T n m^'W'-Qx^w'' 'i'M ctM Mf ^B^H m 1 •ll]'!' : 'i,' iiflii ' iff ''SpJl'ltUilP-' ifl|! |i:ffl||i M''Olf| ill iiiiiin ; > : E HOME CYCLOPEDIA $L'£. games & Our., publishers. Tutor, vi 'i comprise :i comprehensive view <>f the whole circle of li im.m knowledgi — in other wot Is, to form :t General Cyclopedia in 11 portable shape, ft>i r Family Libraries, for Teachers and -, and lor the general reader. CHRONOLOGY A->n HISTORY. Tub- "World's Pkoqrrbs. A imary of Hates, wiih Tabular Views of General History, and an 11; cid Chart, Edi bokgk 1'. Putnam. UNIVERSAL GEOGRAPHY. Being n Gazetteer of the V United States. iCti_' hjiiI. and France, fur IS51. Koitkii by T. Carry Cai.licott. A.M. >GRAf*HY. Beins p. Gazetteer of the Names of the most Eini'i Men of the I'ast. liv I'arkk Godwin. T :J F L'S~EUL ARTS. Including Asrltfulture. Architecture, 1 Kcon« iieering, Machinery. Manufactures. Mining, IV ing 'in lv •■ i'rincipl ipeiiil of American and European Invention*. By T. Antisbll, M. l>. v. 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A Treatise upon Common- Seln fltioii; containing Practical Suggestions to Teaeliers and Parents. By Ciiarlf.s N'ortiirnr, A.M., lata and for many ye rs Prin- (Kv ■ •■■: ■, o: 'the Kjies .- tdioo Salem; now Superintendent of Public Schools, gjj: Darners, Mass, Price $1 American Education, Its PuiNorprAs avd Elements. Dedicated to |§ the Teachers of the Unite.'; States: by E. D. Mansfikld. Price #1.00. * 4 Ainorirati Institutions nnd i'lcir Influence, by Alkxib I)b Toe* quf.vu.i.k; with Notes by Hon. Jons C Spksckr. This bonk is the ■•• of i/e Toco, r work, on the Republic of America, an' - ^y^&^S':^&, ■ -^^fk c&3^ <2^ T II E D D ! g F I'V f ii U £ ii ¥ . 'LI iTM NOTIE J A jV. 1 ! s; ; Aj D YD b |)Ovl; . H ft ft R I";' THE COURSE OF TIME. BY ROBERT POLLOK, A.M. WITH CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF VARIOUS AUTHORS ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF THE POET, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, AND NOTES, CRITICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE, BY JAMES R. BOYD, EDITOR OF MILTON, THOMSON, COWPER, AND YOUNG, ■WITH NOTES, ETC. NEAV YORK: PUBLISHED BY A. S. BARNES & CO., No. 51 JOHN-STKEET. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, By A. S. BARNES & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. Concerning the poetical excellence of the work be- fore us, critics have expressed diverse, and even quite opposite opinions : some, rather unwisely, both for them- selves and for the gifted author, have ranked it with " Paradise Lost" — the production of one of the maturest, most classical, and most opulent of modern minds ; while others, no less unwisely and unfairly, have seemed to take a strange satisfaction in depreciating it, perhaps on this very account, far below its just rank in the literary scale. All admit, however, that it abounds in passages of uncommon excellence, both of matter and style, suffi- cient to commend the work, in its entireness, to continued popular favor and esteem. That it has enjoyed, from its first' publication to the present day, a most remarkable popularity, will be de- nied by none ; that it deserves to retain it on account of its intrinsic worth — for the value of its thoughts, for the grandeur and comprehensiveness of its range of topics, and for the numberless poetic beauties which adorn its pages — we fully believe ; and to render it, if possible, somewhat more attractive and useful to the popular and youthful mind, it is now first published with the impor- tant accompaniment of Critical Observations, selected from respectable Reviews, and also with explanatory 4 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. and illustrative Notes, in which are introduced some of the most interesting incidents in the life of the author, and in the history of the composition of this celebrated Poem, which is given more at length at the end of the volume. The " Critical Observations" are derived from Gilfillan's Literary Miscellany, Blackwood's (Edinburgh) Magazine, and the Spirit of the Pilgrims, while among the notes will be found some of the most important and judicious of the criticisms, relating to this poem, in the jSTorth American Review. In selecting these Critical Observations, I have not culled out only such as were favorable, but have introduced all those of an opposite character that seemed to have been made with even a moderate share of candor and fairness. A concise, but quite satisfactory sketch of the author's life, taken from the Christian Review, gives additional interest and value to this edition. In view of the fact that the poem has been extensively nsed in common-schools and in higher seminaries, as a text-book for parsing, an endeavor "has now been made to prepare the poem, in its present form, to answer much higher purposes in a course of education. As a great convenience, whether used as a text-book, or for individ- ual perusal, the poem has been divided into paragraphs of moderate length, which are supplied with running titles, indicating the principal subjects of each, and thus affording a ready key to every part of the work. The full Index, at the close of the volume, is another prop- erty peculiar to this edition. To some readers, the poem would be more attractive, if in some of its parts it were less theological and didac- tic — less solemn in its tone, and less severe upon human character and conduct ; but it may justly be observed INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 5 that every lover of truth, and especially of Bible truth, must regard this poem with especial interest for the at- tractive manner in which the infallible statements of the sacred writers, concerning man's character, history, and destiny, are herein set forth. On this account, it seems to be a book most desirable to be read and studied by the young. Like the Bible itself, it is highly pleasing to the youthful mind, not yet contaminated by the poi- son of a corrupt and skeptical literature. The high ana varied character of the subjects which it introduces — the scenes of thrilling interest, and surpassing grandeur, which it depicts with masterly skill — its faithful por- traiture of vice and of virtue, with their appropriate retributions — its profound thoughtfulness, and nice dis- criminations—all these, and other peculiarities, are emi- nently suited to enlarge the mind, inform the conscience, regulate the passions, and rightly shape the moral edu- cation of the youthful student of the " Course of Time," which might, with more appropriateness, have been de- nominated " The moral and religious History of Man." A recent author, James Scott, D. D., who has pub- lished an agreeable and instructive biography of Pollok, and well characterized the poem as a Christian Canticle, observes,that " the Reformation of the sixteenth century had reconstructed the creed of the primitive Church ; the truths of the Gospel had become axioms ; nay, were clothed in household words, and uttered through the boundaries of the Protestant Church ; but it required the magic of song to give them the rich tints which please the intellect, and the associations which excite tumult among the feelings. Heathenism had produced the Iliad, Odyssey, and ^Eneid ; the first, the oldest epic poem in the world : Popery, the Divina Comedia and 6 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. the Gerasalemme Liberata : Protestantism, the Paradise Lost, rich not only with the jewelry of ancient lore, but massy with the precious stones of Christianity. The Greek and Roman poems are systems of Paganism : the Paradise of Dante is the Scholastic Theology of the dark ages : Milton's great work is a dissertation on the terrible Expulsion from Eden, with its causes and consequences ; while Pollok's ' Course of Time' is a poem about Re- demption, and is so constructed as to give a befitting history of time to an angel. A heathen could learn the way of salvation by reading it. There is unction in it to a broken heart, and a barbed arrow to the man of pleasure. It stands alone among the poems of time .... The poet sought not, like Virgil, to immortalize princes ; nor, like Sir Walter Scott, to rescue from oblivion na- tional legends of love and prowess ; nor, like Words- worth, to weave a lay to philosophy; but, rather, to garner up in a song the Bible history of Redemption." It seems to be an act of simple justice, and of plain obligation, here to guard the reader against a gross mis- representation of the poem, which is brought forward in the Philadelphia edition of the " British Poets." The writer of the critical notice undertakes to say that Pol- lok " arrays religion in dark robes, and considers it un- necessary to portray her features as both gentle and beautiful. ' Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' The poet, however, exerts himself to show how ragged he can render the one, and how gloomy he can make the other. His volume, from be- ginning to end, is an awful picture of wrath and ven- geance : it contains little to cheer and nothing to gladden ; and would tempt the reader to imagine that man was created only to be tormented." INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. i It is surprising that any respectable critic should ven- ture statements so glaringly false, and so easy to be refuted by a reference to the poem itself. It is not reli- gion, but irreligion — not virtue, but vice, — which the poet " arrays in dark robes." His volume, so far from being " from beginning to end an awful picture of wrath and vengeance," is furnished with many fine pictures of joy, and gladness, and beauty ; and so far from author- izing the charge, that he leads the reader " to imagine that man was created only to be tormented," he exhib- its, in the most eloquent manner, the amazing operations of Divine Mercy, to save fallen man from the torments to which Justice might consign him. To illustrate, for example, the last point ; — he thus speaks of the Bible : " The Book — this holy Book, on every line Mark'd with the seal of high divinity ; On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love Divine, and with the eternal heraldry And signature of God Almighty, stampt From first to last — this ray of sacred light, This lamp, from off the everlasting throne, Mercy took down, and, in the night of Time Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow ; And evermore beseeching men, with tears And earnest sighs, to read, believe, and live ; And many to her voice gave ear, and read, Believed, obey'd ; and now, as the Amen, True, faithful Witness swore, with snowy robes And branchy palms surround the fount of life, And drink the streams of immortality, Forever happy, and forever young." Bk. II. 36*7-383. In illustration of another ground of defence, we might emote from Book Y. a great number of passages, which cannot be mistaken for " pictures of wrath and ven- geance." " Much beautiful, and excellent, and fair Was seen beneath the sun ; but nought was aeen 8 INTRODUCTORY" OBSERVATIONS. More beautiful, or excellent, or fair Thau face of faithful friend ; fairest when seen In darkest day. And many sounds were sweet, Most ravishing and pleasant to the ear ; But sweeter none than voice of faithful friend ; Sweet always, sweetest heard in loudest storm. Some I remember," &c. 299-334. ' And there were too — harp ! lift thy voice on high And run in rapid numbers o'er the face Of Nature's scenery — and there were day And night ; and rising suns, and setting suns ; And clouds, that seem'd like chariots of saints, By fiery coursers drawn," 4 With this you will receive a London 'Review,' containing a critique on my poem. The gentleman who wrote it, whosoever he may be, is deficient in one or two of the great powers of mind; but, upon the whole, the review is a good one — I mean as reviews go now-a-days, since the death of Dr. Samuel John- son, who was the only reviewer that ever appeared in this coun- try with powers equal to the great authors whom he reviewed, and who, on that very account, was the only man that could do CEITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 17 his subject justice. The critic accuses me several times of bor- rowing. This is absolute nonsense. I am conscious that I did not borrow a thought from any poet, dead or alive, in the whole of the ' Course of Time.' Likenesses, here and there, occur among all poets ; and when it so happens, the critic always charges the author with imitation. This is one of the evils of authorship, which we know before w T e publish ; and we submit to it with cheerfulness. Soon after Milton published his immortal work, a critic wrote a long book, in which he undertook to prove that every fine passage in Milton was borrowed." We proceed with Gilfillan's observations : " Another striking quality of the poem was its truth. ' It was no sham, but reality.' Here was an honest, earnest man, talking to you, in solemn tones, of the most solemn things, and believing every word which he uttered. The awful truths of our faith had made, early, a pro- found impression upon his mind. The doctrine of future punish- ment, especially, had seized hold on his imagination as with iron talons ; and had found a fit commentary in the wild and desolate scenery where his infancy was nurtured." " The book, again, is remarkable for its lofty and daring tone." " Perhaps, indeed, this is a blemish rather than a beauty. Mil- ton was lofty, because he could not help it. Sublimity is the shadow of his soul. . . . Dante's daring is that of a wounded and desperate spirit, treading upon terrible thoughts as upon burning ploughshares ; with frightful accuracy and minuteness, writing the diary, and becoming the Defoe, of Perdition About Pol- lok's loftiness there lies an air of effort ; and about his darino- a slight taint of presumption. A youth, though of ' great religious soul, retired in voluntary loneliness, and dipping oft his pen to write immortal things,' may not be permitted the privileges of an old demi-god of song. . . . Still, if over-daring, he is original iu his aspirings." " Pollok's book, too, is remarkable, in general, for its clearness, and simplicity of thought and style ; so much so, that we almost long for a little more of that fine German mysticism, without 18 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. ■which it is, perhaps, after all, impossible to speak of the deepest and the loftiest — of eternity, space, night, infinitude. This ele- ment is too rare for Pollok's wing. . . . His is a thoroughly Scot- tish soul ; clear even in its extravagances — common sense even in its wildness." " We notice, too, the awful holiness of the spirit of this poem. There are few books in the language over whose frontispiece the inscription is so legibly written, ' Off, ye profane,' if not the more solemn motto, ' Holiness to the Lord.' We feel treading on ground consecrated by the shadow of the great Tribunal." " Akin to this the poem is distinguished by its tone of intel- lectual and spiritual assurance. In respect of a sort of divine dogmatism, it more resembles Milton's great work than in any thing else. There is no doubt, nor shadow of doubt, upon his mind ; first, as to every part of his creed, and next, as to his in- dividual capacity for expounding the same. . . . He addresses him- self with unfaltering confidence to greatest things. He has no momentary misgivings of his own fitness. Like Milton, he is intensely conscious of his dignity and size. And it is not his fault that his port is less princely, his panoply less terrible, his afflatus less powerful, and his stature less gigantic." The above observations seem, in the main, to be just and can- did ; but the writer has added others of a far different character, which a proper regard to the cause of just criticism and to the literary reputation of the talented and jnous bard, forbids a place in this volume. Indeed, they, as well as some other criticisms I have seen upon our author, serve to remind one of the portrait of the critics of Earth, which the poet has himself, with a wise forecast, drawn in the latter part of the Eighth Book : " The critics — some, but few, "Were worthy men ; and earn'd renown which had Immortal roots ; but most were weak and vile ; And as a cloudy swarm of summer flies, With angry hum and slender lance, beset The sides of some huge animal ; so did They buzz about the illustrious man, and fain CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 19 With his immortal honor, down the stream Of fame would have descended ; but alas ! The hand of Time drove them away : they were, Indeed, a simple race of men, who had One only art, which taught them still to say — Whate'er was done, might have been better done : And with this art, not ill to learn, they made A shift to live ; but sometimes too, beneath The dust they raised was worth a while obscured." Gilfillan yet acknowledges that the " Course of Time" is a powerful production, full of " things which the world will not let die," and which may long preserve the memory of the ambi- tious and resolute spirit whence they emanated. He then adds : " Class it with the highest productions of the human mind — with the Iliad, the Prometheus Vinctus, the Lear, and the Paradise Lost, we may not, as long as the moon may not be ranked with the sun, nor Ceres with Sirius. Place it even in the second file of poetical master-pieces, — with the Manfred, the Cenci, the Par- adise Regained, and the Excursion, we dare not, so long as 'Jove's satellites are less than Jove.' But let it have its praise as belonging to the order which we may call ' third among the sons of light,' and its place on a sloping shelf, at the top of which shines, in its starry lustre, the ' Night Thoughts,' perched ' Like some dark beauteous bird, whose plume Is sparkling with a thousand eyes.' " CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. [From Blackwood's (Edinburgh) Magazine.] The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said and cred- ited, almost universally, is to please. . . . Pleasure is no more the end of poetry than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion, or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction, expansion, elevation, honor, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it is nothing. Is the end of Paradise Lost — to please ? Is the end of Dante's Divine Comedy — to please ? Is the end of the Psalms of David — to please ? Or of the songs of Isaiah ? This poor idea infests modern criticism — perhaps ancient. . . . It is probable that poetry, even true poetry, has often been in- jured or vitiated, by having been written in the spirit of this creed. ... Its tendency has been to degrade, not only in the esti- mation of the world, but in the works of men of genius them- selves, the Divine art of poetry. Writers and readers have written and read according to a low standard. "We suspect that this doctrine has especially borne hard on all sacred poetry — disinclined poets to devote their genius to it — and consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much, almost all, of what is great in that magnificent walk. For if the masters of the holy harp are to strike it but to please — if their high inspira- tions are to be deadened and dragged down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim, they will either be con- tented to awaken a few touching tones of " those strains that once did sweet in Sion glide," unwilling to prolong and deepen CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 21 them into the diapason of praise — or they will deposit their lyre within the gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "The soul of music sleeping in its strings." We are aware, at the same time, that many objections have been urged against sacred poetry ; but they all resolve themselves into this — that it is difficult or impossible ; but therein lies its power and its glory. Next to Isaiah the Prophet, stands Milton the Poet. But as there are the lesser inspired prophets, so are there the lesser poets — they, too, in another sense, inspired, and the effusions of their spirits, likewise, humanly speaking, divine. How many sublime hymns have been breathed by genius ele- vated by piety " above the smoke and din of this dim spot that men call earth !" With what holy and devout affection are they treasured in pious souls, when men have been poverty-stricken within their very being by this world's afflictions — have had their affections and passions distracted or torn up by the very roots — and then felt that the wilderness could be made to blossom like the rose under the dews of Hermon ! How beautiful is genius when combined "With holiness ! oh ! how divinely sweet The tones of earthly harp, whose cords are touch'd By the soft hand of piety, and hang Upon religion's shrine, there vibrating With solemn music in the ear of God. And must the bard from sacred themes refrain ? Sweet were the hymns in patriarchal days, That, kneeling in the silence of his tent, Or on some moonlight hill, the shepherd pour'd Unto his Heavenly Father! Strains survive More touching far than poet ever breathed Amid the Grecian isles, or later times Have heard in Albion, land of every lay. Why therefore are ye silent, ye who know The trance of adoration, and behold Upon your bended knees the Throne of Heaven, And Him, who sits thereon ? Believe it not, That Poetry in former days the nurse, Yea, parent oft of blissful piety 22 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. Should silent keep from service of her God. Nor with her summons, loud, hut silver-tongued, Sturtle the guilty dreamer from his sleep, Bidding him gaze with rapture or with dread On regions where the sky forever lies Bright as the sun himself, and trembling still With ravishing music, or where darkness broods O'er ghastly shapes, and sounds not to be borne. It is, then, with delight, and not without a feeling of self- dignity, that, from time to time, we leave the giddy fervor and loose rhymes of more modern poetry, to repose on the firm yet impassioned majesty of such writers as Milton ; but we rather think that this reverence, a little prescriptive, is more apt to make us unjust to the claims of a present competitor, than forward to hail any who aspires to compass the same walk. Is it from this alone that we are slow to predict for the author before us a fel- low-memory with the time-honored shades of Dante and Milton ? Independent of comparative award, this poem, " The Course of Time," is certainly of deep and hallowed impress, full of noble thoughts and graphic conceptions — the production of a mind alive to the great relations of being, and the sublime simplicity of our religion ; not without distinct poetry, but more character- ized by a strong and searching intellect. In its simple beauties, it strikes us as the work of a man who has kept himself shy from literature for a first and great attempt; and still more so in its cumbrous faults, which a little self-denial, and a slight notion of comparative excellence, best attained from early trials of strength, would have prevented. The enormous fault of this poem, is an elaborate redundancy in the making up of moral pictures, very much in the style of those of Blair's Grave, to which poem it certainly bears a generic resemblance. Even in those parts of his work- where, according to our author's proposed object, the interest should be deepest, the haughtiness of the epic dignity is fearlessly compromised, that his cabinet of portraitures may have enlargement both of number and space ; and the worst part of his (literary) sin is, that he dilates upon CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 23 the same subject more than once ; not sparing, that all may be complete, lines of interjectional emphasis, which at best, in any work, are but beggarly elements — a life-in-death sort of power — the startling throes of a mere galvanic existence, and quite un- worthy of a mind that has vis enough to set forth direct propo- sitions. The plan of this poem is simple and well-conceived — the whole race of man has been long gathered unto the years of eternity, and the things of time are seen far remote, according to the author's own graphic simile — " as country which has left The traveller's speedy step, retiring back From morn till even" — when a being, confirmed in good, arrives in heaven from some re- mote world. He is welcomed by two of the heavenly dwellers, of whom he inquires the meaning of hell and its woes, which a stray-flight in his passage heaven-ward (somewhat unaccountably ascribed to mere curiosity, rather than the direct leading of God) has permitted him to see. Arrived themselves but lately at the celestial kingdom, they are unable to satisfy his inquiries ; but they take him to an ancient bard, once of our earth, who, accord- ing to the questions of the newly-arrived, in reference particularly to the Lamb of God and the resurrection-morn, which he heard blasphemed in hell, goes over the chief characteristics of man's world, up to the great day of judgment, which marks, according to our author's high argument, "Time gone, the righteous saved, the wicked damn'd And God's eternal government approved." On first view we are struck with the plan, as worthy of the finest arrangement of parts ; but it is soon evident that the best interest must lie in these parts themselves, less in reference to the making up of a unique whole, than to their individual worth. And why ? The consummation which this poem records is in- 24 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. deed overwhelming, and one in which we are awfully interested ; but it stands before us as a great religious truth, long known; and our prescriptive reverence, or our prescriptive callousness, makes us less attentive to any thing like a religious detail, after the original of the Bible. Yet what reader is not alive, with the deepest anxiety, to the process of Eve's seduction as given by Milton, though already the issue is equally known to him from the Scriptures. The same principle on which depends a deep interest in the latter case, explains chiefly why, in the former, it cannot be easily awakened. There were possibilities in the power of Eve, of escape and defence, — the strife of knowledge against knowledge, of innocence against guilt : we attend anxiously, in the hope of seeing her means of resistance exerted ; and there is a deep under-current in the soul of the reader ; an anxious calcu- lation — the most awful process in the human heart — to feel from what slight check an unspeakable calamity might have been prevented. In the general fate of mankind, as given in Mr. Pol- lok's poem, there is no doubtful conflict ; there can be no strife of equal interests. Possibilities there may be in the power of man ; it may be his own folly that he escapes not the final con- demnation ; but this implies little strife of action, and no power in man to keep up the struggle against the sentence ; and there- fore the poem which connects the life of man with the retribution of the judgment-day, considered as a mere human composition, is not, to human sympathies, essentially epic, or progressive in interest. In Paradise Lost, our souls are knit to two living individuals, full of beauty and innocence, and we wait with yearning fear for the sad falling off that is to dash their light, and their love, and their glorious Eden; in the poem before us, we know not real and moving individuals of earth; we are made acquainted, in- deed, with the qualities of individual minds ; but these are no better than the abstract beings of an allegory, and the final fate with which they are respectively visited strikes us but as the vic- tory of God over sin in general, over the wicked follies of men CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 25 and devils. Our reverence, again, for his grand decision, further masters simple feelings, and is a thing far above the usual sym- pathies of sorrow or joy. But allow that these qualities, in ref- erence to judgment, must impress every man with the fate of living beings (and surely our own share in the brotherhood of man is entitled to make the slightest hint of the Last Sentence, to our distinct conception, a scene rife with responsibilities), then there is a new difficulty in the way of our author, to make good the latter clause*of his final argument, — the approval, by human sympathies, of God's eternal awards. Let his victory be put as over individual sinners, then, living as we are in this world, and full of weak and human charities, and not knowing- our own eternal destiny, we cannot have, and God never meant us here to have, such a joy in contemplating the final overthrow of the wicked, as, in the counterpart of the feeling,*shall vindicate tho- roughly to our hearts the severe justice of retribution. Here we cannot even conceive how the eternal separation of two brothers, and the condemnation of the one, shall not dash the full and celestial joys of the other. In any view of the subject — because in any there can be no adequate struggle, on the part of man, against the executive of God's mighty kingdom — a main action is wanting, and progres- sive interest for the work before us, considered merely in the light of an ordinary composition. The general spirit of the above remarks may have a very good particular illustration. This want of a main interest may be accounted for on the same principle which, in a great measure, explains why Mr. Pollok fails to raise our conceptions of horror by his descriptions of the final hell, which his words, not a little magniloquent, led us to believe he meant as the very climax of his poem. In the hell of Milton, the great interest lies in the awakening of the fallen Cherubim from their fiery lethargy. Our sympathies are instantly and directly in the midst of them, remembering with them their past glory, and planning their out- breaking from their burning prison. The horrors of their situa- 2 26 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. tion, though largely described by Milton, are thus in principle incidental, and are insensibly admitted as aggregates of interest by our already excited sympathies. We are taken captive at once, and there is no room for the nil admirari, which is cer- tainly against the poet, whom we see laboring to gird up his loins to do something great. It is the highest praise of the epic gran- deur, and it belongs to Milton in the above instance, when it can gather and take along with its unstayed march, a host of col- lateral circumstances. In Dante's hell, though the conception cannot be so highly praised, the execution is wondrous ; and one unique spirit, through all its attributes of terror and punishment, is never done with knocking at the human heart of his reader. It is not peopled with abstract beings : it is overrun with human affections. We see men in the act of being punished according to the very spirit of their faults ; and the pathetic yearning of all over a human visitor in their descending circles of wrath, — their desire still to know of man's doings on the green earth, and to be remembered in the haunts of their former kindred, — all breathing the very spirit of Dante's own exile, — take a strong hold upon the hearts of his readers. His stories are all of this upper world, and our sympathies go down again, as it were, alive to the misery of the damned, who relate them in the ears of the poet, with sad and interjection al references to the circumstances that now environ their being. Our sympathy is as strong, and has the same play, as when, with all our living consciousness about us, we conceive of our situation pent up in the corded stiffness of death, and en- cumbered with the foul dishonors of the grave, where " Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." The heavy press of woe upon the unhappy narrators gives a fine verisimilitude to the briefness of their details in Dante's poem. The muscular anatomy of harsh feelings, and the quick and in- stinctive shadings of tenderness are fixed before us like statuary. The fino touches of softer poetry that occur here and there, like CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 27 difficult knots of flowers on wild and storm-visited rocks, draw us more strongly to the strange work of this mighty master by giving: relief to its black and terrible edcjes. In the punishment of sinners as described by Mr. Pollok in his last book, their hell and woe are final, and far away. We are aware of their being driven into eternal perdition ; but we are not acquainted with them, as individuals beforehand: we see them not in their lost condition, in reference to any conflict, strug- gling, yet overwhelmed; we hear no more of them as living beings ; and therefore our spirits never enter into their place of torment. Pangs and wrath are prepared beforehand, and then we are told that the wicked are made to enter upon their sor- rowful inheritance ; but this moves us not like the agony of Dante's Inferno, where we behold human feelings sporting like trembling rays through the thick presence of a night of woe. Upon the whole, we believe, that the powers of the poet, not even excepting the great names we have -had occasion to mention above, are inadequate, by a description of the most dread array of physical terrors, to fix the mind to a full conception, either of the bliss or destruction of a single spirit. No man at any given time can call up, and fix before his soul the overwhelming idea. It passes sometimes involuntarily through his heart, but its per- manent expression is beyond the control, and color of words. We would therefore say, that Mr. Pollok has so far been unfor- tunate in the choice of his subject ; and is not altogether to be blamed, if he hath not approved to human sympathies the final justice of God ; or, in the other clause of his argument, to set forth to our conceptions, the full importance of " Time gone, the righteous saved, the wicked damn'd." On the above criticism, Mr. Blackwood, the publisher, thus writes to Mrs. Bell, of London, under date of Au- gust 20, 1827. " Mr. Pollok is the author of a very remarkable poem, ' The 28 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. Course of Time,' which I regret now I did not send you. I sent a copy to Mr. M. ; and you will see a review of it in the June num- ber of my Magazine. The critic, it is generally thought, has not done the author sufficient justice ; but the extracts speak for themselves. My venerable friend, Mr. Henry Mackenzie, and a number of our first literary men here, have taken the greatest interest in Mr. Pollok on account of their high admiration of his poem." CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. [From the Spirit of the Pilgrims.] Several religious poems have appeared within a few years ; but the one taking the widest range, and with a subject requiring the very highest powers to master it, is the " Course of Time." It opens in eternity, long after the judgment. The creation of the world and of man is related to a spirit from some distant sphere. The narrator describes the fall of man, the consequences of it, and the great scheme of redemption. The various ways in which the effects of the fall discover themselves in our per- verted feelings and modes of reasoning, are set forth with great truth, particularly where the gospel is brought to bear upon them. The end of the world, the resurrection, and the judg- ment, follow in succession and close the scene. How all this is filled up, and how relieved, we have no intention of stating : we have answered our object, if we have laid enough before the reader to enable him to perceive that, to fill up such a plan as it should be filled, requires not only a man earnest in his religious views, but one of profound thought, and of almost unmatched poetic powers. CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 29 The first two qualifications we believe we may grant in full to our author ; but we cannot, in sincerity, say so much for him in the last requisite. We cloubt whether the mere poetic excellen- cies of the work are such as to make it deeply interesting to any but truly religious minds ; and to render its sound evangelical sentiment palatable with the world at large, would require in its poetry all the magnificence and beauty of Milton himself. It is a pity that any, in their zeal for religion, should have compared our author with him, the sublime character of whose mind has not been equalled since the days of the prophets. Simply as a poet, Mr. Pollok is neither a Cowper nor a Young. Still he is a poet, and must be allowed to take rank after a few of his con- temporaries, such as Byron, Wordsworth, Crabbe, and one or two more. Nor would we so far dishonor him as to put him down with the Glovers and Haleys, who made a noise in their day. There are also living male and female poets of some celeb- rity, who must be content to take their places after him. He does not, like some of them — to use a homely but applicable expression — lose himself in a smother of words. His diction is plain ; he never writes without thought ; and when you lay his work by, it is with a definite notion of what you have been read- ing : which is a great deal more than Mrs. Hemans admiring readers can say of her. Wordy indefiniteness is the vice of the age ; and people read on, page after page, vaguely pleased with a certain flicker and show of things, without having seen one simple and clear image, or having thought one simple and clear thought. Mr. Pollok is a thinker ; and though this may prove a cause of unpopularity with the diligent readers of books which have taught them not to think, yet it has led those who do think, but have not been careful in this instance to carry along with them the great essen- tials of poetry, to over-estimate him as a whole Poetry is essentially more than this. A man must have some- thing besides a taste for poetry, and a power of putting just and strong thoughts into fair verse. He must have a poet's temper- 30 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. ament — that in which, all coming from him is first fused, and then, running into the mould of the imagination, is turned out a perfect form. It must not be a cold, lifeless form, however, but alive and glowing with the spiritual fire out of which it has come. Passion must utter for itself its own vehement and broken language, and sentiment and sorrow must pour forth their own soft and melancholy sounds like a fountain. Passions and thoughts should not so much be described ; nor should they be so many abstractions ; but rather be, as it were, living, sen- tient, speaking, active beings We do not say that our author is destitute of the great and distinctive qualities of poetry, but that it cannot be said that they are characteristic of his poem. He appears to us to think out what he has written: it does not affect us as if poured through the mind from those deep and living springs within the soul, of which we have spoken. The brain furnished the mate- rial, and wrought it out by itself. His description of hell, in the first book, strikes us as the result of this process ; as ingenious rather than imaginative, and frightful rather than poetical. Mr. Pollok aimed at producing his effect by multiplying cir- cumstances. But circumstances, however well fitted to move us when taken singly, by being over-multiplied lose their power, and serve only to distract us Besides, Mr. Pollok's particulars, when taken singly, too often fail of the intended ef- fect, from want of peculiarity, that which gives individuality. Take as a favorable specimen of our author, his character of Lord Byron. Surely, no thoughtful man can ever read it without being made more thoughtful. It contains many exceptions to our remarks, and many fine reflections, yet before getting through it we catch ourselves casting our eve forward to see where it will end : while reading it we wish it was not quite so long : we leave it with self-dissatisfaction that we were not more affected by what we cannot but allow to be good, and wish we could admire it more than we do. The truth is, that with all there is to praise in it, it lacks the absorbing power. CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. 31 Mr. Pollok's style is not poetic. We do not mean that it is not sufficiently ornamented. Ornamental terms are well-nigh used up ; and the poet, now-a-days, must trust almost solely to the happy combination of the simplest words We have acquitted our author of a certain kind of fashionable wordiness ; but we cannot of another kind. He abounds in epi- thets, and these too often of a character so general, that they might almost as well be applied to any other object, as to that with which they are connected. Tbis remark belongs in a de- gree, and as far as can be, consistently with an intelligible expres- sion of strong thought, to his style generally. Select any of Shakspeare's better passages, and try to take out tbe smallest word from one of them. So closely is his work joined together, so exactly proportioned and fitted is each part to each, and each to the whole, that should you attempt to remove one timber, the building would come tumbling down upon your heads. There is in Mr. Pollok's style a diffuseness — a want of terseness. He may be called a strong man ; but his bulkiness gives him a somewhat heavy movement. Mr. Pollok cannot be so easily excused in another particular — a fault which is hard to be accounted for in a man of his good sense and independent thinking — we mean in his imitations. In the first two books we meet with so much of Milton's structure of sentences, and so many of his favorite terms of expression, that we had no expectation of finding Mr. Pollok so manly and profound a thinker as he turns out to be. He works himself pretty free of this fault, as he gets used to his labor ; though occasional imitations occur, and these so close, that you cannot but smile now and then, even in the most serious passages. He sometimes affects certain words : these, however, are few, such as the word busk. We have "eldest hell," " eldest energy," " eldest skill," and often the old word " whiles." The sentences frequently end with an adjective, brought fully in to fill up the measure. Violence is sometimes mistaken for strength ; and where he attempts sarcasm, after the manner of Cowper, unlike 32 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. Cowper, he not seldom misses his aim. In Young's bad taste, he occasionally introduces conceits into the more serious passages, and we find him aiming at impression by repeating an emphatic word, which is little better than a trick in oratory, and very bad in poetry. Having seen Mr. Pollok most extravagantly and indiscrimi- nately praised, we have dwelt the longer upon his faults and deficiencies ; being aware that nothing so endangers a man's just reputation as excessive commendation. Our author has already reaped some of the natural consequences of this conduct in his admirers ; and we know of no surer way to secure to him his fair deserts, than by giving up freely all which we are not satis- fied he is entitled to Had a more dramatic form been given to the poem, qualities might, perhaps, have been* de- veloped, in which we have all along supposed the author to be wanting, and more vividness, energy, and closeness have been imparted to his whole work There, is much of loose writing and illogical use of terms, in the tales of the great novelist of the day (Sir Walter Scott), but these will be found out of his dialogue, and never in it. Mr. Pollok also chose blank verse. This tasks a man more than any other form of writing, and least of all endures difi'usen ess. Taking these difficulties into consideration, and recollecting that a man never can put forth all his strength when he has a misgiving at heart that what he is undertaking may be beyond his strength, no one can say how much greater poetic power Mr. Pollok might have shown, had he undertaken a work requiring less. lb' appears to have been a truly religious man; and it may he that the very awfulness of his subject, subdued rather than aroused all his energies; that he felt himself a mere mortal, jetting his foot upon holy ground. His mind was in a striking degree meditative. He must have devoted to wise and enlarged meditation, no small portion of those early years, which are spent by others in little else than CKITICA.L OBSERVATIONS. 33 acquiring knowledge. His work is not a mixture of youthful crudities and clever thoughts, but is remarkably characterized by maturity of thinking. He writes like an old observer of men one who had looked long enough upon the world to have seen just what all its glosses are worth. He was not to be deceived into a false estimate of human nature, either by the pride of his own heart, or by short and disconnected views of the hearts of others. He not only had penetration sufficient to perceive where lay the errors of the philosophy of former times, but he had independence and clear-sightedness enough to look quite through the fallacies of his own day, and to see, moreover, that most of the boasted discoveries in what is styled the philosophy of reli- gion, were little better than old errors in new dresses ; that many of the schemes, so vaunted of for their originality, were but mod- ified forms of those which moved in the twilight, when the old revelation was set upon nigh all the world, and the Sun of Riil'hteousness was not risen to bless it — schemes which floated in that light to darken it when it did at length arise, and which would overshadow it now, were not God more than man. There are men who have a certain acuteness at detecting a fallacy, and an activity and clearness of intellect, which work very well within a particular sphere ; but who want a largeness of thought to enable them to follow out the many and far-reach • ing relations of a great scheme, and to comprehend it as a wdiole. Mr. Pollok had such a comprehensive mind, and he brought the exercise of it to the greatest of all subjects — the relation of man to his God, and to a future state. He appears to have wrought with it clear of the perversion of human vanity, and with a most sincere and humble reliance on his Maker for aid. We believe his prayer, in the last book, came from a fervent heart, and that it was one which often went up from him during his labor : " Jehovah ! breathe upon my soul ; my heart Enlarge ; my faith increase ; increase my hope ; My thoughts exalt; my fancy sanctify, And all my passions, that I near thy throne May venture, unreproved." 2* 34: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS. Our demands upon a poet are higher, perhaps, than would be those of many of our readers. We have spoken of the evil done to Mr. Pollok's just fame by indiscriminate praise. In the fear lest we should fall into the same mistake with others, and let our zeal for the true faith for which he wrote lead us to over-esti- mate his poetic merit, it is possible that we may not have done him entire justice We cannot leave this poem without recommending it as a help to the meditations of the serious, and without expressing the wish that those inclined to think full well of human nature and their own hearts, and care- lessly of what God requires of them, would read it also. There is an alarming and an increasing propensity in society to both of these errors; indeed, they are necessarily coupled. We know of few works better calculated than the one we are noticing, to put an end to the vain, the worse than vain fancies, of a pre-eminently vain age. THE COURSE OF TIME. BOOK I. y BOOK r. ANALYSIS. The author invokes the Eternal Spirit to inspire his song, that he may- sing " the Course of Time," " the second birth, and final doom of man,'' "the essential truth — time gone, the righteous saved, the wicked damned, and Providence approved." Long after time had ceased and Eternity had rolled on its periods, num- bered only by God alone, a stranger spirit arrives "high on the hills of immortality," and is there met by two other spirits, "youthful sons of Paradise," who greet him with " Well clone, thou good and faithful servant," and invite him to ascend to the throne of God. The stranger informs them, that, when he left his native world, on his way towards Heaven, he came to a realm of darkness, where he saw beings of " all shapes, all forms, all modes of wretchedness," in a place of torment, " burning continually," and dying perpetually, and heard cursing and blasphemies : the meaning of which he requests them to unfold to him ; but they being unable, introduce him to an ancient bard of the Earth, and all three request him to explain to them the wonders of the place of torments, and prison of the damned. The bard informs them, that " the place the stranger saw was Hell ;" the groans he heard, the wailings of the damned, and that he wiil have his asking, and that "wondering doubt shall learn to answer," while he gives them in brief the history of Man. &fo torn ill §i\\u. BOOK I. Eternal Spirit ! God of truth ! to whom All things seem as they are ; Thou who of old The prophet's eye unsealed, that nightly saw, While heavy sleep fell down on other men, In holy vision tranced, the future pass 5 Before him, and to Judah's harp attuned Burdens which made the pagan mountains shake And Zion's cedars bow — inspire my song ; My eye unscale ; me what is substance teach, And shadow what, while I of things to come, 10 As past, rehearsing, sing the Course of Time, The second Birtb, and final Doom of man. 7. Burdens : Reference is made to the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who thus denominates his predictions of evil, as in chap. xiii. 1 : "The burden of Babylon,"