHER POETS— AIM OF HIS CAREER OF AUTHORSHIP — LINES COM- 
 POSED IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF TINTERN ABBEY— " THE EXCURSION" — 
 'SONNET ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE "—" LINES ON THE DEATH OF MR, FOX"— 
 ■• TRIBUTE TO A FAVOURITE DOG "—" SIMON LEE "—" STORY OF THE DESERTED 
 COTTAGE "—HIS POLITICAL POEMS— CONCLUSION. 
 
 WE are now nearing the close of that glorious registry we have 
 been engaged in examining. When 1 placed my mhid, upon tlie 
 imaginative point of vision, by the side of Chaucer, the father of English 
 poetry, and looked forward, over the tract of nearly five hundred years, 
 to the noble company of his successors, it was a joy to know that modern 
 tnnes would not be found to bring with them modem degeneracy. 
 
 There was encouragement in the assurance that, in quitting the com- 
 panionship of the mighty men of old, we should not pass into the society 
 of a dwarlish and dwindling race. It is a proud feeling, too, that there 
 is shining upon us not only those rays which travel down from former 
 generations, but the light of the living genius of our own. I have been 
 zealous to display the vast spaces of our English poetry ; and especially 
 to show how tliat domain has been, in successive eras, acquired, whenever 
 a poet of original powers has arisen to discover and reclaim the unknown 
 and neglected region. Remember how we liave seen one territory after 
 another thus appropriated and added to our imaginative literature. 
 There was a time when the language was almost without form and void, 
 and darkness was upon the face of its literature. The rude inventions 
 of a barbarian minstrelsy appeared ; but soon came Chaucer, the great 
 poet of the foui-teenth century. Like the Ancient Mariner, " he was 
 the first that ever burst into that silent sea." It is only necessary to 
 recur to the progress of the English Muse to learn how wrong is tlie
 
 336 LECTUKi: lliTELNTH. 
 
 notion which leads to the belief that the domiuion of poetry has reached 
 its utmost couliues. The poorest pedautry is that which, uot mifre- 
 quently, has taught implicit, passive obedience to the authority of a few 
 models, and bound down genius to the ser^ile toil of reiterated imitation. 
 This cannot be : the universe is infinitely wide : and the highest proof ' 
 is when it holds on high a light which reveals to the world realms which 
 had been unknowu as belonging to the sovereignty of imagination. It 
 is the highest attribute of original powers to enlarge the sphere of human 
 sensibility. Think, for instance, how the light of Spenser's imagination 
 at once disclosed to view the untravelled latitudes of his marvellous 
 allegory, — how there soon came the discovery of- what may be called the 
 world of Shakspeare, — and how all to whom the spirit and the sounds 
 of our sublimest poetry are dear have been borne, by the imagination of 
 Milton, through regions radiant with angelic light, through the happy 
 home on the infant and sinless earth, and through the dark and dismal 
 dwellings of the lost spirits. It is grand to find our language made sub- 
 servient to such uses, and enuobUng to contemplate the powers with 
 which the most gifted of our race are endowed, employed to enlarge the 
 compass of human thought. In the history of any department of know- 
 ledge, it is easier to recognise how this has been accomplished by those 
 whose approved fame time has sanctioned, than to understand and appre- 
 ciate similar services rendered by contemporary genius. Nor is this 
 strange. Tame is a slow, and often a reluctant, gift. There is a consti- 
 tutional frailty in us which explains why it is so. The actual presence ia 
 an obstacle to that honour which should be rendered to propliet and poet 
 in his own country or his own generation. This must needs be so in 
 poetry above all. When a poet of truly original powers arises, his very 
 originality can be shown only by extending the light of his genius to 
 regions of thought and feeling unillumined before. Now, too often 
 this is regarded not so much as an enlargement of our ancient and best 
 possessions, but an encroachment ujjou them, and therefore to be resisted. 
 Old landmarks are changed, and time is not taken to inquire whether 
 the change has increased or contracted the territory. Settled literary 
 opinions and tastes, carelessly acquired at first, are disturl)ed ; and this, 
 it seems to me, is one solution of the antagonist reception which every 
 original poet of the higher order of genius is doomed to encounter from 
 the world. It is a warfare that he must wage, — a conquest to be effected, 
 — happily if controlled by the meek spirit of maguaiiimHy. In criticism, 
 candour, with its comprehensive sympathies, is as rare as bigotry is 
 frequent ; and therefore the world has never yet been quick to welcome 
 the greatest poets that have blessed it. Tlie seclusion of Stratford, and
 
 "WOKUSWORTll's AXB BTEON's POETRY. 337 
 
 tlie deeper seclusion of the grave, had long closed over Shakspeare before 
 a thousandth part of his genius was known. The pure and gentle heart 
 of Edmund Spenser wasted beneath neglect and the frustrated hope of 
 his uufiidshed poem. The indomitable spirit of Milton calmly knew how 
 little he had to expect from his contemporaries. So it has ever been. 
 What else is the reason of that tradition which, when all else that is 
 personal respecting the father of poetry has perished, has come down to 
 us upon the cloudy wings of three thousand years, — the ti-adif ion that 
 Homer was a beggar ? It has been finely said, " What a glorious gift 
 God bestows upon a nation when he gives them a poet ! " It might be 
 added, with a sadder truth, that, when the poet enters upon his mission 
 of gladdening and purifying and spiritualizing the hearts of men, the 
 world is ready with the insult, the scofi", the ridicule, and all the Aveapons 
 of a stupid and ignorant enmity. There is a bHudness bUnder than the 
 mole's ; there is a deafness deafer than the adder's : it is the blindness, 
 the deafness, of literary bigotry ! 
 
 The character of the poctiy which forms the subject of the present 
 lectui'e has been peculiarly the subject of controversy, — advocated by 
 an eaniest, afl'ectiouate, and grateful sense of admiration, and assailed 
 by misapprehension, contempt, and a rancorous and reckless hatred. It 
 is not my intention to deal with my subj ect in a spirit of controversy, 
 for two reasons. I have not done so in any part of the course . I have 
 neither attacked nor defended any one of tlie poets in a controversial 
 spirit ; and surely it could not be worth while to assume the tone of 
 polemics now, when just about to part with you. In the second place, 
 it would be a form of discussion wholly unworthy the poet. The time 
 has gone by for it. The poetry has wrought out its own vindication, — 
 one of the noblest victories, in the annals of literature, of truth and the 
 magnanimous self-possession which is its best attendant, over error, 
 with all its alliance of vulgarity and violence and bitterness. Criticism 
 did its Avorst ; but the citadel on which it beat had its foundation deep 
 set in the rock of nature ; and we have lived, and — what is more 
 precious to think of — the poet himself has lived, to see the waters of 
 that insolent tide gradually trickling do\ni ; and now all that is left — 
 the froth, the foam, the dirt, heaved up from the bottom, and the drift- 
 wood on the surface — are fast floating out of siglit. 
 
 There has been expended a great deal of comparative criticism be- 
 tween the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron. During this whole course 
 I have refrained from entering upon comparisons between the poets, 
 because it is a mode of criticism as unsatisfactory as it is easy. There 
 would not be the hsast difficulty in ])lacing them in comparison and in 
 
 z
 
 338 LJ!:CTl31iE FIFTEENTH. 
 
 contrast, and in (inscribing the true relation between the minds and the 
 aspirations of these two poets ; but it would be an uncalled-t'or devia- 
 tion from the habit of my lectures. To any who are disposed to measure 
 their worth by comparisons rather than independently, let me only sug- 
 gest for reflection one signiticaut forewarning of the abiding judgment of 
 posterity, — the final award of fame : — the fact, indisputaijle by any one, 
 that every succeeding year has worn away some crumbling portion of 
 Lord Byron's splendid popularity, while the majestic splendour of 
 Wordsworth's poetry has steadily been rising to a loftier stature amid 
 the permanent edifices of the great poets of the English language. 
 
 It is with some reserve that I allude to the personal history of a 
 living poet; but so truly has the course of Wordsworth's life correspond- 
 ed with the spirit of his poetry, — so intimate the communion, — that I 
 may avail myself of the autobiograpliieal allusions in his works, and 
 some other authentic materials. The earliest date attached to any of 
 his pieces is the year 1786, — more than half a century ago ; and now, 
 when he has passed the solemn limit of seventy years, his imagination — 
 that faculty which age so often qucnelies — is held in undiminished 
 vigour. It has been a life devoted to the cultivation of the art for its 
 best and most lasting uses, — a self-dedication as complete as any the 
 world has ever witnessed. Among the great English poets, Edmund 
 Spenser perhaps alone presented a career of as sedulous cultivation, 
 equally the existence of one as entirely a poet. It is one of the causes 
 which have given such perfect symmetry to the various periods of 
 Wordsworth's existence, — a realization of one of his imaginativ(>, 
 wishes, — that fine aspii'ation in the first words with which he meets the 
 reader. It is the hope of a fulfilment of that grand law of our mor;il 
 being which seeks to preserve the sympathy between the successive 
 eras of life, — a law worthy of reflection ; for it is a happiness to look 
 back into f)ast and distant years without the desolating sense of thoughts 
 and feelings swept away by time. It is a happy thing for meditation, 
 .standing on the promontory of the ])rcsent, to feel the air rising from 
 the shadowy waters of the past and sweeping on to sink to rest upon 
 the dim waves of the future. Injury is done to the health of our moral 
 being when the principle of its continuity is broken. Feelings that 
 were meant to be cherished are suffered to perish. This is worse than 
 the work of time; for that which time should only ripen withers and 
 runs to waste. It is the mischief of custom, and not of time ; and thus 
 one period of our life is alienated from another. The connection be- 
 tween tliem is broken, and former days are forgotten or despised. 
 Chiklibh things must, indeed, be put aw;iy with childiiood ; but too
 
 NECESSITY OF MORAL CONTINUITY. 339 
 
 often worse than cliildish things are put in Ihcir stead. The ini- 
 calcnhiting, unsuspicious fervour of youth, instead of being chastened 
 into a maidy fasliion of the same feeling, is transformed into selfishness 
 and distrust. Young enthusiasm does not grow into a mature and 
 steadier spirit, hut is changed into apathy, or the worse condition, — the 
 liabit of weak and morbid ridicule of all that is elevated and impassioned. 
 To take an instance of two periods of life, standing in close connection, 
 and yet often lamentably destitute of that natural piety which should 
 bind them together for happy and salutary meditation and memory : — the 
 ardent devotion of the lover evaporating in matrimony, when he settles 
 down, as the phrase is, into the married man. From the cool region 
 into which he has passed, he looks back upon his former self with some- 
 thing of contemptuous commiseration, disowning the chivalry, the 
 deference, the adoration, as so much obsolete delusion. In Byron's fine 
 poetic phrase, " a change comes o'er the spirit of his dream." He is a 
 dilferent being ; his friends scarcely recognise him, and his wife hardly 
 knows the man. I speak of this only as an example of this umiatural 
 decomposition of the feelings of different periods of life, as one of the 
 most striking and most dangerous. It was the poet's purpose to pro- 
 claim a laM' of our moral nature wliich gives harmony and consistency 
 to life amid all its inevitable vicissitudes. But the lessons poetry 
 teaches must be simple, strong, and touching : they must be imaginative. 
 It was important, too, that the moral should be illustrated by some 
 fceUng at once pure and universal, — something all might sympathize 
 with ; and, accordingly, he has selected that phenomenon in the heavens 
 wliich even the feeblest sense of the beauty of nature is touched 
 with : — 
 
 " 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 be it when I shall grow old, 
 
 Or let me die ! 
 The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 Tlie days of Wordsworth's life have been thus bound together by a 
 natural piety ; and hcuee the matchless syunnctry of his career, — at onc(! 
 a cause and an effect of his well-diseiplined genius. His childhood was 
 spent on the borders of tluit romantic region in tlie Korth of Englajid 
 where he was to find the ha])py home of his manhood and old age, — 
 
 z2
 
 340 LECTUKE TTFTEENTn. 
 
 the blue outline of the Cumberland Mountains present to his sight, — a 
 lofty and shadowy region for his young imagination to travel to. 
 
 The emotions of the early years of his life have been rescued from 
 oblivion ^yitll a power which manifests both the depth of his childhood's 
 impressions and the strength of his imagination in reviving them. I 
 think that every one who has ever reflected on the movements of his own 
 mind must have realized the difficulty of marking the boundai-y of his 
 memory when it journeys back into past and early years, and at the same 
 time be conscious of the flitting of dim recollections of childhood, — per- 
 hajjs, after all, the most thoughtful period of our whole life. Feelings 
 M'ill often pass across the mind, coming you cannot tell whence, but 
 only that they come from far away, from the dim distance of childhood. 
 Which of its visionary realms could poetry more happily expatiate in ? 
 When the effort is made by a juvenile writer of verses to clothe his 
 impulses in language, it is a weak expression of feeling which yet may 
 be in all respects fit for poetry. But that fitness becomes beautifully 
 ap])arent when a mature imagination is able to redeem feelings which, 
 in abnost all cases, perish entirely, or vanish into the most mysterious 
 cliand)crs of tlie memory, — such shadowy things that you can scarce tell 
 whether they are recollectious, or fancies, or dreams. The more you 
 reflect on these things, the more you will appreciate the imaginative 
 energy necessary to reanimate the impressions received in early life and 
 give them a poetic shape. There is one of Wordsworth's small pieces 
 which exemplifies this power of recalling some of the most evanescent 
 feelings which could have flitted across a boy's mind. He remembers a 
 distant day, bright both with its blue sky and with boyhood's buoyant 
 liappiuess, — 
 
 " One of those heavenly days that cannot die," — 
 
 on whicii he sallied forth upon a boyish enterprise of foraging upon the 
 liazel-trees. The eagerness of his hope, the luxury of animal delight, 
 are vividly remembered, but not more so tlian the rapid transition of 
 feeling, — one of tliose sudden reactions connnon to tlie quick heart of 
 cliildhood, whicli rises from its unexpected sense of pain to an exquisite 
 sympathy, by which imagination spiritualizes the insensate world of 
 nature : — 
 
 " O'er the pathless rocks I forced my way 
 Until, at length, I came to one dear nook 
 Unvisited, where not a l)roken bough 
 Droop'd with its withcr'd leaves, ungracious sign 
 Of devastation, but the hazels rose 
 Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung, —
 
 PECOLLECTION OF CHILDHOOD. 3-11 
 
 A virgin scene ! A little while I stood, 
 
 Ih-eathing with such suppression of the heart 
 
 As joy delights in, and, with wise restraint 
 
 Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed 
 
 The banquet ; or beneath the trees I sat 
 
 Among the flowers, and with the flowers I play'd : - 
 
 A temper known to those, who, after long 
 
 And weary expectation, have been blest 
 
 "With sudden happiness beyond all hope. 
 
 Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves 
 
 The violets of five seasons reappear 
 
 And fade unseen by any human eye : 
 
 Where fairy water breaks do murmur on 
 
 For ever ; and I saw the spai'kling foam, 
 
 And with my cheek on one of those green stones 
 
 That, fleeced with moss, beneath the shady trees, 
 
 Lay round me, scatter'd like a flock of sheep, 
 
 I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound. 
 
 In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay 
 
 Tribute to ease, and, of its joy secure. 
 
 The heart luxuriates with indifferent things. 
 
 Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones 
 
 And on the vacant air. Then up I rose. 
 
 And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough with crash 
 
 And merciless ravage, and the shady nook 
 
 Of hazels, and the green mossy bower, 
 
 Defomi'd and sullied, patiently gave up 
 
 Their quiet being: and, unless I now 
 
 Confound my present feelings with the past, 
 
 Even then, when from the bower I turn'd away 
 
 Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, 
 
 I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 
 
 The silent trees and the intruding sky. 
 
 Then, dearest Maiden ! move along these shades 
 
 In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
 
 Touch ; for there is a spirit in the woods." 
 
 Tlie founilatious of "Wordsworth's mind were thus laid in communion 
 ^\ ith the grand and beautiful scenery of his nati\^e region : — 
 
 " He had felt the power 
 Of nature, and already was prepared 
 By his intense conceptions, to receive 
 Deeply the lesson deep of love which he 
 Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught 
 To feel intensely, cannot but receive." 
 
 Conjoined with this, — the first virgin j)assiou of a soul 
 
 " Communing with the glorious universe," —
 
 34-2 LECTURE EIFTEENTH. 
 
 was his studious, reverential communion with the pages of his j»reat 
 predecessors, — the masters of English poetry, — and chiefly of Milton. 
 Another clement of jiis genius began very early to display itself, — his 
 ever-active sympathy with his fellow-men. Deep as his passion for 
 nature has always been, the living nature of mankind has been dearer 
 to aim ; and it is part of tha history of his mind that he hoped greatly 
 and enthusiastically for the cause of social and political regeneration, 
 when for a short season, at the close of the last century, the whole 
 earth 
 
 " The beauty wore of promise, — that which sets 
 The budding rose above the rose full blown." 
 
 His young spirit, which had fed upon its lonely musings in the nioun. 
 tains and its poetic sympathies with the souls of the dead poets, was 
 prompt to change them for the more active fellow-feeling \vith mankind 
 struggling for freedom : — 
 
 " Farewell, farewell ! the heart that lives alone, 
 Housed in a dream, at distance fnmi the kind ! 
 Such happiness, wherever it is known, 
 Is to be pitied, for 'tis surely blind." 
 
 Full of hope, Wordsworth passed over into Trance in Ihe early pai-t 
 of the French Revolution, and was an eye-witness of some of its territie 
 eonnnotions. His heart was with the down-trodden people, and he was 
 cLited witli the pure enthusiasm W'hich trusted in the virtues of what 
 proved a worthless cause. He witnessed the wretchedness that had 
 Ijeen wrought by tyranny ; and, young and ardent, he over-estimated the 
 restraining influences on the people's vengeance. One of the darkest 
 reproaches which rests on the Revolution of France is the wrong done 
 to the eternal cause of freedom ; for, when at the present day we seek 
 to appreciate the sufferings which first heaved that vast commotion, 
 there rise up, intercepting t!ie view, the blood-boltered spectres of the 
 hideous agencies in that drama. The sympatliies of Wordsworth were 
 with only the pure elements of the cause, especially lieeausc of what he 
 witnessed in the miseries of the ])easantry. The incident is told, that, 
 walking one day, in the neighbourliood of Orleans, in company with a 
 citizen of France, fervid witli republicanism, they came suddenly on the 
 spectacle of a girl of seventeen or eighteen years old, hunger-bitten and 
 wasted to a meagre shadow, knitting in a dejected drooping way, whilst 
 to lier arm was attached by a rope the horse, equally famished, that 
 earned tlie miserable sup})ort of her family. The spectacle told, in one 
 instant, the whole story of wretchedness; and seizing Wordsworth by 
 the arm, his companion exclaimed, " Dear English friend, brother, from
 
 HIS KEVOLUTIOXAKT SYMPATHIES. 343 
 
 H nation of freemen ! Thcd it is that is the curse of our people, in 
 their widest division ; and to cure this it is, as well as to maintain our 
 work against the kings of the earth, that blood must be shed, and tears 
 must flow, for many years to come." 
 
 The atmosphere of the Revolution grew more and more murky. 
 France was stricken with the worst of Egypt's plagues : benighted in 
 moral darkness, it was visited with the pestilence of blood throughout 
 the land. Wordsworth sought the homeward road to England, — the 
 innocent delusion of his enthusiasm scattered, but his heart unembittered 
 by disappointment, and its pulse of genuine freedom beating as strongly 
 as ever. Whilst travelling back to his native region, in crossing the 
 sands of one of the great estuaries, he chanced to inquire of a horseman 
 who overtook him, " Is there any news ? " and to hear the tidings, " Yes : 
 Robespierre has perished." Forgetful of the returning tide coming in 
 over the waste of sands, he stopped to utter a heartfelt thanksgiving for 
 that vindication of justice and outraged liberty. 
 
 "When Wordsworth retired to dwell in the mountain-district of the 
 North of England, there was in the spirit of his seclusion nothing of a 
 morbid solitariness. It was a retirement sought as favoui'able not only 
 to the genial and studious culture of his endowments, but also to the 
 most propitious intercourse with his fellow-men. There was nothing 
 of that faint and false-hearted flight from society of ^vhich genius has 
 sometimes been guilty ; but retirement was chosen as the vantage-ground 
 of imagination and meditative truth, and in his solitude he has nursed 
 his heart in a quick sensibility to aU healthy sympathies with his country 
 and mankind. His plan of life has been kept inviolate : his home is still 
 among the mountains ; his heart is with humanity the wide world 
 over : — 
 
 " He murmurs near the running brooks 
 
 A music sweeter than their own. 
 He is retired as noontide dew, 
 
 Or fountain in a noonday grove : 
 And you must love him, ere to you 
 
 He will seem worthy of your love. 
 The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 
 Of hill and valley, he has view'd, 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 
 Have come to him in solitude." 
 
 Wordsworth has been fortunate in the cordial communion with 
 Coleridge, and Southey, and Lamb, and in the friendship of Sir Walter 
 Scott and the patriarch of contemporary poets, — Rogers. He has been 
 liappy, too, in the intellectual female sympathy he has enjoyed in the
 
 344 LECTUKE riFTEEKTH. 
 
 bosora of his own famil}'. This appears not only in his delicate allusions 
 to the members of his household, but from a passage iu Mr. Southey's 
 Life of Cowper, plainly alluding to Wordsworth. After speaking of the 
 valuable influence on Cowi:)er's mind of his intimacy with Mrs. Unwin 
 and Lady Austin, Southey adds, " Were I to say that a poet finds his 
 best advisers among his female friends, it would be speaking from my 
 own experience, and the greatest poet of the age would confirm it 
 by his." 
 
 The aim of all Wordsworth's endeavours in poetry, as he has stated it, 
 has been that they should be fitted for filling permanently a station, 
 however humble, in the literature of his country. It is remarkable that 
 in not a line can be detected any lowering of that aim to the secondary 
 objects of authorship : no trace of mercenary motive, no p.altering with 
 artificial tastes, no sacrifice of truth and nature for the gain of notoriety, 
 no dallying with fashion, betray a faltering in the purpose to Mhich he 
 devoted himself. This demanded extraordinary self-possession — all the 
 fortitude, the magnanimity of genius — to preserve its composure. He 
 moved on fearlessly, following the call of his owii imagination ; and it is 
 a grand thing now to behold the young and ingenuous, the older and 
 thoughtful, vying with each other in rendering to him the tribute of a 
 grateful admiration. 
 
 On the poet's return from the Coniinent, the love of nature, which 
 had been coeval with his early consciousness, was undiminished. He 
 carried it along with him in his inmost heart, amid all the uncongenial 
 scenes he had been a witness to. There are some admirable lines of his, 
 familiar to every student of Wordsworth's poetry, composed in the 
 neighbourhood of Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the river 
 Wye : they finely represent the change from the passionate to the medi- 
 tative love of nature, — the maturing of the emotion of sentient boyhood 
 to that of thoughtful manhood. But I refer to them because they 
 show how the beauteous forms of the externid world revisited his 
 memory and his feelings even in unpropitious circumstances, — doubtless 
 amid the tumvdtuous agitations of the Parisian mobs, the frenzy of the 
 factions, the waves of a rutiilcss multitude beating against the ancient 
 palace of their kings, the convulsion of every resting-phice of society, the 
 unnatural ferocity of revolutionary women, and the boundless vengeance 
 of the metropolis, with the sympathetic restlessness of the provinces. 
 Amid all this, the poet's heart was gladdened by a return of a memory 
 of the emotion which some placid scene had insj)ired him with : — ■ 
 
 " Oh ! h(nv oft, 
 In darkness, unci amid thu many shapes
 
 LOVE OF NATURE. 3 l-J 
 
 Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir 
 TJniiroti table, and the fever of the world, 
 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, — 
 How oft in spirit have I turn'd to thee, 
 O sylvan Wye ! Thou wanderer through the woods, 
 How often has my spirit turn'd to thee ! " 
 He came forth from amid the cloudy, stormy elements of society to 
 render the imwearied service of a worshipper of nature : — 
 
 " I know that nature never did betray 
 The heart that loved her ; 't is her privilege, 
 Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
 From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues. 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or distui'b 
 Our cheerful faith that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings." 
 
 No poet has ever yet so devoted his imagination to the study of the 
 face of nature as Wordsworth. He lias communed with her in all her 
 moods, and contemplated the ever-varying expression of her countenance. 
 It would transcend even the expansive limits of these lectm-es to illustrate 
 his descriptive poetry, and I can only endeavour to give some idea of 
 the spirit of it. In the last lecture I had occasion to show how danger- 
 ous the love of nature may become if perverted into a sentimental and 
 insidious materialism. In the heart of Wordsworth the passionate 
 love of nature has not been so betrayed. It is coupled with the faith 
 that infinite wisdom has so formed the earth, the elements, and the 
 physical heavens, that the soul, during its abode in its mortal tenement, 
 can gather, from all that meets the senses, food for its noble faculties : — 
 " The glorious habit by which sense is made 
 Subservient still to moral purposes, 
 Auxiliar to divine." 
 
 Deep and habitual as is Wordsworth's devotion to nature, it is no 
 idolatry of what is material. The worlds of the eye and the ear, like the 
 senses that observed them, arc subject to decay ; and it is not the cha- 
 racter of his genius to pause upon what is perishable. He never fails 
 to impress on us that the forms of iiat(?re, loved as they are, are fugitive, 
 valueless, except when contemplated in their relation to man and to his 
 Maker ; that the earth — tlic dear, green earth — will darken in the
 
 316 I.KCTURE FIFTEENTlt. 
 
 al^seiice of imagination. Nay, more : rising to the height of as lofty 
 it-spiration as ever was conceived, either in poetry or })liilosophy, he 
 I)roclaimsthe awful truth tliat the universe itself — the material universe — 
 is a hollow shell, from which the car of faith alone can hear mysterious 
 murmuriugs of eternity. This moral is expounded by means of one of 
 the finest images that ever entered into the heart of poet to conceive, — 
 beautiful in itself and sublime in its application : — 
 
 " I have seen 
 A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of iuland ground, applying to his ear 
 The couvolutious of a smooth-lipp'd shell, 
 To which, ill silence hush'd, his very soul 
 Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon 
 Brighten'd with joy ; for, murmuring from within, 
 Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby 
 To his belief the monitor express'd 
 Mysterious union with its native sea. 
 Even such a shell the universe itself 
 Is to the ear of Faith." 
 
 There is another passage in the "Excursion," bearing on tliis 
 subject, — one of those sublime strains with which that poem abounds, 
 and loftier than aught that English })oetry has known since the age of 
 Milton. It is an apostrophe to the Deity, and, while it teUs that the 
 universe shall perish, also tells the one great element of its glory : — 
 " Thou who didst wrap the cloud 
 Of infancy around us, that thyself 
 Therein, with our simplicity, a while 
 Might'st hold on earth communion undisturb'd. 
 Who, from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, 
 Or from its deathlike void, with punctual care 
 And touch as gentle as the morning liglit, 
 Restor'st us daily to the powers of sense 
 And reason's stedfast rule, — thou, thou alone 
 Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits 
 Which thou includest, as the Sea her waves, 
 For ad(n-atiou thou cndnr'st. — 
 This universe shall pass away — a work 
 Glorious ! because the shadow of thy might, 
 A step, or link, for intercourse with thee ! " 
 
 1 cite these passages to show the principles of Wordsworth's dcscrip- 
 live jKJotry, — liis love of nature liow spiritual ; for, amid all his admira- 
 tion of the world of sense, the undying incorporeal power, the so\il, pre- 
 serves its undaunted sovereignty. So far from siifi'ering his profound sense 
 of the beauty of the material world to entangle his genius in the meshes of
 
 INFLUENCE OF "WORDSWOIiTll's POETRY. 317 
 
 materialism, his rapt iiuagiiiatiou looks on all the f^lories of the universe 
 as but a poor substitute for what the soul may know iu tiie imperial 
 ])alace of its home' with God. Iu the mii,'hty effort of his imagiuatiou, 
 i lie greatest ode in the English language, the ode on the intimations of 
 iunnortality, dwelling upon the heavenly iiuiocenee of childhood, — a 
 feeling iu harmony with the Saviour's words ; and then, raising the 
 human soul above its material life, he has cast a ray of poetiy upon that 
 tlie most impenetrable of all mysteries, — the origin of the soul before its 
 lodgment in the body. Thus, sublimely asserting our immortality, he 
 heeds this earth as no more than ministering to the spirit that has 
 wandered from some better home into this mortal life : — 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star. 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And Cometh from afar. 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness. 
 
 And not in utter nakedness. 
 But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home. 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boi/ ; 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows ; 
 
 He sees it in his joy. 
 The youth who daily farther from the cast 
 Must travel still is nature's priest. 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is Oil the way attended. 
 At length the man perceives it die away 
 And fade into the light of coming day. 
 Earth fills her lap with ])leasures of her own ; 
 Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
 And even with somethiiig of a mother's mind, 
 
 And no unwortliy aim. 
 The homely nurse doth all she can 
 To make her foster-chikl —her inmate, man — 
 Forget the glories he hath known, 
 And that imperial palace whence he came." 
 
 The purpose which the poet proposes to himself, in his descriptive 
 poetry, was to show how the mind and tin; external world are fitted to 
 each other, and to accomplish tliis by rescuing from neglect the un- 
 heeded impressions ])er])etually made upon us, and giving us a distinct 
 consciousness of them when shaped by poetic imagination. Words- 
 worlh's poetry abounds with manifestations of the deep impressions he
 
 348' LECTURE FIFTEENTH, 
 
 receives from slight hints, sucli as occur to any of us in daily life ; and 
 it is this which makes a genial admiration of his writings so precious 
 an acquisition. It is a companionship which clings to humanity in all 
 its paths. Once open your heart to it, and its benignant light will be 
 shed on your domestic hearth, upon all your intercourse with your 
 fellow-men, upon your civic responsibilities to your country, and the 
 sublimer relations in which man is placed. Feelings that are apt to 
 run to waste ripen beneath the influence of his imagination, hope is 
 cherished, and the best impulses coniirmed, the noblest aspirations 
 sustained. Hence comes that ardent aii'ectionate gratitude for moral 
 and intellectual obligations which, from so many hearts, is the silent 
 tribute to the aged poet : — 
 
 " Beauty — a living Presence of the earth, 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms 
 Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed 
 From earth's materials — waits upon my steps ; 
 Pitches her tents before me as I move. 
 An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves 
 Elysian, Fortunate Fields, — like those of old, 
 Sought in the Athmtic main : — why should they he 
 A history only of departed things, 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was ? 
 For the discerning intellect of Man, 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 A simple ])roduce of the common day. 
 
 By words 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are 
 Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
 Of death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To nobler raptures." 
 
 It is this purpose which has led Wordsworth to consecrate by liis 
 imagination things which poetry never shone upon before. You will 
 find in this way a dignity and grace given to feelings wliich before were 
 perhaps deemed unworthy a second thought. For instance, it is hardly 
 possible for any one to pass along the vacant, noiseless street of a city 
 at very early morn, before the population is stirring, — to move amid 
 the sleeping power of a large city, — without a sense of the tranquillity 
 of the moment. The emotion is a natural, a common, and a simple one, 
 but it is indeQnite and evanescent, and therefore needs the imaginative 
 power of a tr>ie poet to give it impressiveness witliout s[)oiling its 
 simplicity. Wordsworth once gazed upon sleeping London, and the 
 feeling I have just been sp(!aking of is now a tiling registered for ever in
 
 IirS POETICAL SYMPATHIES. 340 
 
 poetiy, iu tlie exquisite expression of deep repose which he has given in 
 his famous sonnet on Westminster Bridge : — 
 
 " Earth has not anything to show more fair. 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty ; 
 This city now doth like a garment wear 
 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 Open unto the fields and to the sky, 
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep, 
 In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill ; 
 Ne'er saw I , never felt, a calm so deep. 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will ; 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep, 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still." 
 
 To take one other illustration ; most persons have, I imagine, on 
 looking on the i)lacid surface of a pure and transparent sheet of water, 
 felt a sort of thoughtless impulse, often uttering a sportive wish, to 
 plunge into it. It would hardly be supposed that this blind impulse 
 \\"ds susceptible of poetry or of an imaginative solution : — 
 
 •' Why stand we gazing on the sparkling brine 
 With wonder, smit with its transparency, 
 And all enraptured with its purity ? 
 Because the unstain'd, the clear, the crystalline. 
 Have ever in them something of benign ; 
 Whether in gem, in water, or in sky, 
 A sleeping infant's brow, or wakeful eye 
 Of a young maiden, only not divine ; 
 Scarcely the hand forbears to dip its palm 
 For beverage drawn as from a mountain well ; 
 Temptation centres in the liquid calm ; 
 Our daily raiment seems no obstacle 
 To instantaneous plunging in deep sea 
 And revelling in long embrace wiih thee." 
 
 Another form of poetic communion with nature is that which dis- 
 covers a sympatliy between the api)earances of the outer world and 
 emotions stirring in the heart. This is another great element of Words- 
 worth's poetry. Ou one occasion, having just read tliat tlic death of a 
 celebrated and very popular British statesman was liourly looked for, 
 lie walks forth in the evening of a stormy day, and what he beliolds 
 and feeb is a typo of both the agitated spirit of the poet and his
 
 350 LECTURE riFTEENTH. 
 
 countrymen, and of the steady, placid light of a iiiediiativc re- 
 signation : — 
 
 " Loud is the vale : the voice is up 
 
 With which she speaks when storms are goiic, — 
 A mighty unison of streams ! 
 Of all her voices one ! 
 
 " Loud is the vale ; this inland depth 
 In peace is roaring like the sea ; 
 Yon star upon the mountain-top 
 Is listening quietly. 
 
 " Sad was I, even to pain deprest ; 
 Importunate and heavy load ! 
 The comforter hath found me here 
 Upon this lonely road ; 
 
 " And many thousands now are sad, 
 Wait the fulfilment of their fear ; 
 For he must die who was their stay, 
 Their glory disappear. 
 
 " A power is passing from the earth 
 To breathless nature's dark abyss ; 
 But, when the great and good depart, 
 What is it more than this ? — 
 
 " That man, who is from God sent forth, 
 Doth yet again to God return ? 
 Such ebb and flow mu.st ever be : 
 
 Then wherefore should we mourn r " 
 
 Passing from inanimate nature, I must hasten i-apidly along tlie far- 
 reaching line of Wordsworth's poetic sympathies, entering next into 
 the range of the lower orders of animal life. The tenderness of the 
 human heart for the dumb creatures which surround us is a sentiment 
 as pure as it is appropriate. Neglected, it leads to cruelty worse than 
 brutish ; but, on the other hand, in may be overwrought in(o a species 
 of sentimental misanthropy. When one of Sir Walter Scott's dearest 
 pet dogs died, he caused it to be buried in his garden, — his children 
 weeping over the remains of their mute playmate, and he, as Mrs. Lock- 
 hart remembered, smoothing down the turf with one of the saddest 
 expressions she had ever seen on his face. When afterwards the noblest 
 and most celebrated of his favourites died, he caused a stone and 
 inscription to be placed, near the gate of Abbot sford, over the dog's 
 grave. When Lord Byron's dog expired, he set up a conspicuous 
 monument in the garden at Newstead Abbey, witli an elaborate poetic 
 inscription, recording the virtues of the dead dog in an affected strain of
 
 TKIBL'TE TO A FAA'OrRITE DOG. .S-'l 
 
 abuse and hatred of living men. The pool, moreover, by his will, 
 directed liis own body to be buried near his faithful favourite. Now, 
 every one nuist feel that this is a gross perversion of a feeling whieh 
 might be chastened to better uses. The moment you find appropriated 
 To the brute creation the obscqiues which the heart hallows for man 
 alone, you recoil instinctively from it, as either involving a heartless 
 mockei'y or as degrading to humanity. The affection towards the 
 creatures beneath us in the scale of being may be made to flow in a 
 deep and true channel, as this tribute to a favourite dog well shows : — 
 
 ' Lie here, without a record of thy worth. 
 Beneath a covering of the common earth ! 
 It is not from unwillingness to praise, 
 Or want of love, that here no stone we raise. 
 !More thou deserv'st ; but this man gives to man, 
 Brother to brother ; — this is all we can. 
 Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear 
 Shall find thee through all changes of the year ; 
 This oak points out thy grave ; the silent tree 
 Will gladly stand a monument of thee. 
 I grieved for thee, and wish'd thy end were past, 
 And willingly have laid thee here at last ; 
 For thou hadst lived till everything that cheers. 
 In thee, had yielded to the weight of years ; 
 Extreme old age had wasted thee away 
 And left thee but the glimmering of the day. 
 Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees ; 
 I saw thee stagger in the s>ummcr breeze. 
 Too weak to stand against its sportive breath, 
 And ready for the gentlest stroke of death. 
 It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed ; 
 Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead ; — 
 Not only for a thousand thoughts, that were 
 Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share, 
 But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee, 
 Found scarcely anywhere in like degree ! 
 For love that comes to all— the holy sense, 
 Best gift of God— in thee was most intense. 
 A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind, 
 A tender sympathy, which did thee bind 
 Not only to us men, but to thy kind. 
 Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw 
 The soul of love, love's intellectual law : 
 Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame ; 
 Our tears from passion and from reason came, 
 And therefore shalt *^hou be au honour'd name."
 
 352 LECTUllK FIFTEENTH. 
 
 There is a beautiful expression of Wordsworth's meditiilive fancv 
 inspired by musiuii; over some gold and silver fishes in a vase, which 1 
 allude to, however, rather because of a higher inspiration prompted by 
 the slight hint, — the restoration of them to freedom. It tells his deep 
 sympathy with the liberty of all the mere animal creation : — 
 
 " Who can divine what impulses from God 
 Reach the caged lai'k, within a town-abode, 
 From his poor inch or two of daisied sod ? 
 Oh, yield him back his privilege ! No sea 
 Swells like the bosom of a man set free ; 
 A wilderness is rich with liberty. 
 Koll on, ye spouting whales, who die cr keep 
 Your independence in the fathomless deep ! 
 Spread, tiny nautilus, the living sail ; 
 Dive at thy choice, or brave the freshening gale. 
 If unreproved the ambitious eagle mount 
 Sunward to seek the daylight in its fount. 
 Bays, gulfs, and oceans, Indian width, shall be, 
 Till the world perishes, a tield for thee." 
 
 But the noblest dedication of Wordsworth's genius has been in his 
 communion witli his fellow-men, — a sympathy as expanded as ever filled 
 the human heart, comprehensive of the highest and the lowliest of the 
 race, and shedding a glory on all conditions of liumanity : — 
 
 " T is nature's law 
 That none, the meanest of created things. 
 Of forms created the most vile and brute, 
 The dullest or most noxious, should exist 
 Divorced from good, — a spirit and ])ulse of good, ^ 
 A life and soul to every mode of being 
 Inseparably link'd. Then be assured 
 That least of all can aught that ever own'd 
 
 The hcaven-rcg.irding eye and front sublime \ 
 
 Which man is born to, sink, howc'er depress'd, 
 So low as to be scorn'd without a sin, 
 Witliout offence to God, cast out of view. 
 
 Like the dry remnant of a garden-flower * 
 
 Whose seeds are shed, or as an implemeut 
 Worn out and useless. 
 
 No ! man is dear to man ; the poorest poor 
 Long for some moments in a weary life 
 When they can know and feel that they have been 
 Themselves the fathers and the dealers out 
 Of some small blessings, have been kind to such 
 As needed kindness, for this single cause : — 
 That we have all of us one human heart."
 
 SIMOX LEE. do'-i 
 
 This principle is the great moral element of Wordsworth's poetry, — 
 the sameness of the human heart. I am painfully conscious of the injury 
 I am doing to it by these hurried comments. He has vindicated the 
 sensibilities of mankind in humble life, and, by showing their suscep- 
 tibility to kindness, has fostered the natural love between man and man. 
 He thus silences a common plea of selfishness, in treating the story of 
 tlie ingratitude of the poor as a thing only heard of at a distance. This 
 is the fine moral of the little ballad of Simon Lee, closing with thesi; 
 stanzas : — 
 
 " My gentle reader, I perceive 
 
 How patiently you 've waited ; 
 And now I fear that yon expect 
 Some tale will be related. 
 " O reader ! had you in your mind 
 
 Such stores as silent thought can bring, — 
 O gentle reader ! you would find 
 A tale in everything. 
 " WTiat more I have to say is short, 
 And you must kindly take it ; 
 It is no tale ; but, should you think, 
 Perhaps a tale you '11 make it. 
 " One summer day I chanced to see 
 This old man, doing all he could 
 To unearth the root of an old tree, 
 A stump of rotten wood. 
 '• The mattock totter'd in his hand ; 
 So vain was his endeavour, 
 That at the root of the old tree 
 He might have work'd for ever. 
 " ' You 're overtask'd, good Simon Lee ; 
 Give me your tool,' to him I said ; 
 And, at the word, right gladly he 
 Ileceiv'd my protl'er'd aid. 
 " I struck, and with a single blow 
 The tangled root I scv'cr'd. 
 At which the poor old man so long 
 And vainly had endeavour'd. 
 " The tears into his eyes were brought. 
 And thanks and praises scem'd to run 
 So fast out of his heart, I thought 
 They never would have done. 
 " I 've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning : 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 Hath oftencr left me mourning." 
 2 A
 
 354 LECTURE FIFTEENTH, 
 
 In Wordsworth's highly-cultivated afTection for human nature, of 
 course, is comprehended that reverence of womanly nature which we 
 have observed as au element in the genius of aU the great English poets. 
 It is part of his comprehensive scheme for elevating aud purifying 
 humanity, to throw the light of his imagination upon the meek majesty 
 of the female heart, its faithfulness, its fortitude, its heroism. What 
 can be more touchiugly beautiful than the account of a woman's slowly- 
 wasting spirit, in the story of the " Deserted Cottage," in tlie first book 
 of the " Excursion " ? The sanity of Wordsworth's genius admits of no 
 romantic exaggeration or vapid sentimentality on this subject. While 
 it is his delight to show how divine a thing a woman may be made, he 
 regards her moving in the orbit of domestic life, not as enshrined by a 
 superstitious chivalry, but the being that God gave because it was not 
 good for man to be alone. It is a worthy and no light effort of poetic 
 genius to take from the extravagances of romance all that is attractive, 
 and to blend it with the daily household worth of woman, and, thus 
 preserving its beauty, to reveal the spiritual and the practical which in 
 their harmony niake up the perfection of female loveliness. 
 
 I had it much at heart to treat of Wordsworth's political poems, and 
 to show how valuable a use they might subserve in elevating and chas- 
 tening public sentiment. But the subject is too fine a one to be injured 
 by such hurried discussion as I would now be compelled to give it. Let 
 me only, in evidence of his large-hearted sympathy with our institutions, 
 repeat an unpublished sonnet, composed on reading an account of what 
 he charitably calls some misdoings in our land : — 
 
 " Men of the Western World ! in Fate's dark book 
 Whence this opprobrious leaf of dire portent .' 
 Think ye your British ancestors forsook 
 Their narrow isle, for outrage provident .'' 
 Think ye they fled restraint they ill could brook, 
 To give in their descendants freer vent 
 And wider range to passions turbulent, 
 To mutual tyranny a deadlier look ? 
 ' Nay,' said a voice more soft than zephyr's breath ; 
 ' Dive through the stormy surface of the flood 
 To the great current flowing underneath ; 
 Think on the countless springs of silent good ; 
 So shall the truth be known and understood. 
 And thy grieved spirit brighten strong in faith.' " 
 
 I Lad hoped to present the subject of this lecture with all the care 
 due to a i)Oot whose fame, not yet sanctioned by time, is thereforr- 
 vaguely ajjprcciatcd. But circumstances far beyond my control have.
 
 PARTl^'G "\voRr-s. 355 
 
 so embarrassed the requisite preparation, that I have been constrained 
 to presume upon your indulgence in the luisty and very inadequate 
 suggestions which have constituted tiiis cvoiing's lecture. 
 
 It has been my unafl'ected desire that this course of lectures should 
 be conducted with as little obtrusion of the lecturer personally as 
 possible. It is the cause which I have been anxious to iffipress you with, 
 leaving him to whom you have listened to be recognised as scarce nioi-e 
 than a mere voice. A few words were given to personal considerations iu 
 first meeting you ; a few more may be indulged in now parting from you. 
 I then stated the principles on which this literary enterprise was under- 
 taken, — a duty to this connnunity arising from my position in it. ](. 
 was not consistent with either that duty or my inclination to court a 
 reluctant attendance or solicit it as a favour. Taking no step of tlust 
 sort, and, in these times of indiscriminate and exaggerated pufRiig, 
 avoiding all the machinery of extrinsic influences, it was my resolution 
 that the fate of this course, be it what it might, should be its real fate. 
 I thought it no more than my right distinctly to say so, believing that 
 so we would understand each other the better. It is my wish now to 
 say that the feeling then asserted, so far from hindering, has best 
 promoted, a deep sense of gratefulness for the kindness I have met with. 
 It never entered into my thoughts that my duty to offer this course 
 hroiight the least obligation upon you to attend it. What claims had 
 I upon that patience which has been so bountifully bestowed on me 'i 
 What assurance was there that these lectures could or would be con- 
 ducted in a way that would be satisfactory to you ? I well know the 
 inconvenience, the restraint, the interference wiih other engagements 
 and habits, which your attendance here must have subjected you to ; 
 and, when I look back and think that this has been so for sixteen suc- 
 cessive weeks, my heart leaps up with pride that a subject so purely 
 imaginative should have thus won your attention, and with gratitude for 
 the kind, friendly, and indulgent feelings which the interest of that 
 subject has been the means of extending to me personally. This course 
 has been protracted longer than appears to me desirable ; each lecture, 
 too, has exceeded its due limits. Conscious of this, it has been the uion; 
 gratifying to experience your consideration for me in restraining a!l 
 symptoms of impatience. Ko one can be more sensible than I am of 
 the deficiencies of the course, resulting from two very ample though 
 widely-different causes — the superabundance of the materials and the 
 inai)ility to do the subject the justice which is its due. It is unavailing, 
 however, now to dwell upon those deficiencies, and I would rather turn 
 to the hope suggested by tlieni — necessarily an indefinite hope — of 
 
 2 A 2
 
 356 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 
 
 entering with you, on some futui'e occasion, into some of those regions 
 of our literature of which thus far we have in not a few instances only 
 touched upon the frontiers. In the mean time I can bear away the 
 happy recollection of having witnessed the power which true poetry 
 exerts over the best of our intellectual and moral sympathies, for I know 
 that the hearts of young and old have kindled here with the sound of 
 the noble strains uttered by our English imagination. AU that has 
 reached me respecting these lectures has been kindness — unqualified 
 kindness, — inspiring this feeling above all others : — an anxiety to bring 
 them far nearer than has been done to the ideal of wliat might merit 
 such acknowledgments. It is, therefore, with entire sincerity that for 
 the last words to pass between us I appropriate tliat simple stanza, the 
 very voice of gratefulness, repeated once already this evening : — 
 
 " I 've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning : 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning. "
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 
 ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 @nglis^ bonnets. 
 
 IT is matter of familiar observation, that the success of literary pro- 
 ductions is sensibly dependent on the forms in which they are 
 presented. In the domain of English poetry, there is a section to which 
 justice has not been done : its quality is not lield in very high repute, 
 and the title to it is regarded as somewhat doubtful. I refer to that form 
 of metrical composition which is denominated the Sonnet. To prove 
 that it has not found favour always even in the eyes of those who have 
 cultivated a taste for other forms of poetry, I would ask them whether, 
 when they have met with its modest structure, they have not generally 
 passed it carelessly by. Besides, in the minds of those who do not 
 entirely neglect it, there may be detected a peculiar feeling, aptly to be 
 described as unkindly ; they regard it not with the look that a man gives 
 to hife own kin and countrymen, but with that which is cast coldly and 
 doubtingly upon a stranger or foreigner. Wiile the sonnet is read, 
 an un-Eiifflhh feeling is found to be creeping about the heart, and the 
 fancy is filled unconsciously with thoughts of Petrarch and images of 
 Laura and the Vaueluse. While its melody is falling on the ear, we are too 
 often overtaken with a kind of misgiving that we arc listening to the rich 
 music of, indeed, our own mother-tongue, but tuned to a strange note ; 
 that we hear its glorious words uttered througli a foreign instrument. 
 This is not as it should be. The Muse of England should not stand a 
 suppliant or a vassal anywhere. She holds in her own right, or she holds 
 not at all. So far as literature is concerned, we are, by our calling, 
 guardsmen of English rights and English merits ; and, as the form of 
 poetry in question seems to be regarded as not having yet worked out 
 its independence, I mean to try to undertake its vindication. 1 proclami
 
 358 ■ ESSAY FIKST. 
 
 at the outstep that we acknowledge no allegiance — own no homage — 
 to the Italian. Our literary territory is held absolutely, or it had better 
 be relinquished entirely. There is too much Saxon blood in our veins 
 to bide content on a divided soil or under a feudal tenure. It may be 
 shown that the sonnet is a form of poetry fairly introduced in tlu; litera- 
 ture of England, fully sustained, and now, wdthout reserve or qualifica- 
 tion, by the law of letters it is our own. I propose, therefore, to say 
 a word for our English title and our English fame in this province of 
 poesy. 
 
 Before advancing further, the looseness in the acceptation of the term 
 "sonnet," in consequence of its application to several dillerent forms of 
 poetry, demands some attempt to ascertain its true use, or, at least, to 
 give it some precision. The most obvious property, Avhich is common 
 to the sonnets of all countries, is its limitation to fourteen lines. With 
 the exception of some of the earliest English sonnets, and those of not 
 much merit, wliich extended to eighteen lines, this may be said to be 
 universally true. It is composed of four parts, two qiiadrains and two 
 terzines, which are usually indicated by the typogra])liy in the foreign 
 sonnets, but not in the English. Rhyme is also an essential property, 
 and it is to it that the difierent varieties of the sonnet have reference ; 
 the lines are of equal length and the measure iambic. Tlu; form which 
 is considered as especially entitled to the name is that which is framed 
 after the Italian sonnet, — the Petrarcan model. In tliis the rhymes are 
 repeated at certain intervals so as to produce a recurrence of the same 
 closing sound ; and it is this property which seems to suggest the origin 
 of the name itself. The arrangement is such that, in fourteen lines, 
 there are l)ut five, and sometimes not more than four, several rhymes. 
 I am a little fearful I am making myself disagreeable by the technicali- 
 ties of prosody. By means of a specimen, 1 may accomplisli my wisli of 
 conveying an idea of the general structure of this variety of the sonnet 
 much better and certainly more agreeably. In quoting, with this view, 
 Mr. Wordsworth's sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge, I did 
 not intend to be diverted from the mere consideration of its metrical 
 character. I cannot, howevei", refrain from asking the reader to recall 
 his feelings when he has happened to pass along the streets of a city yet 
 in its slumbers ; and, unless our own deceive us, he will find, we think, 
 an echo to them in the following specimen of the metre of the sonnet : — 
 
 " Earth has not anything to show more fair : 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty. 
 This city now doth like a garment wear
 
 ENGLTSII SONNETS. 359 
 
 The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, 
 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 
 Open unto the fields and to the sky, 
 
 AH bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep, 
 
 In his first splendour, valley, roek, or hill ; 
 
 Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 
 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will : 
 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep. 
 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still ! " 
 
 lu this form the poem is cast by those who have implicitly revered 
 the ancient landmarks. It is the most usual form of the Spanish and 
 Portuguese as well as the Italian sonnet. The English poets, with Shaks- 
 peare as a leader, have, with a characteristic temper, claimed greater free- 
 dom. This appears in several different structures of the poem, in which 
 the variety is effected in some by a different distribution of the rhymes, 
 and in others by increasing the number of them to six and seven, but not 
 attaching them throughout to consecutive lines. The following, selected 
 from the same poet in order to avoid distracting attention to other points 
 of comparison, may serve as specimens of some of these varieties : — 
 
 " The shepherd, looking eastward, softly said, 
 ' Bright is thy veil, O moon, as thou art bright ! ' 
 Forthwith that little cloud, in ether spread 
 And penetrated all with tender light. 
 She cast away, and show'd her fulgent head 
 Uneover'd, — dazzling the beholder's sight, 
 As if to vindicate her beauty's right, — 
 Her beauty thoughtlessly disparaged. 
 Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside. 
 Went floating from her, darkening as it went ; 
 And a huge mass, to bury or to hide, 
 Approach'd this glory of the firmament. 
 Who meekly yields and is obscured, — content 
 With one calm triumph of a modest pride." 
 
 The following specimen may be noticed, by the way, as presenting a 
 striking instance of the combined action of reflective and imaginative 
 power : — 
 
 " In my mind's eye a temple, like a cloud, 
 Slowly surmounting some invidious hill, 
 Kose out of darkness : the bright work stood still, 
 And might of its own beauty have been proud. 
 But it was fashion'd and to God was vow'd 
 By virtues that diffused, in every part. 
 Spirit divine througli forms of human art : 
 i'uith hud her arch, — her arch, when winds blow loud,
 
 360 ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 Into the consciousness of safety thrill'd : 
 And Love her towers of dread foundation laid 
 Under the grave of things ; Hope had her spire 
 Star-high, and pointing still to something higher. 
 Tremhling I gazed, but heard a voice ; it said, 
 Hell-gates are powerless phantoms when we build.'' 
 
 The recently -published volume of poems by Mr. Wordsworth contains 
 a number of sonnets showing his talent in unabated vigour : — 
 " TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING STAR. 
 
 COMPOSED AT LOCH-LOMOND. 
 
 " Though joy attend thee, orient, at the birth 
 Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most 
 To watch thj' course when daylight, fled from earth, 
 In the gray sky hath left his lingering ghost 
 Perplex'd, as if between a splendour lost 
 And splendour slowly mustering. Since the sun, 
 The absolute, the world-absorbing One, 
 Relinquish'd half his empire to the host, 
 Embolden'd bj' thy guidance, holy star, 
 Holy as princely, who that looks on thee, 
 Touching, as now, in thy humility 
 The mountain-borders of this seat of care, 
 Can question that thy countenance is bright. 
 Celestial Power ! as much with love as light ? " 
 
 One word more on this subject of definition before I leave it. Some 
 one perhaps may seek to resolve his doubts on the acceptation of the 
 term " sonnet," by that innocent-hearted method of looking into the 
 dictionary. In the folio edition of Johnson's he will find the following 
 definition : — " Sonnet, a short poem consisting of fourteen lines, of which 
 the rhymes are adjusted by a particular rule. It is not very suitable to 
 the English language, and has not been used by any man of eminence 
 since Milton." And then, in evidence of the lexicographer's conception 
 of the character of tlie poem in question, inserted at length is Milton's 
 sonnet, written on the detraction which followed his " Tetrachordon" 
 and other of his prose treatises. It was a piece of scoff at his political 
 foes ; and the humour of it, such as it is, seems to consist in the in- 
 troduction of as many rugged proper names as the poet could manage in 
 the space of fourteen metrical lines. The smile of the great republican 
 poet, at least as far as we trace it in his prose writings, was certainly 
 not his most agreeable expression : it was tinctured with bitterness. If 
 Dr, Johnson meant, as no doubt he did, to cite that sonnet as a fair 
 specimen, it either evinces a lamentable want of taste, or is additional 
 })roof how completely his vision was sealed to the wealth of the best 
 periods of English poetry. The deliuition which succeeds to the above
 
 ENGLISH SON>'ETS. 361 
 
 is " Sonnettcer, a small poet; in contempt." Let us see who they are. 
 To say nothing of the worthy train of early poets who were small only 
 by comparison with their great contemporaries, the sonnet was a 
 favonrite form of composition with each one of that glorious triumvirate 
 who kindled the flame of poetry higher than ever since the creation it 
 flamed by mere human kindling, and kept it burning at its brightest for a 
 century :— Edmund Spejjser, William Shakspeare, John Milton, 
 — sonnetteers all, — " small poets, in contempt ! " Samuel Johnson ! in 
 charity I hope that you are forgiven ! 
 
 My principal object, thus far, has been merely to illustrate what form 
 of English poetry it is which is designated by the name of the sonnet, 
 and incidentally to call attention to the true conception and exquisite 
 finish of the specimens, selected with no very great pains, from the pages 
 of a living poet. Let it now be distinctly understood that I do not, of 
 course, claim for England the invention of the sonnet. It had its birth 
 under a Southern sky. Whether Italian or Proven9al in its origin 
 would not be pertinent at present to discuss. Its date is anterior 
 to Petrarcli, though, from the fact tJiat it was developed and rendered 
 more popular by him, it is identified so intimately with his name. 
 There is a theory suggested by Ginguene or Sismondi, which traces 
 to the poetry of the Arabs the fashion of continuing and intermingling 
 the metrical sounds in their verses. Now, this is one of the dis- 
 tinguishing features of the sonnet ; and the use of rhyme, which is 
 another, is a Gothic fashion, — a northern barbarism, as it was regarded 
 by aU who, like old Roger Ascham, fed in their hearts the hope of 
 living to sec their vernacular dialects set to the tune of hexameters. 
 May it not be, then, that the wealth of several different quarters of the 
 globe was laid under contribution to be coined in the diminutive mould 
 of the sonnet ? It would be a singular boast for anything so humble 
 and unassuming. It is easy, we are aware, to weave theories, and, upon 
 this subject, to extract much plausibility from the fact of the singular 
 fusing of the European and Saracenic races together in the South of 
 Europe during a part of the Middle Ages. History presents, probably, 
 no more extraordinary instance of the kind than the intermingling of 
 three distinct races in a very limited territory at tlie time of the Norman 
 establishment in Sicily : there was the remnant of the old Sicilian race — ■ 
 tlieir conquerors, the Arabs — and the final victor, the Norman. Well 
 might their music blend together, where they were girt in by the ocean in 
 this little plot. In all diffidence we offer our fancy — we will not dignify 
 it with the title of theory — that one graft was brought by tlie Arab from 
 the East, .and another from the region of the Goth, and that these grew 
 into one growth under the genial influence of an Italian or Sicilian sun.
 
 362 ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 How is a nation's claim to any form of composition, whether metrical 
 or not, to be established ? Not by discovery or preoccupation. Par- 
 nassus is as free and illimitable as the ocean or the wind. If there be 
 any method of taking a ceremonious possession, as territory is acquired 
 by planting a standard or ei-ecting a pile of stones, I have yet to learu 
 what it is. It would not be more presumptuous and irrational to 
 attempt to check the free current of a breeze that has wafted over Italy, 
 than to contend that a certain arrangement of poetic melodies first 
 uttered there must, therefore, remain Italian to the end of time. The 
 domain of letters is no more susceptible of private exclusive dominion 
 tliau is the open sea. If there should be perceived a disposition on the 
 one hand to assert, and on the other to yield to such a claim, it would 
 be time for some one, invoking the spirit of old Grotius to his aid, to 
 compile a Helicon Llberum. What would it be but reviving the principle 
 of the old Portuguese claim ? Petrarch, like De Gama, may have all the 
 fame of discovery, but we yield nothing of long-maintained possession 
 and of present title. We claim our ancient English rights of sailing on 
 tlie wide sea wherever the winds may carry us, and of tuning our lan- 
 guage to any note to which it will answer. 
 
 iVny form of writing, no matter how artificial in its structure or how 
 remote in its origin, may be naturalized into a language, if it is adapted 
 to the character of that language, and if writers can be found who have 
 shown this by actual experiment. In reference simply to origin, the 
 sonnet is an exotic ; but so is the epic or the ode. I cheerfully admit 
 as much in one case as in the other, but nothing more ; and this admis- 
 sion is but equivalent to the acknowledgment that Homer came into the 
 world before Milton, Pindar before Dryden and Gray, and Petrarch be- 
 fore Surrey. A seed from this Southern plant has been sown in the soil 
 of English literature, and, exposed to all the inclemency of a Northern 
 climate, it has been followed by a growth as vigorous and flourishing as 
 the parent-stock. What I take exception to is the propensity still to 
 regard it as an unnatural transplantation, or a forced and artificial growth. 
 When we dwell with an exulting national pride upon the i)ages of the 
 " Paradise Lost," — our own English epic, — we arc never rebuked by 
 being reminded of the claims of Homer. And when we read the 
 Kaglish sonnet, able as we arc to cite hundreds of them which would 
 adorn the literature of any country, we cannot consent to stand always 
 cap-in-hand to the shade of Petrarch. A brief reference to a few 
 of the English soimet-writers of different periods will (irmly establish 
 our claim, and serve at the same time to correct the prejudices against 
 the form itself. 
 
 The most obvious of these prejudices is directed against the narrow
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 303 
 
 and precise limits of the sounet. How, it is asked, oan tlie free s])irit 
 of poetry brcatlic in such bondage, — the certain bounds of fourteen 
 lines, never to be passed over, yet always to be reached ? How can 
 fancy or imagination survive ? If the sentiment be expansive or tin; 
 imagery abundant, all must be cramped or curtailed. If, on the other 
 hand, it can touch the reader's heart in an expression more brief, it must, 
 notwithstanding, be stretched out to the standard. Such is the argu- 
 ment ; and, as a matter of course, Procrustes' bed is usually rolled in by 
 way of illustration. Richness of thought and fancy must be reduced, 
 and poverty must be eked out. Now, all of this, if true, is very objec- 
 tionable, and that it is often true there is many a luckless sonnet on 
 record to testify. But whart does it prove ? Not that the sonnet is an 
 inappropriate form of poetry, but only that it is often employed upon 
 subjects that are not adapted to it, and by writers who are unequal to 
 it. The objection establishes nothing more than that there may be an in- 
 competent poet or an injudicious selection of the topic, — an objection 
 surely not peculiar, but which would form an equally reasonable pre- 
 judice against the ode, the drama, or the epic. But the complaint does 
 not stop here. One fault, it is alleged, leads to another, — violations of 
 literary propriety, like breaches of veracity, being of a very social tend- 
 ency. Unnatural forms of expression are traced as a necessary con- 
 sequence of an unnatural form of composition. The poet, unable, by 
 reason of his artificial restraints, to give sufficient development to his 
 feeling or liis imagery, finds himself obliged to produce his impression 
 by resoi-ting to points and antitheses, and aU the devices of artificial 
 expression. Hence, it is said, the conceits for which the Italian sonnet 
 is signally noted, and which may be observed also in no inconsiderable 
 degree in so many of those of other nations. Again, we might resist 
 this attack by charging the fault upon the individual poet : it proves 
 his weakness and nothing else. But we are willing to take the burden 
 of proof upon ourselves. We maintain that these faults are not 
 naturally or necessarily inherent in the sonnet ; and how can the ques- 
 tion be better settled than by reference to what has actually been 
 accomplished by it ? Let us conceive, proposed as a topic for a sonnet, 
 a vindication of the form of poetry itself, to be effected by an enumera- 
 tion of the famed poets of various countries who have made use of it, 
 with allusions to their general character, the prominent circumstances 
 of their lives, and their several purposes in writing; this to be dono 
 adequately, without restraint or prolixity, in language at once poetical 
 and natural, and with a strict regard to tlie requisitions of versification. 
 The conception would be surely ample enough for a poem of fourteeu
 
 364 ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 lines, under peculiar metrical laws. Wbetber the sonnet be equal to 
 it may be best ascertained by the perusal of another of Wordsworth's, 
 in which the reader will recognise the execution of tlic conception which 
 we have just sketched in a very lifeless paraphrase : — 
 
 " Scorn not the sonnet ; critic, you have frown'd, 
 Mindless of its just honours: with this key 
 Shakspeare unlock'd his heart; the melody 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 
 Camoens soothed with it an exile's grief; 
 The sonnet glittcr'd a gay myrtle-leaf 
 Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd 
 His visionary brow ; a glowworm lamp. 
 It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from fairy-land 
 To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains, — alas, too few ! " 
 
 What could be more finished, more perfect, whether you regard it for 
 its mere fancy, or as a piece of eulogy or criticism ? What more 
 natural in the expression, more free from everytliing like false effect, 
 more varied in its harmonies ? What melody could be sweeter than the 
 fall of its close ? Is tliere a word that could be taken away, or one 
 tliat co\dd be added? Well would it alone sustain the fine illustration 
 which has been given of Wordsworth's sonnets, and which is also in a 
 great measure applicable to all the best sonnets in tlie language : — 
 " Wordsworth's sonnet never goes olT, as it were, with a clap or reper- 
 cussion at the close : but is thrown up like a rocket, breaks into light, 
 and falls in a soft shower of brightness." Another, very cliaracteristic 
 of his general manner, may serve to show that a very simple sentiment 
 — that of local association — may be gracefully amplified to the space of 
 the sonnet, -wathout any of the insipid dilution which distinguishes so 
 many of them : — 
 
 ' There is a little unpretending rill 
 Of limpid water, humbler far than aught 
 That ever among men or naiads soiight 
 Notice or name ! It quivers down the hill, 
 Furrowing its shallow way with dubious will; 
 Yet to my mind this scanty stream is brought 
 Oftencr than (jangcs or the Nile ; a thought 
 Of private recollection sweet and still ! 
 Months perish with tlieir moons ; year treads on year; 
 13ut, faithful Emma, thou with me canst say
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 865 
 
 That, while ten thousand pleasures disappear, 
 And Hies their memory fast almost as they, 
 The immortal sjiirit of one happy day 
 Lingers beside that rill, in vision clear." 
 
 I am tempted to add another somiet, as a liappy specimen of art, — a 
 singular instance of secondary description, illustrating clearly the fre- 
 quent aualoiry between poetry and painting, or, to describe it move 
 philosophically, between fancy and the bodily eye : 
 
 "UPON THE SIGHT OF A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE, 
 
 PAINTED B\ SIR G. H. BEAUMONT, BART. 
 
 " Praised be the art whose subtle power could stay 
 Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape. 
 Nor would i)ermit the thin smoke to escape. 
 Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day ; 
 Which stopp'd that band of travellers on their way. 
 Ere they were lost within the shady wood ; 
 And show'd the bark upon the glassy flood 
 For ever anchor'd in her sheltering bay. 
 Soul-soothing art ; which morning, noontide, even, 
 Do serve with all their changeful pageantry ; 
 Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime, 
 Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given 
 To one brief moment caught from fleeting time 
 The appropriate calm of blest eternity." 
 
 There is also great merit in the following as a piece of landscape de- 
 scription, illuminated with a very rich moral light, the imagery of the 
 closing lines, especially, evincing admirable taste : — 
 
 " A PARSONAGE IN OXFORDSHIRE. 
 
 " Where holy ground begins, unhallow'd ends, 
 Is mark'd by no distinguishable line ; 
 The turf unites, the pathways intertwine ; 
 And, wheresoe'cr the stealing footstep tends. 
 Garden, and that domain where kindred, friends. 
 And neighbours rest together, here confound 
 Their several features, mingled like the sound 
 Of many waters, or as evening blends 
 With shady night. Soft airs from shrub and flower 
 Waft fragrant greetings to each silent grave ; 
 And, while those lofty poplars gently wave 
 Their tops, between them comes and goes a sky 
 Bright as the glimpses of eternity 
 To saints accorded in their mortal hour." 
 
 Tne complaint of the narrowness of the limits of the sonnet appears 
 indicative more of the character of the mind of him who makes it than
 
 3G6 ESSAr FIRST. 
 
 of anything else. Writers vary wonderfully in the room they require : 
 some can breathe freely in no spaee narrower than a modern state 
 paper, while others are more considerate. The former are not the men 
 to write sonnets : we commend them to the epic. But is there not in 
 this craving for space something that does not accord very well with 
 true poetic temperament ? If a writer be indeed worthy of his calling, 
 if he do indeed belong to that creative class who make the world they 
 inhabit, what need has he of calling for more ground ? Is it not. 
 enough that he has a spot to rise from ? The peak of a broken crag, 
 or the point of a blasted branch, would be sorry quarters indeed. for a 
 bear or a buffalo ; but the majesty of the eagle claims no wider sove- 
 reignty for his footing, when he is springing from the earth to bathe his 
 wings in. the floods of the sun. Or, when the lark soars, like a sick 
 man's hope, to meet the coming dawn, the home he leaves is wrapped 
 in the little circumference of a tuft of grass. To these the spirit of 
 true poetry is kindred. The insatiate demand for room is the symptom 
 of a restless and licentious intellect, — of feelings undisciplined. If we 
 should hear it from the lips of one in whom we could discern a trace of 
 poetic promise, we would address him in the language of afl'ectiouair 
 entreaty :^Get thee to thy study, and there, seeking the writings of 
 those who adorned our literature in that happy age when authors had 
 not yet become part of a printer's stock in trade, — when men wrote 
 from the fulness of the heart and not the emptiness of the p\irse, — and, 
 communing with their pages, chasten thine own heart. There are 
 doubtless many who are unable, and many who are unwilling, to brook 
 the restraints of the sonnet ; but that proves only that there are many 
 faint-hearted and many false-hearted poets. All that we contend for is 
 that the difficulty, tlic existence of which we freely admit, is not 
 insuperable ; that there is no quality of poetry which may not be 
 brought within its bounds. When a poet repudiates it, he is the uncon- 
 scious witness to convict himself of a lieentiousuess which he mistakes 
 for the indignant spirit of true fnu'dom. Eut, again, let the sonnet 
 speak its own vindication : — 
 
 " Nuns fret not at their convents' narrow room ; 
 
 And hermits are contented with their cells; 
 
 And students with their pensive citadels ; 
 
 Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, 
 
 Sit blithe and hajipy ; bees, that soar fur bloom 
 
 Iliph as the highest peak of Furness Fells, 
 
 "Will murmur by the hour in foxglove-bells; 
 
 In truth the prison unto which we doom 
 
 Ourselves no prison is : and hence to me,
 
 KJJGLISn SONNETS. 367 
 
 In sundry moods, 't was pastime to be bound 
 Within the sonnet's scanty plot of groimd : 
 Pleased if some sotils (for such there needs must be) 
 Who have felt the weight of too much liberty 
 Should find brief solace there, as I have found." 
 
 It is to the narrow bounds of the sonnet that we may safely ascribe 
 its frequent want of popuLirity, and the countless failures of many who 
 have attempted it. For its most perfect conception and execution, it 
 demands, I have little hesitation in saying, powers as great and varied 
 as the epic itself. In addition to the qualilications for the usual forms 
 of poetry, tlie poet must bring to tlie sonnet a profound judgment and a 
 command of language that never fails ; his power for condensation of 
 thought must be irresistible ; he must possess that suggestive talent in 
 writing, by no means a common one, by which the reader may be set 
 upon trains of thought or feeling. His heart must be under equal 
 discipline. On the part of the reader, too, much is required. There is, 
 as we all know, one state of mmd for prose, and another for poetry. 
 The former may correspond with many of the states of feeling in which 
 men happen to be ; the latter differs essentially from most of them. 
 It varies with the constitution ; it may be felt in different degrees at 
 different times ; often it requires a process of preparation. It was one 
 of Charles Lamb's observations — deep-dyed as they all were in truth 
 and the tints of his own peculiar humour — that " Milton almost re- 
 quires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon 
 him. But he brings his music, to which who listens had need bring 
 docile thoughts and purged ears." It was a fine philosophical thought, 
 entitled to more consideration, as coming from one whose heart, if ever 
 the heart of man was, was in a state of perpetual susceptibility to all 
 that is true and beautiful in nature. Now, this process of preparation 
 is usually part of the poet's own work : much of every poem of any 
 length may be devoted to the mere purpose of elevating the reader's 
 feelings to the required pitch : the world is too much with us for us to 
 dispense with the poet's chastening. But the brevity of the sonnet 
 precludes it. The consequence is, that the reader, perusing it with 
 feelings not sympathetic or not susceptible enough, may, with great 
 injustice, impute to the poem a want of impression which really is the 
 result only of his own mood. Every reflective reader of poetry must 
 have noticed how differently he has been affected at different times by 
 the same piece. The sonnet, therefore, while it requires a writer of 
 peculiar ability, needs a read(!rof soincwluit more than ordinary reiiding- 
 capabilities. These are causes abundantly sufhcieut to accouut for
 
 368 ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 frequent failures in sonnet-writing, and frequent want of popularity 
 when successful. But we greatly err if the sonnet be not a favourite 
 abiding-place for him who, whether as a writer or a reader, joins to au 
 intellect well disciplined a heart nursed in the spu-it of genuine freedom. 
 His feelings wiU be congenial with those of the gallant cavalier who 
 kept the liberty of his soul unbroken by the dui-ance of his body ; and, 
 iu answer to the reproach of restraint, we can fancy him breaking out 
 iu the same exulting strains :— 
 
 " Th' enlarged windes, that curie the flood, 
 
 Kuow no such libertie. 
 Stone walls do not a prison make 
 
 Nor iron barres a cage ; 
 Miudes innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for an hermitage. 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone, that soare above, 
 
 Enjoy such libertie."* 
 
 If fui'ther proof be required of the capabilities of the sonnet, an 
 argument of no mean authority may be found in the fact that it was not 
 too narrow for the spirit of Shakspeare. If any one stiU believes that 
 the loftiest poetic temperament should not brook its bondage, let him 
 stand up and say so after reading the following, one of the least- 
 neglected, perhaps, of the collection of Shakspeare's sonnets : — 
 
 " Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments. Love i.s not love 
 Which alters when it alteration finds, 
 Or bends with the remover to remove : 
 Oh, no ; it is an ever-fixed mark. 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
 It is the star to every wandei'ing bark. 
 Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken. 
 Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 Within his bending sickle s compass come ; 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
 If this be error and upon me proved, 
 I never writ, nor no man ever loved." 
 
 It would be dillicult to cite a finer passage of moral poetry than this 
 description of the master-passion. f How true and how ennobling to 
 
 » Lovelace, 1612. 
 
 + The fame of having composed the finest prose delineation of the pas.sion of 
 Love may be claimed for Coleridge ; it may be found in a piece entitled " The
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 3G9 
 
 our nature ! We at once recos:;nise in it the abstraction of that concep- 
 tion which has found a dwelling and a name in the familiar forms of 
 Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen, Cordelia, — of Romeo, and of Othello too, 
 if that character be correctly understood. If this sonnet was written 
 before his dramas, then it was the pregnant thought from which were 
 destined to spring those inimitable creations of female character that 
 have been loved, as if they were living beings, by thousands. If, as is 
 most probable, it was written afterwards, it is Sliakspeare's own com- 
 ment, and might be prefixed as a most apj)Osite motto to those dramas in 
 which he has given life and motion to the conception. The gladdening 
 influences of a lover's thoughts — the cheering light of a pure affection 
 —were never depicted with truer feeling than in the following sonnet — 
 
 " 'WHien, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 1 all alone beweep my outcast state. 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless erics, 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd. 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
 "With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
 Yet in these thoughts, myself almost despising, 
 Haplj- I think ou thee. And then my state 
 (Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
 For thj' sweet love, remember'd, such wealth brings. 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings." 
 
 I make no apology for quoting from the same collection another 
 specimen, in which the reader cannot fail to observe an abundant 
 measure of that exquisite but uncloying sweetness which distinguishes 
 so much of the old English poetry. This sonnet would have been a 
 meet melody to be chanted, with the songs of Herbert and Herrick, by 
 the honoured lips of old Izaak Walton : — 
 
 " Oh how much m'ore doth beauty beauteous seem 
 By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 
 The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 
 For that sweet odour which doth in it live. 
 The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 
 As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 
 
 Improvisatore," included in his poetical works. For philosophical analysis 
 and for beauty of expression it is unequalled by any single passage on the sub- 
 ject. As a piece of abstract description or definition it is not surpassed by the 
 celebrated definition of wit in Barrow's Sermons. 
 
 2 B
 
 370 ■ ESSAT nnsT. 
 
 Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly 
 
 When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : 
 
 But, for their virtue only is their show, 
 
 They lived unwoocd, and uurcspected fade ; 
 
 Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; 
 
 Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made : 
 
 And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth. 
 
 When that shall fade, by verse distils your trutli." 
 
 Besides these objections, which are equally Jipplicable to the sonnets 
 of all nations, the English sonnet is charged with faults of its own. Dr. 
 Johnson's opinion has been already adverted to. Lord Byron, in one 
 of the very few sonnets he wrote, makes the same admission, — that it 
 is a form of poetiy not suited to our language ; and, though some allow- 
 ance is to be made for the language of compliment which he was ad- 
 dressing to an Italian lady, yet the fact that the noble poet, with all his 
 Italian promptings, so rarely made use of the sonnet, is proof enough 
 of liis sentiments. I have thus frankly referred to the opinions of Dr. 
 Johnson and Lord Byron, (odd company indeed !) both strong names 
 and witnesses against our cause. I must be allowed to speak of them- 
 with equal freedom. There will be no novelty in the expression of an 
 opinion derogatory to Dr. Johnson's character as a critic of poetry, nor 
 will it be necessary, I presume, to remind the reader of the errors, both 
 of judgment and taste, in his principal critical work. Dr. Johnson had, 
 in fact, a hearty love for only one period of English poetry, and that not 
 its best period. His affection was given to the poetry of that time when 
 the native vigour of the poetry of England was enfeebled by the intro- 
 duction of Gallic refinements, — when the healthy, sanguine English 
 Muse was miserably depleted. To say that he was little better than 
 blind and deaf to aU elsajKvould scarcely be using language too strong. 
 Out of the limits of the period referred to, he praised only by compul- 
 sion, as is apparent from his reluctance, such as is manifested in his 
 criticisms on the minor poems of Milton. Tliere is no instance on re- 
 cord in which the guilt of literary omission attaches more strongly and 
 has done more injury than in Dr. Johnson's "Lives of tlie English 
 Poets." For aught that appears there, Chaucer, and Spenser, and 
 Shakspeare (as a poet apart altog(!tlier from the dramatist), and Dray- 
 ton, Daniel, Sir Philip Sidney, and others of the age of Queen Elizabeth, 
 — the chief of the poets of England, — might never have breathed a 
 verse. And, in the dreary absence of these, after what names is the; 
 misguided reader led in chase ? Stepney, Mallet, Granville and Pomfret, 
 Hughes and Yaldcn and Sprat, — " rats and mice and such small deer."
 
 EXGLTSII SOXXETS. 371 
 
 Now, thr school of poetry which was favourite wit!) Dr. Johnson was 
 exactly that by which the sonnet was completely repudiated ; it demands 
 too much of the substance of poetry to have found favour in the eyes of 
 the Charles 11. and Queen Anne's men.* It is a fact of considerable 
 interest as bearing on our subject, and one which will be appreciated 
 by those who are familiar with the different ages of English poetry, that 
 during the most artificial period the sonnet was neglected abnost 
 universally ; and that it revives with the taste for the earlier models, 
 which is one of the best features in the literature of our day, and from 
 which we may infer that poetry at least is completing a cycle by a return 
 to primitive power and simplicity. To invalidate the authority of Lord 
 Byron's name may be a more delicate task than that we have just 
 attempted. Conceding all the vigour of imagination that may be claimed 
 for him by that large but decreasing class, his zealous admirers, I caimot 
 but believe that he greatly wanted the qualities essential to success in 
 the severer forms of poetry. This would have been especially felt in 
 the sonnet. Neither his habits of thought nor his modes of feeling 
 were adapted to it, nor had he sufficient command of expression. His 
 head and liis heart and his tongue were all undisciplined. The time has 
 gone by, I hope, for the misplaced sympathy with what are called the 
 eccentricities of genius, and for the fallacy which recognises the right 
 of any mortal to claim exemption from the laws which universally control 
 the intellectual as well as moral being of mankind. How much is it to 
 be deplored that Lord Byron was too disdainful habitually to lay his 
 restless head in the lap of nature ! His conceptions, lofty as they un- 
 questionably often were, were not distinct enough for a poem of limited 
 size; his emotions, deep as they were, unhappily were not chastened. 
 Language did not sit upon him as a garment, but girt him like hai-ness, 
 as his more discriminating admirer often, to his own discomfiture, per- 
 ceives. When we hear Lord Byron's doubts as to the capabilities of 
 the English language for the sonnet, we should recollect that he was 
 far from being well read in English poetry, and that he was not well 
 inclined to believe that what he himself was unequal to could be ac- 
 complished by any of his contemporaries. 
 
 But, leaving the witnesses, let us look to the charge. The sonnet is 
 
 * We may be reminded that the selection for the Lives was made by the 
 publishers. Wc are aware of that fact, but it is an inadequate apology. Dr. 
 Johnson himself suggested names, — some of those we have referred to in th'- 
 text. He might have controlled and extended the selection ; or, if not, he 
 might at least have proclaimed the existence of other treasures, if his ta.stehail 
 prompted him to an acquaintance with the earlier poetry of England. 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 ESSAY riusT. 
 
 not suited to the Eng-lisli language. In what respect does the language 
 fail ? Surely not in expression ; for no one will venture to deny that a 
 certain number of English words will convey as much thought as an 
 equal number of the words of any language, living or dead. The alleged 
 defect refers, we may fairly presume, to considerations of versification. 
 zV poverty of rhyme and a deficiency of harmony are imputed to the 
 language, which, if merited, would indeed disqualify it for the con- 
 tinuous melody of the sonnet. I regard the charge as an idle prejudice. 
 To complain of language is a hackneyed device to conceal ignorance or 
 incompetency. Let any one reflect on what has been accomplished by 
 the English tongue, let him muse a while on the achievements of English 
 prose or English verse, and he may well be impatient of these disloyal 
 repinings. Whoever undertakes to bring down Sir Thomas Brown's re- 
 cord to our own times, to be the historian of vulgar errors, of men's 
 folKes and mistakes, should place this in the foremost rank, — the 
 opinion which ascribes a narrowness to that glorious way over which 
 Shakspeare and ]\Iilton, Taylor and Barrow, Baxter and Bunyan, Burke, 
 Coleridge, and Wordsworth, have passed into the hearts and minds of 
 the British race on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 Tlie sonnet has been successfully naturalized into English literatui'e. 
 Its first introduction was contemporary with the early improvement in 
 our 1 oetry by which metrical forms of versification were substituted for 
 the old rhythmical mode. Its prescriptive title is, therefore, as good as 
 that of any other form. The first English sonnets were written by Henry 
 Howard, the gallant but unfortunate Earl of Surrey. The melodies of 
 strange languages had fallen on his ear ; yet he neither remained abroad 
 to renounce his own houie, nor did he r.,'turn with a heart corrupted by 
 foreign travel, but, in a spirit of ])ure and lofty patriotism, he sought 
 his native land, to call up tlie yet-buried luirmonies of his mother-tongue. 
 This honour is shared with him by his contemporary and friend. Sir 
 Thomas Wyat. I have already shown that the sonnet has been employed 
 with honour by others, — the chief of English poets. In the hands of 
 Shakspeare its form was modified ; and, as we are much more disposed 
 to regard him as a lawmaker than as an oiitlaw, we cannot but think 
 that there is too dainty a preciseness in the hesitation which is felt in 
 a])])lyiiig the name to olher forms than the original model. We are 
 ready to adopt Shakspcare's enlargement of the meaning of the word, 
 because no essential principle whatever of the poem is sacrificed by the 
 variety. But to avoid the appearance of a mere verbal dispute, if we 
 adopt the stricter sense of the term, the severer form of the poem, the 
 legitimate sonnet, as it is called, the poets of England have abundantly
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 373 
 
 vindicated the powers of tlie language. It is to a living poet tliat tlie 
 glory of consummating this victory over a widc-sprciid prejudice is due. 
 The notes that proclaimed this triumph of the Englisli Muse are uttered 
 by the sonnets of William Wordsworth. From these alone we might 
 readily show the abundant richness of the language in rhymes, its power 
 of expression, and its llexil)ility of metre. With those, indeed, who are 
 accustomed only to the more prominent rhymes and the more marked 
 forms of verse, the melody of the sonnet may often fall as on a deaf ear. 
 But to a cultivated taste, and to the secret sense of hearuig, apt for the 
 music of poetry, we would cheerfully commit almost any one of Words- 
 worth's sonnets, without an apprehension that the sweetness and 
 variety of its harmony w"ould pass unheeded. The following may l)c 
 taken after little more than a moment's selection : — 
 
 " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
 , The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 
 Breathless with adoration; the broad sun 
 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 
 The gentleness of heaven is on the sea. 
 
 Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
 
 And doth, with his eternal motion, make 
 
 A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 
 
 Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkcst with me here, 
 
 If thou appear'&t untouch'd by solemn thought, 
 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 
 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year. 
 
 And worshippest at the Temple's inner shrine, 
 
 God being with thee when we know it not." 
 
 Another prejudice, perhaps tlie most deeply seated, against the sonnet, 
 results from an impression that it always treats a subject exclusively 
 with reference to the feelings of the poet. Hence it is censured as 
 egotistical, and is looked upon as the vent of moping and discontented 
 humours, and of insipid sentimentality. That there are very many 
 sonnets justly obnoxious to these reproaches may be freely admitted : 
 and, also, that a bad sonnet is, for reasons that might readily be stated, 
 one of the worst of failures. Of those who have been able to find none 
 other, I can only say that they have been indeed unfortunate in their 
 selection. But I protest against this indiscriminate grouping of the 
 good and bad. If the sonnet be judged on that principle, how will the 
 epic abide it ? A bad epic is very bad, too, and a great deal more of it. 
 It is one of the merits of the Engli^Ii sonnet-writers that they have 
 ([ualified the subjective character, of the poem ; the feelings of the poet 
 are not necessarily most prominent : many of tlie best of the English
 
 37-1 ESSAY riKST. 
 
 sounets may be read without recognising him as anything more than a 
 voice. 
 
 That the sonnet is egotistical is obviously only a comparative censure. 
 Whether this is to be imputed to it for its reproach or its repute will 
 manifestly depend upon whose egotism it is. If it express tlie feelings 
 of a hollow heart or the thought of an empty head, nothing can be more 
 valueless. But has it not been the key to open the secret cabinet of 
 spirits whose stores were precious ? When Shakspeare meditated upon 
 his theatrical profession, it was in the sonnet that he breathed out his 
 sense of degradation in that beautiful lament, of which the tone is a 
 little louder than a sigh and yet not so harsh as a murmur. It is here 
 that his genius, no longer embodied in its creations, appears to us in its 
 individual nature ; — he walks upon the earth in his own personal form. 
 What poem can boast of greater interest ? — 
 
 " Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to the view. 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, 
 Made old oft'euces of affections new. 
 Most true it is that 1 have look'd on truth 
 Askance and strangely ; but, by all above, 
 These blenches gave my heart another youth. 
 And worse essays proved thee my best of lo\c. 
 Now all is done, save what shall have no end : 
 Mine appetite I never more will grind 
 On newer proof, to try an older friend, — 
 A God in love, to whom I am confined. 
 Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, 
 Even to thy pure and most, most loving breast." 
 
 Again, in reference to the same topic : — 
 
 " Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds. 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand ; 
 Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd ; 
 Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
 Potions of eysell, 'gainst my strong infection ; 
 No bitterness that 1 will bitter think, 
 No double penance, to correct correction. 
 Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye 
 Even that your pity is enough to cuie mc."
 
 EKGLISU SONNETS. ' 375 
 
 Tliis would be sweet language from auy lips ; but what can be deeper 
 than the pathos of it, when yo\i reflect that it is the grief of one whose 
 wisdom, for more than two centuries, has been reverently quoted by 
 statesmen, philosophers, and divines, whose plots have wound round so 
 many hearts- and moistened so many eyes, whose pictures of passions 
 have moved such sympathies, and whose wit has gladdened so many 
 faces ? It is in his sonnets that you find the conclusive proof that he 
 was " the gentle Shakspeare."* It will be recollected that he retired to 
 Stratford to pass the evening of his days. We quote the following 
 sonnet, which appears to refer to that period, partly for the fine ampli- 
 fication it contains of a well-known phrase in Macbeth, and chiefly for 
 the surpassing beauty of the images illustrative of a poet's silent old ago. 
 We challenge the poetry of the world against that one line : — 
 
 " That time of year thou mayest in me behold, 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare, ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds satvj. 
 In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
 As after sunset fadeth in the west. 
 Which by-and-by black night doth take away, — 
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
 In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 
 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie. 
 As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
 Consumed with that which it was nourish"d by. 
 This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, 
 To love that ■well which thou must leave ere long." 
 
 One other instance may be cited by way of refutation of the charge 
 of insipidity brought against the soimet. When Milton addressed the 
 
 grave appeal of patriotism to his contemporaries, Cromwell and Fairfax 
 
 * 
 * Of all the epithets that are attached to the name of Shakspeare, there are 
 but two or three that are to be tolerated. You can scarcely, by means of any 
 term, add to the conception of genius which is suggested by the single word 
 " Shakspeare." The phrase, " the gentle Shakspeare," deserves to be a 
 favourite one, because it teaches a truth of deep moral interest ; it tells of the 
 blessed union of genius and gentleness, — that there is a natural alliance 
 between the highest powers of intellect and tenderest emotions of the heart. 
 There might, perhaps, be no other objection than the appearance of quaiut- 
 ness to his sharing Hooker's epithet, " the judicious Shakspeare," as iudicat- 
 ing those faculties which, combined with imagination, are found only in poets 
 of the first order. Mr. Coleridge applied to Shakspeare the expression " the 
 myriad-minded," avi]p /xuoiovov;, having reclaimed it from a Greek monk, by 
 whom it had been used in reference to a patriarch of Constantinople. A& to 
 most other epithets for him, they are as tinkling cymbals.
 
 37G ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 and Vane, he chose this form. When he invoked a higher power, it was 
 the sonnet by which he uttered the prayer, " Avenge, O Lord, thy 
 slaughtered hosts," — a note so fearful and so loud that we can almost 
 fancy it echoing over the valleys in which the bones of the martyrs lay 
 covered with snow. And when, at last, no longer able to resist the 
 belief that he had been labouring for an unworthy age, that he had been 
 prompting to freedom a race that was sluggish and sensual, it was in 
 the sonnet that he expressed his solemn resignation. It was a fitting 
 close for his eventful career. The storm that had risen on the meridian 
 of his life had slowly abated, and, while the fragments of it were yet 
 strewn on every side and the thunders of his controversial voice were 
 echoing in the distant sky, there broke forth, at sunset, a placid gleam of 
 that light which had beamed upon his youth. His sight extinguished, a 
 hostile dynasty restored, — " Dai'kness before and Danger's voice behind," 
 — he bowed his head with the unsoured cheerfulness of his early days. 
 In that spii'it we find him in the sonnets communing with a few chosen 
 friends and with his God. To appreciate MUton's sonnets fully, we 
 should refresh our recollections of some of his prose-writings ; we should 
 recall the fierce indignation and the bitter scorn hurled against 
 Salmasius ; we should recur to the closing passages of his tract of 
 " Reformation in England," — the most awfid hnprecation ever uttered 
 by the voice of man, save when it has been prophetic of the vengeance 
 of the Almighty. Then let either of the sonnets adcbcssed to Cyriac 
 Skinner be read : — 
 
 " Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 Bereft of light their seeing have forgot, 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 
 Or man or woman. Yet I argue not 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
 Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 The eonscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task. 
 Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 
 This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, 
 Content, though l)lind, had I no better guide." 
 
 Can it be that the tori'ent which before leaped so madly and so loudly 
 from roek to rock has passed into this gentle current ? How full, how 
 tranquil, is its flow ! 
 
 Spenser's sonnets arc of .secondary merit. Inferior to liis other minor
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 377 
 
 poems, they are iinimpassionerl productions, of a character which seems 
 to be suggested by the title " Amoretti '"' prefixed to them. The poet 
 who, as a sonnet-writer, has gained a place by the side of Shakspeare 
 and Milton, is AVordsworth. And when it is considered that all of these 
 have given to the world works of a more enlarged form and of the 
 highest order of poems, it would seem that the soimet was used as a 
 kind of private tablet to preserve the detached and passing thoughts 
 which must ever be rising in the ceaseless fountain of a great poet's 
 heart. It is the record of 
 
 " The sessions of sweet, silent thought," 
 
 to borrow from a sonnet of Shakspeare one of those exqiiisite plirases 
 which fell so naturally and so gracefully from his tongue, and which 
 justify us in saying (not iiTeverently, we trust) that he spake as never 
 man spake. Let no one look upon the little poem with a hasty super- 
 ciliousness. I have shown that it has been the retreat of poetic genius 
 of the first rank, — an oratory for those who have worthily ministered in 
 the solemnities of cathedral service. 
 
 The sonnets of Wordsworth would richly deserve a separate examin- 
 ation. He, more than any other poet, has shown its adaptation to a 
 very great variety of subject and of feeling. If there were none other 
 in the language, there would be reason enough to claim the sonnet as a 
 form of poetry completely naturalized into English literature. The 
 public is at last rendering him justice ; the sound of the war that was 
 waged against him has died away. It is his singularly-happy fortune, 
 in which his early admirers especially sympathize, to witness the begin- 
 ning of the maturity of his fame. It will be completed by the reputation 
 of his soimets, which will probably be the last of his works to gain very 
 general favour. For tliis reason we have quoted from them freely, and 
 if the reader desire the eloqvience, the pathos, and the philosophy of 
 poetry, with all its harmonies, we commend him to the several collections 
 of somiets among the poems of Wordsworth. 
 
 In adverting to contemporary poetry, we cannot suppress a regret 
 that Coleridge — that other great light, but recently extinguished— did 
 not, in the later periods of his life, revive his early attachment to the 
 sonnet. In expressing this regret, I would not be understood a.s 
 participating in the charge of inactivity that has so inconsiderately been 
 brought against him. Of that injustice we wash our hands, for we 
 entertain too deep a gratitude for what he has done, and too firm convic- 
 tion that few writers have contributed more to the thoughts of their 
 fellow-beings. Coleridge has been our friend,— our companion, our
 
 378 ESSAY FIRST. 
 
 i^uide, our own familiar friend. We could not lay upon the grass that 
 grows on his grave the weight of the lightest complaint. I merely 
 regret that in his old age he did not renew the series of his youthful 
 sonnets, because his constitutional habits of reflection and his singular 
 powers of versification preeminently qualified him for this form ot 
 poetry. I could readily point out many a passage in Mr. Coleridge's 
 prose-works, in which som.e noble thought is illuminated by a richly, 
 imao-inative illustration, and which would need only the metrical 
 arrangement to constitute a sonnet of the first order. His son. Hartley 
 Coleridge, who has given proof that the genius of the family has not 
 been buried in the fatlier's grave, might find in such a process of trans- 
 formation a task affectionate to the memory of his parent and worthy of 
 his own powers.* 
 
 It is irksome, we are aware, to write from other men's suggestions, 
 and the best efi"orts of mind are those which are purely self-evolved. 
 The mere diifieulty of any undertaking would be no obstacle to the 
 intellect that could conceive a sonnet in all respects so adequate to its 
 high theme as the following from the poems of Hartley Coleridge : — 
 
 "TO SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 " The soul of man is larger than the sky, — 
 Deeper than ocean, or abysmal dark 
 Of the unfathom'd centre. Like that ark 
 Which in its sacred hold uplifted high, 
 O'er the drown'd hills, the human fiimily, 
 And stock reserved of every living kind, 
 
 * If our voice could reach him, we would commend such passages as the 
 following as suitable material for a sonnet : the fine comparison in ,the 
 " Friend," — " Human experience, like the stern-lights of a ship at sea, 
 illumines only the path we have passed over ; " — or Coleridge's impassioned 
 wish respecting the reoei)tion of his works; — "Would to Heaven that the 
 verdict to be passed on mj' labours depended on those who least needed them I 
 The water-lily, in the midst of the waters, lifts up its broad leaves and expands 
 its petals at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain with a 
 q\iicker sympathy than the parched shrub in the sandy desert ; " — or his bold 
 conception respecting the design of miracles, in the " Statesman's Manual : " — 
 " It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, 
 that the senses were miraculously appealed to. Reason and revelation are 
 their own evidence. The natural sun is, in this respect, a symbol of the 
 s^piritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, he 
 calls up the breeze to cha.se away the usurping vapours of the night-season, 
 and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification ; not, 
 surely, in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its 
 interception."
 
 ENGLISH SONNETS. 379 
 
 So, in the compass of the single mind, 
 
 The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie 
 
 That make all worlds. Great poet I 't was thy art 
 
 To know thyself, and in thyself to be 
 
 Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny, 
 
 Or the firm fatal Purpose of the Heart, 
 
 Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same, 
 
 Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame." 
 
 In closing my enumeration of the capabilities of the sonnet, there is 
 one other purpose to which it was equal. It could express the feelings 
 of Charles Lamb. Whj of Charles Lamb more than of any one else ^ 
 Reader, if you ask that question you have not yet learned the dear 
 mysteiy of those two monosyllables, — " Charles Lamb." But if you 
 have been more fortunate, how much of the spirit of "Elia" will you 
 not recognise in these two brief poems ! — 
 " WORK. 
 " Who first invented Work, and bound the free 
 And holiday-rejoicing spirit down 
 To the ever-haunting importunity 
 Of business in the green fields, and the town. 
 To plough, loom, anvil, spade, — and, oh I most sad. 
 To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ? 
 Who but the being unblest, alien from good, 
 Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
 Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, 
 That round and round incalculably reel — 
 For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel 
 In that red realm from which are no returnings ; 
 Where, toiling and turmoiling, ever and aye. 
 He and his thoughts keep pensive working-day." 
 
 " LEISURE. 
 " They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke. 
 That like a millstone on man's mind doth pres£i, 
 Which only works and business can redress; 
 Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, 
 Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. 
 But might I, fed with silent meditation, 
 Assoiled live from that fiend. Occupation, — 
 Improbus labor, which hath my spirit ])rokc, 
 I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit ; 
 Fling in more days than went to make the gem 
 That crown'd the white top of Methusalem ; 
 Yea, on my weak neck take, and never forfeit. 
 Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky. 
 The heaven-sweet burden of eternity."
 
 380 T.SSAT SECOKB. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured, not very systematically, to vindicate a neg- 
 lected department of English poetry. I never engage in an investigation 
 of the kind, involving a recurrence to the early periods of English 
 literature, without feeling disposed, on closing it, to give way to a 
 thanksgiving that " the lines have fallen to us in such pleasant places ; 
 that M'e have so goodly a heritage." To the student of poetry — we 
 liope a distinction is drawn between such and many of the ordinary 
 readers of poetry — we commend the sonnet as worthy of his regard, and 
 as one of the best tests of a cultivated taste. 
 
 The public taste for the sonnet is reviving, and it would not be a 
 difficult task to give it a true tone. Let a selection be made from the 
 sonnets of Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and other 
 of the earlier poets, and from those of Warton, Bowles, Wordsworth, 
 Southey, Coleridge, and others, illustrated with occasional critical 
 notices. A volume might be formed into which none but the best 
 English sonnets should be admitted. Besides its intrinsic merit, such 
 a book would possess much of the charm of novelty, and, what •would 
 distinguish it most favourably from all books of selections, each 
 selection would be a complete and perfect poem in itself. I can scarcely 
 imagine a more agreeable volume for the study or for the parlour-table 
 I recommend the suggestion to some enterprising publisher, as one 
 likely to be successful, and which would certainly render a service to 
 the cause of English letters. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 '^atms of Partlcg Colcribgc. 
 
 We love to meet occasionally with a new name in the annals of litera 
 ture. Eor, though there is a sovereign company to whom we never 
 falter in our allegiance, yet, for tlic honour of time present, and for the 
 sat isfaction of knowing that the best portion of the world is not standing 
 still, we rejoice now and then to hail a new author. Under this 
 designation we desire to be distinctly understood as not including that 
 throwing class of handicraftsmen who are engaged in tlic manufacture of 
 what l)y courtesy are called books. When we speak of authorship, we 
 mean that occupation which gives to a name an abiding-place in the 
 liistory of letters. It is one of the evils of the aeeumulation of modern 
 publications, that a man, unless gifted with supernatural reading-powers.
 
 POEMS OF IIAKTI-EY COIiERTDGE. 381 
 
 is compelled to be somewhat reserved in forming- now literary acqnaint- 
 ances. He contents liimself with his old friends ; he retreats to the 
 shelf of his lil)rary that has become endeared to him ; he finds his 
 security amonj^ the familiar volumes that he could lay his liand upon in 
 the daric ; he is shy of uew-made gentry. Yet these very feelings pro- 
 bably enhance the pleasure of meeting with a volume which bears th(; 
 stamp of something above the mere meehauisra of bookmaking. 
 
 It is an added pleasiu'e to be able to greet a new poet. The world, 
 we are apprehensive, is growing too prosy. We are haunted with a 
 vague sort of alarm — more like a dream, or a nightmare, than a waking 
 thought — that hosts of the tenants of this goodly green globe will turn 
 into brokers and money-dealers. The hearts of men, we fear, wUl be in 
 the stocks. It is one of the characteristics of the times, that whole 
 communities are alarmingly utilitarian. Nothing is secure from tlie 
 base uses of economists and calculators ; no spot or edifice, however 
 hallowed, is assui'ed in its moral associations ; no spectacle, however 
 glorious by the woi'k of nature, is safe from the rude touch of heartless 
 speculation. Men have been found bold enough to lay their impious 
 hands upon scenes the most awful in creation.- The cataract and the 
 cascade are measured for water-power ; the mountain-torrent is 
 a feeder. A traveller, revisiting a district of country after a few 
 years' absence, inquires after a M^aterfall as he does after an old in- 
 habitant, and is no more surprised at finding that one has gone to his 
 rest than that the other has been turned to its work. Niagara has 
 scarcely been secure. Presumptuous as modern "improvement" is, 
 there need not, we suppose, be a rational fear that the ceaseless discharge 
 of more than five inland seas might be perceptibly diminished ; but that 
 the matchless sublimity of that spot may be grievously impaired, we 
 have greatly feared. Our last pilgrimage to that place of worship — that 
 slirine of tlie Almighty — was hastened by this appreliension. As we 
 approached it, we heard of railroads to the Falls, — of the " City of the 
 Falls," — of towai-lots, and of water-power. We saw, with a heavy 
 heart, the actual plan of these devices. Alas ! thought we, shall that 
 voice of the Creator be silenced ? — shall the deep that there crieth unto 
 deep be hushed ? But there came glad tidings that nature was avenged. 
 The bold mortal — the Titan of the land-jobbers — wlio had dared to 
 traific with her glories was laid prostrate in tlie very deed. We turned 
 pagan for the nonce, and gave thanks to the spirit of the cataract, whom, 
 in fancy, we beheld triumphing over the prostrate evil genius of Specu- 
 lation. It will, we fondly trust, ])rove a lesson against future presump- 
 tion. We have no fear that man, with aU the pomp and power and
 
 382 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 pride of mechanism, can draw more than a drop from that flow ; yet lie 
 may most vexatiously intrude : the shrill accents of art may be mingled 
 with the solemn tones of nature, — a harsh accompaniment to the unison 
 of voices of the great -waters. The surrounding scenery may be sadly 
 defaced, if touched by any hand which is not restrained by a sense of 
 the sublimities of the place. As we wandered about the neighbourhood, 
 a group of Indians glided across our path, — a young Tuscarora, with a 
 very unabated look, and his squaw with her infant peering out of its 
 cradle on its mother's back. By the by, an Indian mother's love should 
 be exceeding deep, we surmise, for her dear little savage is borne so much 
 more than the infants of the sophisticated matrons in civilized com- 
 munities. As we looked at them, a thought came into our mind that the 
 traces of the world as it has been were not yet quite effaced, — that 
 something was still left untouched by the restless, feverish hand of cove- 
 teousness. We gazed upon the savages as the Ancient Mariner did upon 
 the bright water snakes : — 
 
 " A spring of love gush'd from my hc.irt, 
 And I bless' d them unaware ; 
 Snre mj' kind saint took pity on me, 
 And I bless'd them unaware." 
 
 We have no ambition to be sentimentally conservative ; but we do 
 lament that the spirit of change is restrained by no higher consideration 
 than a distrust of investment, and that it has no fear of assaulting the 
 bounds set by nature or by moral association. It is oidy when it trans- 
 gresses its lawful Limits — as in the glaring instance we have adverted 
 to —that we deplore the progress of improvement so called. The world 
 would be aU the better, we fancy, if the practical fit which is on it were 
 somewhat abated. A factitious standard has been introduced by the 
 sell'-sufficieut wisdom of the day, which tests all things by what is called 
 a practical character, — which means, we believe, the quality of teaching 
 men to make money, or to increase the crops, or to multiply the fabric 
 of " stuffs," under which latter denomination may be included a large 
 proportion of the products of the press. Books are valued according 
 to the same standard. Now, we most thankfully greet any literary efibrt 
 which recognises a higher aim and a nobler end. Surely there is a prac- 
 tical character of a better kind than that which is indicated by the 
 ordinary acceptation of the term ; surely something more is to be done 
 than to administer to man's physical wants ; he is to be supplied with 
 something more than food, and clothing, and the trash called " light 
 reading " by those who look upon books as mere allies against time. 
 A writer elevating himself above the lower spheres of authorsliip is
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 383 
 
 worthy of a more than ordinary welcome. We delight, therefore, we 
 repeat, to meet with a new poet. 
 
 The name of Hartley Coleridge will probably be new to many of our 
 readers. He is the son — the first-born — of the late Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge, the poet and philosopher : we always hesitate which to call 
 him, and regret that the language supphes no word comprehensive of 
 both titles. Mr. Hartley Coleridge has therefore a patrimonial reputa- 
 tion. How far, however, that species of inheritance may be available 
 to a man's own reputation, is, we think, somewhat questionable ; for it 
 is quite as apt to induce an invidious comparison as a wilUngness to 
 trace the ancestral power. It has the effect of interesting pubhc 
 cariosity, but beyond that the heir's own fame must be earned by his 
 own efforts. 
 
 It is pleasing to find any instance in which the strength and qualities 
 of the mind have descended from fatlier or mother to the offspring. The 
 likeness has much greater interest than those physical similitudes in 
 which there is often so carefully transmitted the shape of a nose or a 
 mouth, or the twist of an eyebrow, or that most imperishable of all 
 traits, which is rarely quenched by the lapse of less than three or four 
 generations, — a head of red hair. A case of intellectual inheritance is 
 an agreeable exception to the general tendency to degeneracy. The 
 necessity of crossing the breed seems to make such brutes of us that it 
 is not a pleasing theory. The instances of hereditary talent in literature 
 are, however, we are obliged to acknowledge, of rare occurrence. After 
 a few minutes labour of recollection, the only examples we are able to 
 call to mind are Kings David and Solomon, and the two Drs. Sherlock. 
 The latter of these cases is not of sufficient note, and the circumstance 
 of inspiration obviously puts the former out of the question ; for it 
 might probably be regarded as an exception to a general rule rather 
 than an illustration of it. Poetic genius especially is so delicate a com- 
 bination, that it is likely to be destroyed by any change in its constitu- 
 tion. Two of Dryden's sons attempted to follow in their father's path ; 
 but the spirit of " gh)rious John " had iled, and what they wrote the 
 world has willingly let die* Spenser left two sons, — one with a 
 name at least that might well befit a poet, " Sylvanus Spenser," — the 
 
 * Perhaps in the constitution of the sons there was too large a proportion of 
 the mother's chai'acter. A letter from Dryden'.s wife — the Lady Elizabeth, as 
 she was styled, from her noble lineage of the Howards — has been preserved, in 
 which the following pa.ssage occurs : — " Your father is much at woon ius to his 
 health, and hi.s defnesc is not wosce, but much as he was when he was heare. 
 Give me a true account how my deare sonn Charlies is head dus."
 
 384 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 other with a name that would have suited one whose walks were on the 
 highways of prose, " Peregrine Spcuser." What, by the by, had become 
 of the poet's own beautiful name, " Edmund Spenser " ? Perhaps the 
 child was so named that pcrislicd in the flames when Spenser's dwelling 
 was fired by the Irish rebels and he cb'iven from the country.* Unless 
 that child, over whose untimely and disastrous fate tl\e poet's broken 
 heart beat its last throbs, inherited some of the parent's spirit, 
 his boundless imagination came not down to others of the name. 
 Milton's son — John Milton, junior — died in his infancy ; but, we dare 
 say, had he lived longer, he would have been literally "a mute, in- 
 glorious Milton." Certauily his early death is not to be deplored, if 
 we may conjecture what his character would have been from that of 
 Milton's daughters, who grew aweary of theii' intellectual attendance 
 upon the blind old bard, and longed for the hunible tasks of needlework. 
 It is an ugly page in female history that records how they turned away 
 from their communion with the spirit of their sire. "The irksomeness 
 of then- employment could not always be concealed, but broke out more 
 and more into expressions of uneasiness ; so that at length they were 
 all sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufactures 
 that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gpld or 
 silver." f The gloiy of Shakspcare's name began and ended with him- 
 self, — his o-wii unheritable self. We hope that the name is not dese. 
 crated by the wear of any modern mortal, for it has passed above the 
 common uses of men's names. How anomalous would a " Mr. or Mrs. 
 Shakspeare " sound, and what perfect contradictions in terms would 
 " the little Shakspeares " be ! When the Rev. Mr. Dyce, one of Shaks- 
 pcare's biographers, visited Stratford-on-Avon, in 1S20, for the purpose 
 of gathering traditions, he found a woman upwards of eighty years of 
 age named Mary Hornby, who gained a livelihood by showing the house 
 in which the bard M'as born. She claimed a descent from Shakspeare, 
 her maiden name being Hart,, and had evidently inherited a full share of 
 his love of the drama. Her high ancestral feeling manifested itself by 
 her saying, " I writes plays, sir," and prodiicing a tragedy entitled " The 
 Battle of Waterloo." The old woman, who had better been at her 
 prayers, was, we presume, well read in the three parts of Henry VI. ; 
 she had assuredly selected a famous theme for "Alarums — Enter 
 
 * This calamity is mentioned by Soutliey, in his notices of the early British 
 poets, in a manner rather peculiar : — " When Tyrone's rebellion b'oke out, 
 Spenser's house was burnt by the rebels, and in it his papers and one of his 
 children." — Southey's " British Poets." 
 
 t Life of Milton, by his nephew, Edward Philips.
 
 POEMS OF IIAUTLEY COLERIUOE. 385 
 
 English and Frcncli, fighting — Exeunt, fighting — Alarums." So far as 
 syntax is conccructl, she seems to have been what the French critics in 
 their ignorance are so fond of calling her great progenitor,— "a wild, 
 irregular genius." Such fallings oif may well serve to rebuke man's 
 pride. It was one of the trials of the calamitous life of the sainted 
 Jeremy Taylor to witness the debased career of his own children. Who 
 could have thought that the offspring of one whose spiiit dwelt so 
 habitually in the regions of an aspiring devotion would have declined to 
 such degenerate ways ? One fell in a duel, staining his dying hand with 
 the blood of his antagonist ; the other, with a slower but as deep a 
 perfidy, became a favourite companion of ViUiers, Duke of Buckingham. 
 One more of ttese melancholy instances of degeneracy : Izaak Walton, 
 the great piscator, left an only sou, bearing too his honoured name. 
 He, an Izaak Walton, turned away from the banks of the sedgy Lea, 
 became a travelled gentleman, studied the Fine Arts in Italy, returned 
 to one of the English universities, and devoted himself to assisting in 
 the compilation of an ecclesiastical history. There is no i-ecord of his 
 having ever angled for a single fish. Another of old Izaak's — " honest 
 Mr. Walton's " — descendants, but, fortunately, not bearing the name, 
 which in this instance was spared the degradation, strayed stiU further 
 from the harmless paths of his forefather, and acquired some notoriety 
 among that craft who after a fashion are fishers of men, by the author- 
 ship of the work, doomed to most criminal associations, entitled, 
 " Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown." 
 
 But we are loath to dwell longer on this sad topic. The frequent 
 occurrences of such instances of degeneracy as we have advei'ted to would 
 almost justify a congratulation on those cases where the race of an 
 illustrious individual has become extinct with him. There would seem 
 to be a tendency in nature to transmit the weaknesses and intirmities 
 rather than the nobler parts of our being. Of this there is so niuch 
 hazard, that, whenever great powers are blended with any defects, we arc 
 tempted to I'cjoice in our hearts on finding that the line of succession is 
 broken. It would be difiicult, for instance, to fancy any being more 
 superlatively disagreeable than a young Dr. Johnson would in all pro- 
 bability have been ; and surely, if nature had fui'uished such an individual, 
 she would have been bound to supply a young Boswell to match him. It 
 was wisely ordained, no doubt, that the late Miss Hannah More lived and 
 died an " unwedded maiden old." We must pause a moment to make 
 our acknowledgment to Mr. Wordsworth for that phrase ; for, having a 
 profound affection for several of the class in question, we have long felt 
 the need of some term as a substitute for that other one which has 
 
 2 c
 
 386 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 become somewhat tinctured with reproacli. The lovely piety which 
 adorned the life of Hannah More might, in the second generation, have 
 subsided into a residuum of mere starch ; or, if the aberration had been 
 to the opposite extreme, and as wide as in the family of the good 
 Jeremy Taylor, her descendant might have been an opera-singer or a 
 figurante. 
 
 We have been led into these trains of rcflecliou by taking up the 
 volume of Mr. Hartley Coleridge's poems. A literary ellbrt by a son of 
 Coleridge was calculated to attract attention. Tlie influence exerted by 
 the father's writings was deeper than tliat of most authors ; the readers 
 that were moved by him were strongly moved, and we could hardly 
 believe that their influence would be inoperative on his own household. 
 We had anticipations, therefore, of Hartley Coleridge before we knew 
 of his literary pursuits. AVhat he has so far accomplished may be con- 
 sidered chiefly as experiment for him and promise to the world. But 
 enough, we think, has been done to show that the Coleridge name has 
 not yet reaped the whole harvest of its fame. Hartley Coleridge has 
 appeared as the author of the volume of poetry which we purpose 
 examining in this article, and of a volume of biography, — " The Lives 
 of Distinguished Northerns," — a work of very considera])le attractions, 
 with a vein of pleasant writing on the surface and of line philosophy 
 beneath. The compliment has also been paid of throwing upon him 
 suspicions of the authorship of that extraordinary and delightful produc- 
 tion, " The Doctor ; " and, although the proofs seem to have accumulated 
 more upon Southey than upon any one else, we are very reluctant to 
 give up a belief of ours that Hartley Coleridge has a hand in it, partici- 
 ])ating, probably, with tlie laureate, and thus reviving that fine old custom 
 of joint authorship whieli was of no uncommon occurrence in the early 
 days of English literature. 
 
 Hartley Coleridge is, by a sort of necessity, a poet, and tlie lovers of 
 his father's melodious imaginings had a right to indulge great hopes of 
 him. His father's prayers and teachings marked him for the high con- 
 verse of poesy ; and the beautiful allusions to him, when yet an infant 
 have kept a place in the hearts of the admirers of the sire open for the 
 son. Wc feel towards Hartley Coleridge as if we could say that we 
 knew him when a child. What liappier introduction could he have had 
 than by tlie little incident narrated with such true parental as well as 
 poetic feeling in Coleridge's exquisite poem, "The Nightingale" ? — 
 " Farewell, O warbler ! till to-morrow eve. 
 
 And you, my friends ! farewell, a. short farewell ! 
 We have been loitering long and pleasantly I
 
 POEMS OF IIARTLi:r COLERIDGE. 387 
 
 And now for our dear homes. That strain again ! 
 Full fain it would delay me ! My dear babe, 
 Who, capable of no articulate sound, 
 Mars all things with his imitative lisp, — 
 How he would place his hand beside his ear. 
 His little hand, the small forefinger up, 
 And bid us listen ! And I deem it wise 
 To make him nature's playmate. He knows well 
 The evening star ; and once, when he awoke 
 In most distressful mood (some inward pain 
 Had madfi up that strange thing, an infant's dream), 
 I hurried with him to our orchard-plot. 
 And he beheld the moon, and, hush'd at once. 
 Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently. 
 While his fair eyes, that swam with undropp'd tears. 
 Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam ! Well ! — 
 It is a father's tale. But if that Heaven 
 Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up 
 Familiar with these songs, that with the night 
 He may associate joy ! — Once more, farewell. 
 Sweet nightingale ! Once more, my friends, farewell ! " 
 Ahd again, in the lines entitled " Frost at Midnight : " — 
 " Dear babe, that slecpest cradled by my side, 
 Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm. 
 Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
 And momentary pauses of tlic thought ! 
 My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
 With tender gladness thus to look at thee, 
 And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
 And in far other scenes ! For I was rear'd 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a bree/e 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds 
 Which imago, in their bulk, both lakes and shores 
 And mountain-crags : so shalt thou see and hear 
 The lovely shades and sounds intelligible 
 Of that eternal language which thy. God 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 Himself in all, and all things in himself. 
 Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould 
 Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 
 
 " Therefore, all seasons shall be sweet to thee ; 
 Whether the summer clothe the general earth 
 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
 Betwixt the tuft of snow on the bare branch 
 2 c 2
 
 388 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
 
 Smokes in the sun- thaw ; whether the eavo -drops full 
 
 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
 
 Or if the secret ministry of frost 
 
 Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 
 
 Quietly shiniag to the quiet moon." 
 
 Such aspirations must have shed a prosperous iuflucuce upon the 
 expanding spirit of him whose childhood was thus watched over. The 
 interest of this hoine-story is completed bv the sweet response of the son 
 to the aged parent, upon wliose ear — -soon after sealed by death — it 
 may have sounded as an earnest of his early prayer. It is impossible 
 not to be most favourably prepossessed by the dedication of these poems, 
 not merely for the admirable simplicity of the expression, but for the 
 pure and right -hearted feeling which pervades it : — 
 
 " DEDICATORY SONNET, 
 
 TO S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Father, and hard, revered ! to whom I owe— 
 Whate'er it be — my little art of numbei-s, 
 Thou, in thy night-watch, o'er my cradlad slumbers 
 Didst meditate the verse that lives to show 
 (And long shall live, when we alike arc low) 
 Thy prayer liow ardent, and thy hope how strong, 
 That 1 should learn of nature's self the song. 
 The lore, which none but nature's pupils know. 
 
 " The prayer was heard: I ' wander'd, like a breeze,' 
 By mountain-brooks and solitary meres, 
 And gather'd there the shapes and fantasies 
 Which, mix'd with passions of my sadder years. 
 Compose this book. If good therein there be, 
 That good, my sire, I dedicate to thee. 
 
 " Hautley COLEKinCE." 
 
 The feeling with wliich the volume is offered to the public discovers 
 tlic same good sense and feeling : — 
 
 " Of the verses contained in this volume, none, with a single exception, 
 can claim the privilege of juvenile poems. I neither deprecate nor defy 
 the censure of the critics. No man can know, of himself, whether he 
 is, or is not, a poet. The thoughts, the feelings, the images, which are 
 the material of poetry, are accessible to all who seek for them ; but the 
 power to express, combine, and modify, — to make a truth of thought, — 
 to earn a sympathy for feeling, — to convey an image to the inward eye, 
 witli all its influences and associations, — can only approve itself by 
 experiment ; and the result of the experiment may not he known for
 
 POEMS OF HAKTLET COLERIEGE. 389 
 
 years. Such an experiment I have ventured to try, and I Avait the 
 result with patience. Should it be favourable, the present volume will 
 bliortly be followed by another, in which, if no more be accomplished, 
 a higher strain is certainly attempted."* 
 
 This is language very appropriate to the modesty of a first effusion ; 
 but the time will come, we are inclined to think, when Hartley Coleridge 
 wiU feel that " a man can know of himself whether he is, or is not, a 
 poet." When he rises (as we trust he will) into that promised higher 
 strain, he must rely upon his own consciousness rather than upon tlie 
 appreciations of others. The poet who talks of high strains must not 
 wait for results ; " soaring in the high region of his fancies, with his 
 garland and singing-robes about him,"f he must not look too often on 
 the world that he leaves beneatli him. But difiidence is a good fault at 
 any time. 
 
 Tills volume of poems has given us assurance against a misgiving that 
 has occasionally insinuated itself into our minds — a fear that the great 
 stream of English poetry may for a time be intermitted. Commencing 
 at the close of the long intei-val which elapsed after Chaucer's lime, the 
 series of eminent poets may be regarded as continuous from the date of 
 the re\dval of poetry with the Earl of Surrey down to the present day. 
 Sir Pliilip Sydney followed soon after that early period : he was mourned 
 by Spenser, whose career was a little earlier than Shakspeare's. The 
 retired manhood of Shakspeare and the youth of Milton touched the 
 same period of time. There is a tradition of an interview between 
 Milton in his old age, and the youthful Dryden, — an interview, by-the- 
 by, sought by the latter, for the purpose of making a request which 
 gave but sorry promise of his subsequent power : he was seeking 
 permission to turn " Paradise Lost " into a rhyming tragedy, called 
 " The State of Imiocence." In one of his letters Pope has recorded 
 having once seen Dryden, with a lament that his acquaintance reached 
 no further : — " Virgilium tantnm vidi." Gray and CoAi^er brought tlie 
 scries down towards the close of the last century, and Crabbe and 
 Rogers may be looked on as the connecting Unks with the great con- 
 temporary poets. Of these, Coleridge, Walter Scott, and Byron are in 
 their graves ; Southey seems to have taken up his abode " in the cool 
 element of prose." The light is yet burning upon Rydal Mount, — 
 with vigour enough, we fervently trust, to send forth its kindly in- 
 fluences upon human nature for years to come. But the course of 
 nature is coming on; and, in his bcautifid lines on the death of the 
 * Preface. t Milton.
 
 890 r.SSAT SECOND. 
 
 Ettrick Shepherd, " the old man eloquent " has told of the Marninp: lie 
 has felt in the death of his contemporaries : — 
 
 " Like clouds that rake the mountain summit 
 Or waves that own no curbing hand, 
 How fast has brother foUow'd brother 
 From sunshine to the sunless land ! 
 " Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers 
 Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
 A timid voice, that asks in whispers, 
 
 ' Who next will drop and disappear ? ' " 
 
 A\"heu Wordsworth, too, shall have passed to his rest, — well earned 
 by a long life devoted, without reserve or intermission, to elevating the 
 feelings and character of inankind, — where, we have sometimes asked 
 ourselves, shall he be found who may prove equal to the inheritance ? 
 If there be no one worthy to transmit the trust which for three centuries 
 has not been forfeited, it will tell that a sad change has come over the 
 spirit of that race who speak the English tongue. Let not this be 
 tliought an exaggeration. It is only the vulgar in intellect, and the 
 indiscriminatiug, who look upon poetry as a mere superfluity, — an 
 ornament, perhaps, but still only an excrescence of the mind. Who 
 half as much as the poets have given permanency to the thoughts and 
 feelings of the world as it was long ago ? W^hat unaided human spirit 
 in the wide universe of letters ever wrought half the influence of Shaks- 
 peare ? WTiat name suggests a tithe of his genius and power i* " No 
 man," said the elder Coleridge, "was ever yet a great poet M'ithout 
 being at the same time a profound philosopher; for poetry is the 
 l)lossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, 
 human passions, emotions, language." No poet, it may be added, 
 entertaining an inadequate conception of his calling, can approach to 
 eminence in it. We have no desire to wage a war for the poetasters, — 
 t he inspired of the annuals, whether of souvenirs or of the addresses of 
 watchmen and newspaper-carriers : we are speaking of other gentry. 
 The sublime notion of poetry which should always guide a critical taste 
 lias been upheld in a fine panegyric by W^ordsworth, in one of his prose 
 treatises, M'hieh are not known as they should be, and from which we 
 are, therefore, the more induced to quote the passage : — 
 
 " The man of science seeks trutli as a remote and unknown benefactor ; 
 he eherisiies and loves it in his solitude : the poet, singing a song in 
 which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth 
 us our visil)]e friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and 
 liner spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLKRIDGE. 391 
 
 111 the countenance of all science. Emphatically may it be said of the 
 poet, as Sliakspeare hath said of man, that ' he looks before and after.' 
 He is the rock of defence of human nature, — an upholder and preserver, 
 carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of 
 difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and 
 customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently 
 destroyed, the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast 
 empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over 
 all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere ; though 
 the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he 
 will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which 
 to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge : it is 
 immortal as the heai't of man. If the labovu-s of men of science should 
 ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, 
 and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep 
 then no more than at present, but he will be ready to foUow the steps 
 of the man of science, — not only in those general indirect effects, but 
 he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects 
 of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the 
 botanist, or mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as 
 any upon which it can be employed, — if the time should ever come 
 when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which 
 they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences 
 shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering 
 beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, 
 thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form 
 of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the trans- 
 liguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and 
 genuine inmate of the household of man."* 
 
 Now, wdth our minds filled with such conceptions of the cUvine art, 
 let us look whether Hartley Coleridge gives promise of being worthy 
 to continue the succession of English poets ; let us see what is the 
 character of his poetic aspirations, and how high they have carried him. 
 We find a pai'tial answer in two of his soimets, which serve a double 
 purpose, of showing his conception of his caUing, and his power over 
 language and metre to give it utterance : — 
 
 " WHO IS THE POET ? 
 
 " Who is the poet ? Who the man whose lines 
 Live in the souls of men like household words ? 
 
 Wordsworth's Poetical Woi-ks, Appendix II. Observations, &c.
 
 392 ESSAT SECOND. 
 
 Whose thought, spontaneous as the song of birds 
 With eldest truth coeval, still combines 
 With each day's product, and like morning shines, 
 Exempt from age ? 'T is he, and only he, 
 Who knows that truth is free, and only free, — 
 That virtue, acting in the strict confines 
 Of positive law, instructs the infant spirit 
 In its best strength, and proves its mere demerit 
 Rooted in earth, yet tending to the sky,— 
 With patient hope surveys the narrow bound, 
 , Culls every flower that loves the lowly ground. 
 
 And, fraught with sweetness, wings her way on high." 
 
 " THE USE OF A TOET. 
 
 " A thousand thoughts were stirring in my mind, 
 That strove in vain to fashion utterance meet ; 
 And each the other cross'd, — swift as a fleet 
 Of April clouds perplex'd by gusts of wind. 
 That veer, and veer around, before, behind. 
 Now History pointed to the custom'd beat ; 
 Now Fancy's clue, unravelling, led their feet 
 Through mazes manifold, and quaintly twined. 
 So were they straying,— so had ever stray'd, 
 Had not the wiser poets of the past 
 The vivid chart of human life display'd, 
 And taught the laws that regulate the blast, 
 AVedding wide impulse to calm forms of beauty. 
 And making peace 'twixt liberty and duty." 
 
 The subject is also touched in some lines quaintly entitled " Poiktes 
 Apoietes," in which, after lamenting his own feebleness, he tells, with 
 a very pleasing allusion to his nativity and infancy, and a dark intima- 
 tion of some unhappiness, of his poetic longings :— 
 
 " Divinest Poesy ! 't is thine to make 
 
 Age young — youth old — to baffle tyrant Time, — 
 From antique strains the hoary dust to shake. 
 And with familiar grace to crown new rhyme. 
 
 " Long have I loved thee, — long have loved in vain ; 
 Yet large the debt my spirit owes to thee : 
 Thou wreathedst my first hours in a rosy chain. 
 Rocking the cradle of my infancy. 
 
 " The lovely images of earth and sky 
 
 From thee 1 learn'd within my soul to treasure ; 
 And the strong magic of thy minstrelsy 
 
 Charms the world's tcmi)est to a sweet, sad measure
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 303 
 
 " Nor Fortune's spite, nor hopes that once have been, 
 Hopes which no power of Fate can give again, — 
 Not the sad sentence — that my hfe must wean 
 From dear domestic joys, — nor all the train 
 
 " Of pregnant ills and penitential hanns 
 
 That dog the rear of youth iinwisely wasted, — • 
 Can dim the lustre of thy stainless charms, 
 Or sour the sweetness that in thee I tasted." 
 
 We aro glad to find Hartley Coleridge expressing his sense also of the 
 chai'acteristic weakness of a great deal of contemporary verse. The 
 danger to which the cause of poetry appears chiefly to be exposed is the 
 process of evaporation or sublimation by which modem versifiers so 
 frequently separate its more superficial properties of sound and diction 
 from its deeper and more abiding qualities of thought and feeling ; for, 
 dealing out their light wares, they give a pretext to the prose-wittcd 
 ground-walkers to sneer even at real poetry, and turn away from it as if 
 it too were milk for babes. These evils seem to lie beyond the reach 
 of remedy, and, until the wit of criticism shall devise some artillery 
 light enough for the warfare, the butterflies and the humming-birds 
 must flutter with impunity. The manufacturers of the fantastic com- 
 modities of modem versification have become of late years so numerous, 
 that they are setting up all the world over their little tabernacles of 
 rhjnne, which in solidity of structure mightily remind us of the fairy- 
 palace described by old Michael Drayton : — 
 
 " The walls of spidei's' legs are made. 
 
 Well mortised and finely laid ; 
 
 He was the master of his trade, 
 It curiouslie that builded : 
 
 The windows of the eyes of cats. 
 
 And for the roof, instead of slats, 
 
 Is cover'd with the skins of bats. 
 With moonshine that are gilded." 
 
 The self-complacent tribe — no longer the " genus irritable" — are 
 eluded by Hartley Coleridge with great gentleness in a sormet of ex- 
 quisite beauty : — 
 
 " Whither is gone the wisdom and the power 
 That ancient sages scatter"d with the notes 
 Of thought-suggesting lyres ? The music floats 
 In the void air ; e'en at this breathing hour 
 In every cell and every blooming bower 
 The sweetness of old lays is hovering still : 
 But the strong soul, the self-constraining will, 
 The rugged root that bare the winsome flower.
 
 394 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 Is weak aud wither'd. Were we like the fays 
 That sweetly nestle in the foxglove-bells, 
 Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipp'd shells 
 Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays, 
 Then might our pretty modern Philomels 
 Sustain our spirits with their roundelays." 
 
 One of the best iudications in this volnme of poems is the power of 
 reflection which pervades most of its pages. The sonnets (of which 
 tliere are a considerable number) are of the first order of that difficult 
 form of composition. It would not be easy to suggest three higher 
 themes for the sonnet than are presented in those we are about to 
 quote ; aud it would be extreme fastidiousness to dcsii-e an executidU 
 more faithful to their lofty conceptions : — 
 
 " HOMER. 
 
 " Far from all measured space, yet clear and plain 
 As sun at noon, ' a mighty orb of song ' 
 Illumes extremcst heaven. Beyond the throng 
 Of lesser stars, that rise, and wax, and wane, 
 The transient rulers of the hckle main, 
 One stedfast light gleams through the dark and long 
 And narrowing aisle of memory. How s-trong. 
 How fortified with all the numerous train 
 Of human truths, great poet of thy kind, 
 Wert thou, whose verse, capacious as the sea 
 And vai'ious as the voices of the wind, 
 Swell'd with the gladness of the battle's glee. 
 And yet could glorify infirmity. 
 When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined." 
 
 "SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 " The soul of man is larger than the sky. 
 Deeper than ocean or the abysmal dark 
 Of the unf'alhom'd centre. Like the ark, 
 Which in its sacred hold uplifted higli, 
 O'er the drown'd hills, the human family. 
 And stock reserved of every living kind, 
 So, in the compass of the single mind, 
 The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie 
 That make all worlds. Great poet ! 't was thy art 
 To know thyself, and in thyself to be 
 VVhate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny, 
 Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart. 
 Can make of man. Yet thou wert still the same. 
 Serene of thought, unhurt by thj' own flame."
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 395 
 
 " TO WORDSWORTH. 
 " There have been poets that in verse display 
 The elemental forms of human passions : 
 Poets have been, to whom the fickle fashions 
 And all the wilful humours of the day 
 Have furuish'd matter for a polish'd lay : 
 And many are the smooth elaborate tribe 
 Who, emulous of thee, the shape describe 
 And foin would every shifting hue portray 
 Of restless nature. But thou, mighty seer I > 
 
 'T is thine to celebrate the thoughts that make 
 The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake 
 We to ourselves and to oiir God are dear. 
 Of nature's inner shrine thou art the priest, 
 Where most she works when we perceive her least." 
 The poet who succeeds in the sonnet enjoys at least this one great 
 privilege : — that his name is associated with some of the most illustrious 
 names in the histoiy of English poetry, and for the obvious reason that 
 comparatively very few have been successful in that form of metrical 
 writing. The reader familiar with Shakspcare's sonnets — and who that 
 loves his own language is not ? — will not uufrequently lind them recalled 
 to his mind by the sonnets scattered through this volume ; for, without 
 the slightest appearance of imitation, there is a similarity in the vein of 
 feeling, — in the expression of a desponding love, of self-reproach and 
 regrets, — and in the play of fancy, — which redounds greatly to the 
 honour of our contemporary. The following would not suffer by a 
 direct comparison with Shakspcare's well-known and beautiful sonnet on 
 tlie unchangeableness of love : — • 
 
 " Is love a fancy or a feeling ? No ! 
 It is immortal as immaculate Truth. 
 'T is not a blossom, shed as soon as youth 
 Drops from the stem of life ; for it will grow 
 In barren regions, where no waters flow. 
 Nor ray of promise cheats the pensive gloom. 
 A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er the tomb, 
 That but itself and darkness naught doth show. 
 Is my love's being ; yet it cannot die. 
 Nor will it change, though all be changed beside ; 
 Though fairest beauty be no longer fair. 
 Though vows be false, and faith itself deny, 
 Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide. 
 And hope a spectre in a ruin bare." 
 
 Hartley Coleridge well knows that the sonnet may he used for other 
 purposes than being charged with pensive regrets and the tender feelings.
 
 396 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 It was once the exclusive property of love and melancholy, who piped 
 upon it by turns. Milton seized it and blew a blast that in a moment 
 revealed its unknown tones, and it has since been sounded to animate 
 the high and tumultuous passions, — to cheer a people in moments of 
 virtuous exultation, and to shame them in the days of degeneracy and 
 corruption. A thought in one of Milton's sonnets is finely amplified in 
 the following : — 
 
 " LIBERTY. 
 
 " Say, what is Freedom ? What the right of souls, 
 Which all who know are bound to keep or die, 
 And who knows not, is dead ? In vain ye pry 
 In musty archives or retentive scrolls, 
 Charters and statutes, constitutions, rolls, 
 And remnants of the old world's history : — 
 These show what has been, not what ought to bo, 
 Or teach at best how wiser Time controls 
 Man's futile purposes. As vain the search 
 Of restless factions, who, in lawless will, 
 Fix the foundations of a creedless church, 
 A lawless rule, — an anarchy of ill. 
 But what is Freedom ? Rightly understood, 
 A universal license to be good." 
 
 That is better doctrine than is brought to light by every class of 
 politicians. We are not enthusiasts enough to fancy that a nation can 
 be redeemed from political worthlessness by song ; but it would be no 
 difficult matter to show that the power of a popular poet may be a 
 matcli against that of a demagogue. His influence may well be directed 
 to control the feelings of a people, — to guide and to elevate them. The 
 times are in need of writers to sustain a lofty tone of public sentiment ; 
 to depict, if it be only in fancy, a love of the common good, unqualilied 
 by private interest ; to perpetuate, at least, the memory of the hardiliood 
 and simplicity of ancient patriotism. It may savour a little of satire, 
 :dthough we do not mean it as such, to say that this is a duty for the 
 poets. Tyrtaeus was blind of one eye, lame of a leg, something of a 
 dwarf, and quite deformed: he could not have been what is called "a 
 ]irclfj/ poet," but he was, for all that, a good general. The vigour of a 
 thousand swords was in his strains. Although we imagine it is more 
 difficult to draw out votes, the modern weapons, than it was to di-aw 
 out swords, yet, may not somewhat of the terror of Tyrt»us's lyre be 
 revived ? There is a power in poetry for him who knows how to wield 
 it, that can awaken the sensibihties of a people not quite sunk into the 
 last stages of forgetfulness and torpidity.
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLEUIDGE. 397 
 
 lu order to enable the reader to form his opinion of the sonnets con- 
 tained in this volniue, we are iudueed to add two more to our quota- 
 tiouSj — one on the vision of poets, conceived in a fine classical mood : — 
 
 " The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair, — 
 Green Ida never dccni'd the uurse of Jove,^ 
 Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove, 
 Had idly murmur'd to the idle air, — 
 The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair 
 In Delphi's cell and old Trophonius' cave, — 
 And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave 
 Had never blended with the sweet despair 
 Of Sappho's death-song, — if the sight inspired 
 Saw only what the visual organs show ; 
 If heaven-born fantasy no more required 
 Than what within the sphere of sense may grow ; 
 The beauty to perceive of earthly things, 
 The mounting soul must heavenward j)lumo her wings." 
 
 The other is a charniiug instance of the strange thoughts tliat come 
 into a poet's mind :— 
 
 " What was't awaken'd first the untried ear 
 Of that sole man who was all human kind ? 
 Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind, 
 Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere ? 
 The four mcUirtuous streams which fiow'd so near, 
 Their lulling murmurs all in one combined ? 
 The note of bird unnamed ? The startled hind 
 Bursting the brake, — in wonder, not in fear 
 Of her new lord ? Or did the holy ground 
 Send forth jnysterious melody to greet 
 The gracious pressure of immaculate feet ? 
 Did viewless seraphs rustle all around, 
 Making sweet music out of air as sweet ? 
 Or his own voice awake him with its sound ? " 
 
 It is the meditative power of these poems that we have prmcipally 
 adverted to, not only because it is the property most favourably dis- 
 tinguishing them from the productions of many of the fraternity, but 
 because it is that upon which the expectation of future success may be 
 raised most securely. But this quality does not of itself constitute 
 poetry, nor is it likely to form the most successful poetry, if it occur 
 apart from the higher of the more properly poetical powers, — the imagin- 
 atioa. It is the combined action of thought and imagination — of the 
 reflective and creative powers — that indicates poetic genius ; and, from 
 observing traces of that action on many of his pages, v/e are led to
 
 308 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 b(!lieve that there is no poetic effort from which Hartley Coleridge need 
 shrink, if the powers with which he is gifted are duly cultivated and 
 actively exerted. We should be glad to see him adventuring an ode. 
 
 In every poetic mind — whether of the writer or the reader of poetry — 
 there are certain subsidiary powers not to be overlooked. The poems 
 in this volume, which, after the series of sonnets, are grouped under the 
 title of " Thoughts and fancies," contain, amid some of a high mood, 
 several varieties of the lighter forms of poetry. In the songs there is 
 something that reminds us of the gracefulness of Moore's Melodies, — 
 his easy iiow of versification, and the admirable art with which ^ gives 
 wings to a sentiment. The piece entitled " A Medley " is an agreeable 
 specimen of fancy disporting in its own nature, — revelling in its lawless- 
 ness, — darting away not quite out of sight, but far and wildly enough 
 to occasion an amusing perplexity to readers who are sober-minded to 
 an extreme, — straitened by a sort of intellectual over-righteousness. 
 The following lines are of a more convenient length for quotation, and, 
 though more regular in their conception, may illustrate the author's 
 manner in what may be designated poems of fancy : — 
 "WHAT I HAVE HEARD. 
 " I've heard the merry voice of spring, 
 
 When thousand birds their wild notes fling 
 
 Here and tliere and everywhere. 
 
 Stirring the young and gladsome air ; 
 
 I've heard the many-sounding seas, 
 
 And all their various harmonies, — 
 
 The tumbling tempest's dismal roar, 
 
 On the waste and wreck-strew'd shore, — 
 
 The howl and the wail of the prison'd waves, 
 
 Clamouring in the ancient caves. 
 
 Like a stifled pain that asks for pity : 
 
 And I have heard the sea at peace, 
 
 When all its fearful noises cease, 
 
 Lost in one soft and multitudinous ditty. 
 
 Most like the murmur of a far-off city : 
 
 Nor less the blither notes I know, 
 
 To which the inland waters flow, — 
 
 The rush of rocky-bedded rivers, 
 
 That madly dash themselves to shivers ; 
 
 But anon, more prudent growing, 
 
 O'er countless pebbles smoothly flowing, 
 
 With a dull, continuous roar. 
 
 Hie they onward, evermore ; 
 
 To their everlasting tune, 
 
 When the sun is high at noon,
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 399 
 
 The little billows, quick and quicker, 
 Weave their mazes, thick and thicker, 
 And beneath, in dazzling glances, 
 Labyrinthine lightning dances, 
 Snaky network intertwining, 
 With thousand molten colours shining, — 
 Mosaic rich with living light. 
 With rainbow-jewels gaily dight : 
 Such pavement never, well I ween. 
 
 Was made, by monarch or magician, 
 For Arab or Egyptian queen ; 
 
 'T is gorgeous as a prophet's vision : 
 And I ken the brook, how sweet it tinkles. 
 As 'cross the moonlight green it twinkles, 
 Or heard, not seen, mid tangled wood, 
 When the soft stockdove lulls her brood 
 With her one note of all most dear, — 
 More soothing to the heart than ear : 
 And well I know the smother'd moan 
 
 Of that low breeze, so soft and brief, 
 It seems a very sigh, whose tone 
 
 Has much of love, but more of grief. 
 I know the sound of distant bells. 
 Their dying falls and lusty swells, — 
 That music which the wild gale seizes 
 And fashions howsoe'er it pleases. 
 And I love the shrill November blast. 
 That through the brown wood hurries fast 
 And strips its old limbs bare at last. 
 Then whirls the leaves in circling error, 
 As if instinct with life and terror ; 
 Now bursting out enough to deafen 
 The very thunder in the heaven. 
 Now sinking dolefully and dreary, 
 Weak as a child with sport aweary. 
 And after a long night of rain, 
 Wlien the warm sun comes out again, 
 1 've heard the myriad-voiced rills, — 
 The many tongues of manj' hills, — 
 All gushing forth in new-bom glorv-, 
 Striving each to tell its story ; 
 Yet every little brook is known 
 By a voice that is its own. 
 Each exulting in the glee 
 Of its new prosperity." 
 
 Tlie loncjest poem in the volume is tlie tale of " Leonard and Susan," 
 -a narrative in which there is rather too much dallyins with ?ricf. It
 
 400 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 is one of tliose pieces of unmitigated tragedy in wliicli the heart craves 
 relief. Tlie picture of their young loves, with ^vhieh the poem opens, 
 abounds with very delicate touches of uatm-e and feeling : — 
 
 " Thej' vrere a gentle pair, -whose love began 
 They knew not when : thej' knew not of a time 
 When they loved not. In the mere sentient life 
 Of unremember'd infancy, whose speech, 
 Like secret love's, is only smiles and tears, 
 The baby Leonard clapp'd his little hands, 
 Leap'd in his nurse's arms, and erow'd uloud, 
 When Susan was in sight, and utter'd sounds 
 Most strange, and strangely sweet, that nothing meant 
 But merely joy, as in the greenwood tree 
 The merry merle awakes his thrilling song 
 Soon as the cool breath of the vernal dawn 
 Stirs the light leaflets on the motionless boughs. 
 Mute as the shadow of a passing bird 
 On glassy lake, the gentle Susan lay, 
 Husli'd in her meek delight. A dimpled smile 
 Curl'd round her tiny, rosy mouth, and seem'd 
 To sink, as light, into her soft full eyes, — 
 A quiet smile, that told of happiness 
 Her infant soul investing, as the bud 
 Enfolds the petals of the nascent rose. 
 
 " Born in one week, and in one font baptized 
 On the same festal day, they grew together ; 
 And their first tottering steps were hand in hand. 
 While the two fathers, in half-earnest sport, 
 Betroth'd them to each other. Then 't was sweet 
 For mothers' ears to hear them lisp and try 
 At the same words, each imitating each ; 
 But Leonard was the babe of nimbler tongue. 
 And ' Sister Susan' wa^ the first plain phrase 
 His utterance master'd : by that dear kind name 
 He call'd the maid, supplying so a place 
 Which nature liad left void. An only child 
 Of a proud mother and a high-born sire. 
 Full soon he Icam'd to mount a palfrey small, 
 Of that dwarf race that prance unclaim'd and free 
 O'er the bleak pastures of the Shetland Isles. 
 And wlio may tell his glory or his pride 
 When Susan, by her mother's arms upheld, 
 Sat, glad though fearful, on the courser's rear, 
 While he, exulting in his dauntless skill, 
 Rein'd its short testy neck and froward mouth, 
 Taming its wilful movement to the pace
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 401 
 
 That palfrey suits of wandering lady fair ? 
 
 Bold were his looks ; his speech was bold and shrill ; 
 
 His smooth round cheeks glow'd with a ruddy brown ; 
 
 And dark the curls that cluster'd o'er his head, 
 
 Knotty and close. In every pliant limb 
 
 A noble boy's ambitious manliness 
 
 Elastic sprung. Yet child more loving, fond, 
 
 Ne'er sought the refuge of a parent's side. 
 
 But Susan was not one of many words. 
 
 Nor loud of laughter, and she moved as soft 
 
 As modest nymphs, in work of artist rare, 
 
 Seem moving ever. In her delicate eye 
 
 And damask cheek there dwelt a grace retired, 
 
 A prophecy of pensive womanhood. 
 
 And yet, in sooth, she was a happy child ; 
 
 And, though the single treasure of her house, 
 
 She neither miss'd a brother's love, nor lack'd 
 
 The blest emotions of a sister's soul. 
 
 She thought no sister loved a brother more 
 
 Than she her brother Leonard, — him who show'd 
 
 The strawberry lurking in the mossy shade. 
 
 The nest in leafy thicket dark embower'd, 
 
 The squirrel's airy bound. No bliss he knew, 
 
 No toy had he, — no pretty property, — 
 
 No dog, — no bird, — no tit of childish wrath, — 
 
 That was not hers. The wild and terrible tales 
 
 His garrulous old nurse o'er night had told, 
 
 He duly in the morning told to her, 
 
 With comments manifold ; and when seven years 
 
 Made him a student of learn'd Lilly's page, 
 
 "With simple, earnest, kindly vanity, 
 
 He fill'd her wondering ear with all his lore 
 
 Of tense and conjugation, noun and verb ; 
 
 Searching the word-book for all pretty names — 
 
 All dainty, doting, dear diminutives — 
 
 Which the old Romans used to woo withal." 
 
 Imagination and fancy do not of themselves make up the poet's 
 nature ; they are elements which are to be animated by quick and 
 natural feeling. Has Hartley Coleridge the heart as well as the intellect 
 of a poet? The motto, from Chaucer, upon his title-page, conveys a 
 sort of profession that the volume is a collection of love-poems ; and on 
 many of its pages there are indications of a deep susceptibility to tlie 
 attractions of female character, under the impulse of which he has 
 given some very finished delineations of true womanly nature. From a 
 number of more passionate pieces the following may be selected as an 
 exquisite portrait of female dignity and sorrow : — 
 
 2 D
 
 402 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 STANZAS. 
 
 " She was a queen of noble nature's crowning ; 
 
 A smile ol' hers was like an act of grace ; 
 She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, 
 
 Like daily beauties of the vulgar race : 
 But, if she smiled, a light was on her face, 
 A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam 
 Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream 
 
 Of human thought with unabiding glory ; 
 Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream : — 
 
 A visitation, bright and transitory. 
 
 " But she is changed, — hath felt the touch of sorrow ; 
 
 No love hath she, no understanding friend ; 
 Oh, grief ! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow 
 
 What the poor niggard earth has not to lend ; 
 
 But when the stalk is snapt the rose must bend. 
 The tallest flower that skyward rears its head, 
 (irows from the common ground, and there must shed 
 
 Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, 
 That they should lind so base a bridal bed 
 
 Who lived in virgin pride so sweet and purely ! 
 
 " She had a brother, and a tender father. 
 
 And she was loved, but not as others are 
 From whom we ask a return of love, but rather 
 
 As one might love a dream ; a phantom fair 
 
 Of something exquisitely strange and rare, 
 Which all were glad to look on, men and maids, 
 Yet no one claiin'd ; as oft in dewy glades 
 
 The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness, 
 Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades : 
 
 The joy is ours, but all its own the s;idncss. 
 
 " 'T is vain to say her worst of grief is only 
 
 The common lot, which all the world have known : 
 To her 't is more, because her heart is lonely. 
 
 And yet she hath no strength to stand alone. 
 
 Once she had jilaymatcs, fancies of her own, 
 And she did love them. They are pass'd away. 
 As fairies vanish at the break of day ; 
 
 And, like a spectre of an age departed. 
 Or unsphered angel woefully astray. 
 
 She glides along, — the solitary-hearted." 
 
 Wc have rarely met with anything more felicitous than that closing 
 lini; ; the being described with such self-restraining power — never too 
 much revealed tVoin the cloud of mystery that envelopes it — passes away 
 an object of admiration more than of love, — too siiered for common
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 403 
 
 human sympathy. The same pure feeling towards the sex pervades 
 the volume, and finds expression in some elegiac pieces of a very 
 touching character. There is evidence in the volume of a suscep- 
 tibility to other' emotions than the passion of love, and we are glad of 
 it, for we have no great partiality for the poet amatory exclusively, 
 whom we are tempted to fancy a sort of " Master Slender," — " a softly- 
 sprighted man, with a little yellow beard," who has but one thought, 
 " Sweet Anne Page ! " and no other recollections than " stewed prunes " 
 and the bear-garden. Love-poets find their profit in the easy access 
 they gain to the soft hearts that abound all the world over. But the 
 true poet must deal with other feelings beside the one master- 
 passion, — kindly affections, and calm and placid impulses. As far as a 
 writer's character may be conjectured from his writings. Hartley Cole- 
 ridge must be a gentle and right-hearted being. Omitting those in- 
 stances in which he speaks dramatically, there is an air of sincerity in 
 his expressions of feeling which mightily wins his reader's goodwill. 
 We miist except his expressions of mirtli, which have not a real or 
 healthy tone ; and, although there are in tlie volume words which, as 
 Jeremy Taylor says, are " as light as the skirt of a summer-garment," 
 yet they seem to be rather the relief of a heavy heart than the ventings 
 of a light one. Passing them by, the beauty of sincerity is not the least 
 of the beauties of the following lines : — 
 
 " SENSE, IF YOU CAN FIND IT. 
 " Like one pale, flitting, lonely gleam 
 
 Of sunshine oil a winter's day. 
 There came a thought upon my dream, 
 I know not whence, but fondly deem 
 
 It came from far away. 
 " Those sweet, sweet snatches of delight 
 
 That visit our bedarken'd clay 
 Like passage-birds, with hasty flight : — 
 It cannot be they perish quite. 
 
 Although they pass away. 
 " They come and go, and come again ; 
 
 They 're ours, whatever time they stay .' 
 Think not, my heart, they come in vaiu. 
 If one brief while they soothe thy pain 
 
 Before they pass awaj'. 
 " But whither go they ? No one knows 
 
 Their home ; but yet they seem to say 
 That far beyond this gulf of woes 
 There is a region of repose 
 
 For them that pass away ! " 
 
 2d 2
 
 401 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 We feel as if we sliould be missing a rare opportunity for appropriate 
 quotation, considering the approaehing season, if we passed by the 
 stanzas on " New Year's Day." We arc pretty conlident that the year 
 will come to its close without producing anytliiug conceived in better 
 feeling, and that many a New Year's sermon will be j)reached to duller 
 ears. At aU. events, the stanzas will be less likely than the sermons to 
 be applied by those to whom they are addressed, away from themselves, 
 to their neighbours. We have ventured to call attention, by means of 
 italics, to some of the lines which show the exuberance of the poet's 
 fancy : — 
 
 " NEW YEAR'S DAY. 
 
 " While the bald ti-ces stretch forth their long lank arms, 
 And starving birds peck nigh the reeky farms ; 
 While houseless cattle paw the yellow field, 
 Or, coughing, shiver in the pervious bield, 
 And naught more gladsome in the hedge is seen 
 Than the dark holly's grimly -glistening green ; 
 At such a time the ancient year goes by 
 To join its parent in eternity; 
 At such a time the merry year is born, 
 Like the bright berry from the naked thorn. 
 
 " The bell rings out ; the hoary steeple rocks ; 
 Hark ! the long story of a score of clocks ; 
 For once a year the village clocks agree, — • 
 E'en clocks agree to sound the hour of glee ; 
 And every cottage has a light awake, 
 Unusual stars long flicker o'er the lake ; 
 The moon on high, if any moon be there, 
 Maj' peep, or wink ; no mortal now will care : 
 For 't is the season when the nights are long. 
 There 's time, ere morn, for each to sing his song. 
 
 " The year departs. A blessing on its head ! 
 We mourn not for it, for it is not dead. 
 Dead ? What is that ? A word to joy unkno\vTi, 
 Which love abhors, and faith will never own. 
 A word whose meaning sense could never find. 
 That has no truth in matter, nor in mind. 
 The passing breezes gone as soon as felt, 
 The flakes of snoio that in the soft air melt. 
 The wave that tchiteninfj curls its frothy crest 
 And falls to sleep upon its mother's breast, 
 The smile that sinks into a maiden's eye, — 
 They come, they go, they change ; they do not die. 
 So the old year — that fond and formal name — 
 Is with us yet, another and the same.
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 405 
 
 " And are the thoughts that evermore are fleeing, 
 The moments that make up our being's being, 
 The silent \s-orkings of unconscious love, 
 Or the dull hate which clings, and will not move. 
 In the dark caverns of the gloomy heart. 
 The fancies wild and horrible, which start 
 Like loathsome reptiles from their crankling holes, 
 From foul, neglected corners of our souls : — 
 Are these less vital than the waves or wind, 
 Or snow that melts and leaves no trax;e behind ? 
 Oh ! let them perish all, or pass away, 
 And let our spirits feel a New Year's day. 
 
 " A New Year's day ! 't is but a term of art, — 
 An arbitrary line upon the chart 
 Of time's unbounded sea, — fond Fancy's creature, 
 To reason alien, and unknown to nature. 
 Nay : 't is a joyful day,— a day of hope 1 
 Bound, merry dancer, like an antelope ; 
 And as that lovely creature, far from man. 
 Gleams thi-ough the spicy groves of Hindostan, 
 Flash through the labyrinth of the mazy dance 
 "With foot as nimble, and as keen a glance. 
 
 " And we, whom many New Year's days have told 
 The sober truth that we are growing old. 
 For this one night — ay, and for many more — 
 Will be as jocund as we were of yore. 
 Kind hearts can make December blithe as May, 
 And in each morrow find a New Year's day." 
 
 Hartley Coleridge is au egotist ; and gracefully does his egotism sit 
 upon liini. It is one of the poet's privileges. There are expressions 
 throughout the volume ealculated to excite commiseration and somewhat 
 of curiosity in some breasts, — murmurings of self-reproach, — repinings 
 after misspent time and neglected talent, together with intimations of 
 domestic griefs. We know not what it may all mean, but certain are 
 we that there is an air of sad reality about it : it is no fantastic woe, — 
 none of the old fa.f/iiu/i of melancholy that may be traced from the days 
 of Ben Jonson's " Master Stephen" down to the times of Lord Byron. 
 It is not possible to suspect Hartley Coleridge of playing any such 
 small game, — of following the worn-out device of enacting " 11 Fe/iseroso " 
 for eifect. His allusions to his poverty do him honour, and we cannot 
 believe that one who has learned to depict nature with the delicacy and 
 fidelity which mark this volume has been idle, or unprofitably employed. 
 At all events, he has before him the time and the power of self-recovery. 
 Throwing aside all distrust of the poetic power of the EugUsh tongue.
 
 406 ESSAY SECOXD. 
 
 let him not wavor or be drawn down by any despondency. Let bim call 
 to mind " the labour and intense study " which Milton looked ujion as 
 his portion in life, wlien lie conceived the thought of " a work not to be 
 raised from the heat of youth, 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." Let him look to his favourite 
 Wordsworth, and see what that career is which befits him who meditates 
 the great achievements in verse, and we have no fear but that at some 
 futm-e day we shall behold him on higher ground than the beautiful 
 efi'usious in the present volume. It has been our oijject to make our 
 readers acquainted witli a name that is well worth the knowing, and we 
 have thus, we flatter ourselves, been helping Mr. Hartley Coleridge to 
 gain some of his distant fame, — a commodity that loses none of its value 
 because it comes from far away. We take our leave of him, for the 
 present, by quoting a poem of exquisite finish and beauty, which we 
 have reserved for a final impression : — 
 
 " THE SABBATH DAY'S CHILD. 
 
 TO ELIZ-MiKTH, INFANT D.VronTEll OF TIIK KF.V. MR KUH.VKU 
 FLEMING, BART. 
 
 " Pure precious drop of dear mortality, — 
 
 Untainted fount of life's meanderinir stream, 
 
 AVhose innocence is like the dewy beam 
 
 Of morn, a visible reality, 
 
 Holy and quiet as a hermit's dream, — 
 
 Unconscious witness to the promised birth 
 
 Of perfect good, that may not grow on earth 
 
 Nor be com])uted by the worldly worth 
 
 And .stated limits of morality, — 
 
 I'air tyi)e and pledge of full redemption given. 
 Through Him that saith, ' Of such is the kingdom of hcavcu.' 
 
 " Sweet infant, whom thy brooding parents love 
 
 For what thou art, and what they hope to see thee, 
 
 Unhallow'd spirits and earth-born phantoms flee thee ; 
 
 Thy soft simplicity — a hovering dove, 
 
 That still keeps watch, from blight and bane to free thee ; 
 
 With its weak wings, in peaceful care outspread, 
 
 Fanning invisilily thy pillow'd head — 
 
 Strikes evil powers with reverential dread 
 
 Beyond the sulphurous bolts of fabled Jove, 
 
 Or whatsoe'er of amulet or charm 
 Fond Ignorance devised to save poor souls from harm.
 
 POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 407 
 
 " To see thee sleeping on thy mother's breiist, 
 
 It were indeed a lovely sight to see ; 
 
 Who would believe that restless sin can be 
 
 In the same world that holds such sinless rest ? 
 
 Happy art thou, sweet babe, and happy she 
 
 Whose voice alone can still thy baby-cries. 
 
 Now still itself ; yet pensive smiles, and sighs, 
 
 And the mute meanings of a mother's eyes, 
 
 Declare her thinking, deep felicity, — 
 
 A bliss, my babe, how much unlike to thine, 
 Mingled with earthly fears, yet cheer'd with hope divine ! 
 
 " Thou breathing image of the life of nature I 
 
 Say, rather, image of a happy death ; 
 
 For the vicissitudes of vital breath, 
 
 Of all infirmity the slave and creature, 
 
 That by the act of being perisheth, 
 
 Are far unlike that slumber's perfect peace 
 
 Which seems too absolute and pure to cease, 
 
 Or sufi'er diminution or increase. 
 
 Or change of hue, proportion, shape, or feature ; 
 
 A calm, it seems, that is not, shall not be 
 Save in the silent depths of calm eternity. 
 
 " A star reflected in a dimpling rill 
 
 That moves so slow it hardly moves at all, — 
 
 The shadow of a white-robed waterfall, 
 
 Seen in the lake beneath when all is still, — 
 
 A wandering cloud that, with its fleecy pall, 
 
 Whitens the lustre of an autumn moon, — 
 
 A sudden breeze that cools the cheek of noon, 
 
 Notmark'd till miss'd, so soft it fades, and soon, — 
 
 Whatever else the fond inventive skill 
 
 Of Fancy may suggest, — caunot supply 
 Fit semblance of the sleeping life of infancy. 
 
 " Calm art thou as the blessed Sabbath eve. 
 
 The blessed Sabbath eve when thou wast born ; 
 
 Yet sprightly as a summer Sabbath morn. 
 
 When, surely, 't were a thing unmeet to grieve ; 
 
 When ribbons gay the village-maids adorn, 
 
 And Sabbath music on the swelling gales 
 
 Floats to the farthest nooks of winding vales 
 
 And summons all the beauty of the dales. 
 
 Fit music this a stranger to receive ; 
 
 And, lovely child, it rung to welcome thee. 
 Announcing thy approach with gladsome minstrelsy. 
 
 " So be thy life, — a gentle Sabbath, jiurc 
 
 From worthless strivings of the work-day earth !
 
 408 ESSAY SECOND. 
 
 May time make good the omen of thy birth, 
 Nor worldly care thy growing thoughts immure, 
 Nor hard-eyed tlirift usurp the throne of mirth 
 On thy smooth brow. And, though fast-coming years 
 Must bring their fated dower of maiden fears, 
 Of timid blushes, sighs, and fertile tears, — 
 Soft sorrow's sweetest ofl'spring, and her cure, — 
 May every day of thine be good and holy. 
 And thy worst woe a pensive Sabbath melancholy ! " 
 
 JDUS run, US AM) ;-ON, PIUNTERS.
 
 
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