 | Rambles and reveries |  |
THOUGHTS ON THE POETS.
GOLDSMITH.
It is sometimes both pleasing and profitable to recur to
those characters in literary history who are emphatically
favorites, and to glance at the cause of their popularity.
Such speculations frequently afford more important results
than the mere gratification of curiosity. They often lead
to a clearer perception of the true tests of genius, and
indicate the principle and methods by which the common
mind may be most successfully addressed. The advantage
of such retrospective inquiries is still greater at a period
like the present, when there is such an obvious tendency
to innovate upon some of the best established theories of
taste; when the passion for novelty seeks for such unlicensed
indulgence, and invention seems to exhaust itself
rather upon forms than ideas. In literature, especially,
we appear to be daily losing one of the most valuable
elements—simplicity. The prevalent taste is no longer
gratified with the natural. There is a growing appetite
for what is startling and peculiar, seldom accompanied by
any discriminating demand for the true and original; and
only permanent elements of literature; and no healthy
mind, cognizant of its own history, is unaware that the
only intellectual aliment which never palls upon the taste,
is that which is least indebted to extraneous accompaniments
for its relish.
It is ever refreshing to revert to first principles. The
study of the old masters may sometimes make the modern
artist despair of his own efforts; but if he have the genius
to discover, and follow out the great principle upon which
they wrought, he will not have contemplated their works
in vain. He will have learned that devotion to nature
is the grand secret of progress in art, and that the success
of her votaries depends upon the singleness, constancy,
and intelligence of their worship. If there is not enthusiasm
enough to kindle this flame in its purity, nor energy
sufficient to fulfil the sacrifice required at that high
altar, let not the young aspirant enter the priesthood of
art. When the immortal painter of the Transfiguration
was asked to embody his ideal of perfect female loveliness,
he replied—there would still be an infinite distance between
his work and the existent original. In this profound and
vivid perception of the beautiful in nature, we perceive
the origin of those lovely creations, which, for more than
three hundred years, have delighted mankind. And it is
equally true of the pen as the pencil, that what is drawn
from life and the heart, alone bears the impress of immortality.
Yet the practical faith of our day is diametrically
opposed to this truth. The writers of our times are constantly
making use of artificial enginery. They have, for
earnest directness of earlier epochs. There is less faith,
as we before said, in the natural; and when we turn from
the midst of the forced and hot bed products of the modern
school, and ramble in the garden of old English literature,
a cool and calm refreshment invigorates the
spirit, like the first breath of mountain air to the weary
wayfarer.
There are few writers of the period more generally beloved
than Dr. Goldsmith. Of his contemporaries,
Burke excelled him in splendor of diction, and Johnson
in depth of thought. The former continues to enjoy a
larger share of admiration, and the latter of respect, but
the labors of their less pretending companion have secured
him a far richer heritage of love. Of all posthumous
tributes to genius, this seems the most truly desirable.
It recognizes the man as well as the author. It is
called forth by more interesting characteristics than talent.
It bespeaks a greater than ordinary association of
the individual with his works, and looking beyond the
mere embodiment of his intellect, it gives assurance of an
attractiveness in his character which has made itself felt
even through the artificial medium of writing. The authors
are comparatively few, who have awakened this feeling
of personal interest and affection. It is common, indeed,
for any writer of genius to inspire emotions of gratitude
in the breasts of those susceptible to the charm, but
the instances are rare in which this sentiment is vivified
and elevated into positive affection. And few, I apprehend,
among the wits and poets of old England, have
said this kind of literary fame was eminently desirable.
There is, indeed, something inexpressibly touching in the
thought of one of the gifted of our race, attaching to himself
countless hearts by the force of a charm woven in by-gone
years, when environed by neglect and discouragement.
Though a late, it is a beautiful recompense, transcending
mere critical approbation, or even the reverence
men offer to the monuments of mind. We can conceive
of no motive to effort which can be presented to a man of
true feeling, like the hope of winning the love of his kind
by the faithful exhibition of himself. It is a nobler purpose
than that entertained by heartless ambition. The
appeal is not merely to the judgment and imagination, it
is to the universal heart of mankind. Such fame is emphatically
rich. It gains its possessor warm friends instead
of mere admirers. To establish such an inheritance
in the breast of humanity, were indeed worthy of
sacrifice and toil. It is an offering not only to intellectual
but to moral graces, and its possession argues for the
sons of fame holier qualities than genius itself. It eloquently
indicates that its subject is not only capable of
interesting the general mind by the power of his creations,
but of captivating the feelings by the earnest beauty
of his nature. Of all oblations, therefore, we deem it the
most valuable. It is this sentiment with which the lovers
of painting regard the truest interpreters of the art. They
wonder at Michael Angelo but love Raphael, and gaze
upon the pensively beautiful delineation he has left us of
himself, with the regretful tenderness with which we look
music, too, dwell with glad astonishment upon the celebrated
operas of Rosini and some of the German composers,
but the memory of Bellini is absolutely loved. It is
well remarked by one of Goldsmith's biographers, that the
very fact of his being spoken of always with the epithet
“poor” attached to his name, is sufficient evidence of the
kind of fame he enjoys. Whence, then, the peculiar attraction
of his writings, and wherein consists the spell
which has so long rendered his works the favorites of so
many and such a variety of readers?
The primary and all-pervading charm of Goldsmith is
his truth. It is interesting to trace this delightful characteristic,
as it exhibits itself not less in his life than in his
writings. We see it displayed in the remarkable frankness
which distinguished his intercourse with others, and
in that winning simplicity which so frequently excited the
contemptuous laugh of the worldly-wise, but failed not to
draw towards him the more valuable sympathies of less
perverted natures. All who have sketched his biography
unite in declaring, that he could not dissemble; and we
have a good illustration of his want of tact in concealing
a defect, in the story which is related of him at the time
of his unsuccessful attempt at medical practice in Edinburgh—when,
his only velvet coat being deformed by a
huge patch on the right breast, he was accustomed, while
in the drawing room, to cover it in the most awkward
manner with his hat. It was his natural truthfulness
which led him to so candid and habitual a confession of
his faults. Johnson ridiculed him for so freely describing
first play; and, throughout his life, the perfect honesty of
his spirit made him the subject of innumerable practical
jokes. Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable
from eminently truthful characters. Yet, if such is the
case, it does not in the least diminish our faith in the superiority
and value of such characters. Waiving all moral
considerations, we believe it can be demonstrated that
truth is one of the most essential elements of real greatness,
and surest means of eminent success. Management,
chicanery and cunning, may advance men in the
career of the world; it may forward the views of the politician,
and clear the way of the diplomatist. But when
humanity is to be addressed in the universal language of
genius; when, through the medium of literature or art,
man essays to reach the heart of his kind, the more sincere
the appeal, the surer its effect; the more direct the
call, the deeper the response. In a word, the more largely
truth enters into a work, the more certain the fame of
its author. But a few months since, I saw the Parisian
populace crowding around the church where the remains
of Talleyrand lay in state, but the fever of curiosity alone
gleamed from their eyes, undimmed by tears. When
Goldsmith died, Reynolds, then in the full tide of success,
threw his pencil aside in sorrow, and Burke turned
from the fast-brightening vision of renown, to weep.
Truth is an endearing quality. None are so beloved
as the ingenuous. We feel in approaching them that the
look of welcome is unaffected—that the friendly grasp is
from the heart, and we regret their departure as an actual
principle through the labours of genius. It immortalizes
history—it is the true origin of eloquence, and
constitutes the living charm of poetry. When Goldsmith
penned the lines—
One native charm than all the gloss of art,
the secret which has embalmed his memory. It was the
clearness of his own soul which reflected so truly the
imagery of life. He did but transcribe the unadorned
convictions that glowed in his mind, and faithfully traced
the pictures which nature threw upon the mirror of his
fancy. Hence the unrivalled excellence of his descriptions.
Rural life has never found a sweeter eulogist. To
countless memories have his village landscapes risen
pleasantly, when the “murmur” rose at eventide.
Where do we not meet with a kind-hearted philosopher
delighting in some speculative hobby, equally dear as the
good Vicar's theory of Monogamy? The vigils of many
an ardent student have been beguiled by his portraiture of
a country clergyman—brightening the dim vista of futurity
as his own ideal of destiny; and who has not, at
times, caught the very solace of retirement from his
sweet apostrophe?
The genius of Goldsmith was chiefly fertilized by observation.
He was not one of those who regard books
as the only, or even the principal sources of knowledge
so richly spread over the volume of nature, and shadowed
forth so variously from the scenes of every-day life and
the teachings of individual experience. There is a class
of minds, second to none in native acuteness and reflective
power, so constituted as to flourish almost exclusively
by observation. Too impatient of restraint to endure
the long vigils of the scholar, they are yet keenly alive to
every idea and truth which is evolved from life. Without
a tithe of that spirit of application that binds the German
student for years to his familiar tomes, they suffer not a
single impression which events or character leave upon
their memories to pass unappreciated. Unlearned, in a
great measure, in the history of the past, the present is
not allowed to pass without eliciting their intelligent comment.
Unskilled in the technicalities of learning, they
contrive to appropriate, with surprising facility, the wisdom
born of the passing moment. No striking trait of
character—no remarkable effect in nature—none of the
phenomena of social existence, escape them. Like Hogarth,
they are constantly enriching themselves with
sketches from life; and, as he drew street-wonders upon
his thumb-nail, they note and remember, and afterwards
elaborate and digest whatever of interest experience affords.
Goldsmith was a true specimen of this class.
He vindicated, indeed, his claim to the title of scholar, by
research and study; but the field most congenial to his
taste, was the broad universe of nature and man. It was
his love of observation which gave zest to the roving life
he began so early to indulge. His boyhood was passed
migrating from the house of one kinsman or friend to
that of another; and on these occasions, as well as when
at home, he was silently but faithfully observing. The
result is easily traced in his writings. Few authors, indeed,
are so highly indebted to personal observation for
their materials. It is well known that the original of the
Vicar of Wakefield was his own father. Therein has he
embodied in a charming manner his early recollections of
his parent, and the picture is rendered still more complete
in his papers on the “Man in Black.” The inimitable
description, too, of the “Village Schoolmaster,”
is drawn from the poet's early teacher; and the veteran,
who “shouldered his crutch and told how fields were
won,” had often shared the hospitality of his father's roof.
The leading incident in “She Stoops to Conquer,” was
his own adventure; and there is little question, that, in
the quaint tastes of Mr. Burchell, he aimed to exhibit
many of his own peculiar traits. But it is not alone in
the leading characters of his novel, plays and poems, that
we discover Goldsmith's observing power. It is equally
discernible throughout his essays and desultory papers.
Most of his illustrations are borrowed from personal experience,
and his opinions are generally founded upon
experiment. His talent for fresh and vivid delineation,
is ever most prominently displayed when he is describing
what he actually witnessed, or drawing from the rich fund
of his early impressions or subsequent adventures. No
appeal to humor, curiosity, or imagination, was unheeded;
and it is the blended pictures he contrived to combine
lively an interest to his pages. One moment we find
him noting, with philosophic sympathy, the pastimes of a
foreign peasantry, and, another, studying the operations
of a spider at his garret window,—now busy in nomenclating
the peculiarities of the Dutch, and anon alluding to
the exhibition of Cherokee Indians. The natural effect
of this thirst for experimental knowledge, was to beget a
love for foreign travel. Accordingly, we find that Goldsmith,
after exhausting the narrow circle which his limited
means could compass at home, projected a continential
tour, and long cherished the hope of visiting the East.
Indeed, we could scarcely have a stronger proof of his enthusiasm,
than the long journey he undertook and actually
accomplished on foot. The remembrance of his romantic
wanderings over Holland, France, Germany, and
Italy, imparts a singular interest to his writings. It was
indeed worthy of a true poet that, enamored of nature and
delighting in the observation of his species, he should
thus manfully go forth, with no companion but his flute,
and wander over these fair lands hallowed by past associations
and existent beauty. A rich and happy era despite
its moments of discomfort, to such a spirit, was that year
of solitary pilgrimage. Happy and proud must have been
the imaginative pedestrian, as he reposed his weary frame
in the peasant's cottage “beside the murmuring Loire;”
and happier still when he stood amid the green valleys of
Switzerland, and looked around upon her snow-capt hills,
hailed the old towers of Verona, or entered the gate of
Florence—the long-anticipated goals to which his weary
enhance the pleasure of musing amid these scenes of
poetic interest, it must have been the consciousness of
having reached them by so gradual and self-denying a
progress. There is, in truth, no more characteristic portion
of Goldsmith's biography, than that which records
this remarkable tour; and there are few more striking
instances of the available worth of talent. Unlike the
bards of old, he won not his way to shelter and hospitality
by appealing to national feeling; for the lands through
which he roamed were not his own, and the lay of the last
Minstrel had long since died away in oblivion. But he
gained the ready kindness of the peasantry by playing the
flute, as they danced in the intervals of toil; and won the
favor of the learned by successful disputation at the convents
and universities—a method of rewarding talent
which was extensively practised in Europe at that period.
Thus, solely befriended by his wits, the roving poet rambled
over the continent, and, notwithstanding the vicissitudes
incident to so precarious a mode of seeing the world,
to a mind like his, there was ample compensation in the
superior opportunities for observation thus afforded. He
mingled frankly with the people, and saw things as they
were. The scenery which environed him flitted not before
his senses, like the shifting scenes of a panorama,
but became familiar to his eye under the changing aspects
of time and season. Manners and customs he quietly
studied, with the advantage of sufficient opportunity to institute
just comparisons and draw fair inferences. In
short, Goldsmith was no tyro in the philosophy of travel;
its superior results are abundantly evidenced
throughout his works. We have, indeed, no formal narrative
of his journeyings; but what is better, there is
scarcely a page thrown off, to supply the pressing wants
of the moment, which is not enriched by some pleasing
reminiscence or sensible thought, garnered from the recollection
and scenes of that long pilgrimage. Nor did
he fail to embody the prominent impressions of so interesting
an epoch of his chequered life, in a more enduring
and beautiful form. The poem of “The Traveller,”
originally sketched in Switzerland, was subsequently revised
and extended. It was the foundation of Goldsmith's
poetical fame. The subject evinces the taste of
the author. The unpretending vein of enthusiasm which
runs through it, is only equalled by the force and simplicity
of the style. The rapid sketches of the several countries
it presents, are vigorous and pleasing; and the reflections
interspersed, abound with that truly humane
spirit, and that deep sympathy with the good, the beautiful,
and the true, which distinguishes the poet. This production
may be regarded as the author's first deliberate attempt
in the career of genius. It went through nine editions
during his life, and its success contributed, in a
great measure, to encourage and sustain him in future and
less genial efforts.
The faults which are said to have deformed the character
of Goldsmith, belong essentially to the class of foibles
rather than absolute and positive errors. Recent biographers
agree in the opinion, that his alleged devotion to
temporary mania; and we should infer from his own
allusion to the subject, that he had, with the flexibility of
disposition that belonged to him, yielded only so far to
its seductions as to learn from experience the supreme
folly of the practice. It is at all events certain, that his
means were too restricted, and his time, while in London
too much occupied, to allow of his enacting the part of a
regular and professed gamester; and during the latter
and most busy years of his life, we have the testimony
of the members of the celebrated club to which he was
attached, to the temperance and industry of his habits.
Another, and in the eyes of the world, perhaps, greater
weakness recorded of him, was a mawkish vanity, sometimes
accompanied by jealousy of more successful competitors
for the honors of literature. Some anecdotes,
illustrative of this unamiable trait, are preserved, which
would amuse us, were they associated with less noble endowments
or a more uninteresting character. As it is,
however, not a few of them challenge credulity, from their
utter want of harmony with certain dispositions which he
is universally allowed to have possessed. But it is one
of the greatest and most common errors in judging of
character, to take an isolated and partial, instead of a
broad and comprehensive view of the various qualities
which go to form the man, and the peculiar circumstances
that have influenced their development. Upon a candid
retrospect of Goldsmith's life, it appears to us that the
display of vanity, which in the view of many are so demeaning,
may be easily and satisfactorily explained.
seems designed by the Creator, that the very sense of
capacity should urge genius to fulfil its mission, and
support its early and lonely efforts by the earnest conviction
of ultimate success. To beings thus endowed, the neglect
and contumely of the world—the want of sympathy
—the feeling of misappreciation, is often a keen sorrow
felt precisely in proportion to the susceptibility of the
individual, and expressed according as he is ingenuous
and frank. In the case of Goldsmith, his long and solitary
struggle with poverty—his years of obscure toil—
his ill-success in every scheme for support, coupled as
they were with an intuitive and deep consciousness of
mental power and poetic gifts, were calculated to render
him painfully alive to the superior consideration bestowed
upon less deserving but more presumptuous men, and the
unmerited and unjust disregard to his own claims. Weak
it undoubtedly was, for him to give vent so childishly to
such feelings, but this sprung from the spontaneous honesty
of his nature. He felt as thousands have felt under
similar circumstances, but, unlike the most of men, “he
knew not the art of concealment.” Indeed, this free-spoken
and candid disposition was inimical to his success
in more than one respect. He was ever a careless talker,
unabled to play the great man, and instinctively preferring
the spontaneous to the formal, and “thinking aloud” to
studied and circumspect speech. The “exquisite sensibility
to contempt,” too, which he confesses belonged to
him, frequently induced an appearance of conceit, when
no undue share existed. The truth is, the legitimate pride
itself in Goldsmith greatly to his disadvantage. The
fault was rather in his destiny than himself. He ran
away from college with the design of embarking for
America, because he was reproved by an unfeeling tutor
before a convivial party of his friends; and descended to
a personal rencontre with a printer, who impudently delivered
Dodsley's refusal that he should undertake an
improved edition of Pope. He concealed his name when
necessity obliged him to apply for the office of usher;
and received visits and letters at a fashionable coffee-house,
rather than expose the poorness of his lodgings.
He joined the crowd to hear his own ballads sung when
a student; and openly expressed his wonder at the stupidity
of people, in preferring the tricks of a mountebank
to the society of a man like himself. While we smile at,
twe cannot wholly deride such foibles, and are constrained
o say of Goldsmith as he said of the Village Pastor—
It is not easy to say, whether the improvidence of our
poet arose more from that recklessness of the future, characteristic
of the Irish temperament, or the singular confidence
in destiny which is so common a trait in men of
ideal tendencies. It would naturally be supposed, that
the stern lesson of severe experience would have eventually
corrected this want of foresight. It was but the
thoughtlessness of youth which lured him to forget amid
the convivialities of a party, the vessel on board which he
had taken passage and embarked his effects, on his firs
wandering out on the first evening of his arrival in Edinburgh,
without noting the street or number of his lodgings;
inviting a party of strangers in a public garden to take tea
with him, without a sixpence in his pocket; and obstinately
persisting, during his last illness, in taking a favorite
medicine, notwithstanding it aggravated his disease. A
life of greater vicissitude it would be difficult to find in
the annals of literature. Butler and Otaway were, indeed,
victims of indigence, and often perhaps, found
themselves, like our bard, “in a garret writing for bread,
and expecting every moment to be dunned for a milk-score,”
but the biography of Goldsmith displays a greater
variety of shifts resorted to for subsistence. He was successively
an itinerant musician, a half-starved usher, a chemist's
apprentice, private tutor, law-student, practising
physician, eager disputant, hack-writer, and even, for a
week or two, one of a company of strolling players. In
the history of George Primrose, he is supposed to have
described much of his personal experience prior to the period
when he became a professed litterateur. We cannot
but admire the independent spirit he maintained
through all these struggles with adverse fortune. Notwithstanding
his poverty, the attempt to chain his talents
to the service of a political faction by mercenary motives
was indignantly spurned, and when his good genius proved
triumphant, he preferred to incribe its first acknowledged
offspring to his brother, than, according to the
servile habits of the day, dedicate it to any aristocratic
patron, “that thrift might follow fawning.” With all his
to have forgotten the self-respect becoming one of nature's
nobility.
The high degree of excellence attained by Goldsmith
in such various and distinct species of literary effort, is
worthy of remark. As an essayist, he has contributed
some of the most pure and graceful specimens of English
prose discoverable in the whole range of literature. His
best comedy continues to maintain much of its original
popularity, notwithstanding the revolutions which public
taste has undergone since it was first produced; and
“The Hermit” is still an acknowledged model in ballad-writing.
If from his more finished works, we turn to
those which were thrown off under the pressing exigencies
of his life, it is astonishing what a contrast of subjects
employed his pen. During his college days, he was
constantly writing ballads on popular events, which he
disposed of at five shillings each, and subsequently, after
his literary career had fairly commenced, we find him sedulously
occupied in preparing prefaces, historical compilations,
translations, and reviews for the booksellers; one
day throwing off a pamphlet on the Cock-Lane ghost,
and the next inditing Biographical Sketches of Beau
Nash; at one moment, busy upon a festive song, and at
another deep in composing the words for an Oratorio. It
is curious, with the intense sentiment and finished pictures
of fashionable life with which the fictions of our
day abound, fresh in the memory, to open the Vicar of
Wakefield. We seem to be reading the memoirs of an
earlier era, instead of a different sphere of life. There
and with the exception of Burchell's incognito, no attempt
to excite interest through the attraction of mystery.
And yet, few novels have enjoyed such extensive and
permanent favor. It is yet the standard work for introducing
students on the continent to a knowledge of our
language, and although popular taste at present demands
quite a different style of entertainment, yet Goldsmith's
novel is often reverted to with delight, from the vivid contrast
it presents to the reigning school; while the attractive
picture it affords of rural life and humble virtue, will
ever render it intrinsically dear and valuable.
But the “Deserted Village” is, of all Goldsmith's productions,
unquestionably the favorite. It carries back
the mind to the early season of life, and re-asserts the
power of unsophisticated tastes. Hence, while other poems
grow stale, this preserves its charm. Dear to the heart
and sacred to the imagination, are those sweet delineations
of unperverted existence. There is true pathos in
that tender lament over the superseded sports and ruined
haunts of rustic enjoyment, which never fails to find a response
in every feeling breast. It is an elaborate and touching
epitaph, written in the cemetery of the world, over what
is dear to all humanity. There is a truth in the eloquent
defence of agricultural pursuits and natural pastimes, that
steals like a well-remembered strain over the heart immersed
in the toil and crowds of cities. There is an unborn
beauty in the similes of the bird and her “unfledged
offspring,” the hare that “pants to the place from whence
at first he flew,” and the “tall cliff that lifts its awful form,”
And no clear and susceptible mind can ever lose
its interest in the unforced, unexaggerated and heart-stirring
numbers, which animate with pleasure the pulses of
youth, gratify the mature taste of manhood, and fall with a
soothing sweetness upon the ear of age. We are not
surprised at the exclamation of a young lady who had been
accustomed to say, that our poet was the homliest of men,
after reading the “Deserted Village”—“I shall never
more think Dr. Goldsmith ugly!” This poem passed
through five editions in as many months, and from its domestic
character became immediately popular throughout
England. Its melodious versification is doubtless, in a
measure, to be ascribed to its author's musical taste, and
the fascinating ease of its flow is the result of long study
and careful revision. Nothing is more deceitful than the
apparent facility observable in poetry. No poet exhibits
more of this characteristic than Ariosto, and yet his manuscripts
are filled with erasures and repetitions. Few
things appear more negligently graceful than the well-arranged
drapery of a statue, yet how many experiments
must the artist try before the desired effect is produced.
So thoroughly did the author revise the “Deserted Village,”
that not a single original line remained. The
clearness and warmth of his style is, to my mind, as indicative
of Goldsmith's truth, as the candor of his character
or the sincerity of his sentiments. It has been said
of Pitt's elocution, that it had the effect of impressing one
with the idea that the man was greater than the orator.
A similar influence it seems to me is produced by the
It is not, indeed, by an analysis, however critical, of
the intellectual distinctions of any author, that we can
arrive at a complete view of his genius. It is to the feelings
that we must look for that earnestness which gives
vigor to mental efforts, and imparts to them their peculiar
tone and coloring. And it will generally be found that
what is really and permanently attractive in the works of
genius, independent of mere diction, is to be traced rather
to the heart than the head. We may admire the original
conception, the lofty imagery or winning style of a
popular author, but what touches us most deeply is the sentiment
of which these are the vehicles. The fertile invention
of Petrarch, in displaying under such a variety of
disguises the same favorite subject, is not so moving as
the unalterable devotion which inspires his fancy and
quickens his muse. The popularity of Mrs. Hemans is
more owing to the delicate and deep enthusiasm than to
the elegance of her poetry, and Charles Lamb is not less
attractive for his kindly affections than for his quaint
humor. Not a little of the peculiar charm of Goldsmith,
is attributable to the excellence of his heart. Mere
talent would scarcely have sufficed to interpret and display
so enchantingly the humble characters and scenes to
which his most brilliant efforts were devoted. It was his
sincere and ready sympathy with man, his sensibility to
suffering in every form, his strong social sentiment and
his amiable interest in all around, which brightened to his
mind's eye, what to the less susceptible is unheeded and
his own experience of privation prevented them
from indurating through age or prosperity. He cherished
throughout his life an earnest faith in the better feelings
of our nature. He realized the universal beauty
and power of Love; and neither the solitary pursuits of
literature, the elation of success, nor the blandishments of
pleasure or society, ever banished from his bosom the
generous and kindly sentiments which adorned his character.
He was not the mere creature of attainment, the
reserved scholar or abstracted dreamer. Pride of intellect
usurped not his heart. Pedantry congealed not the
fountains of feeling. He rejoiced in the exercise of
all those tender and noble sentiments which are so much
more honorable to man than the highest triumphs of
mind. And it is these which make us love the man not
less than admire the author. Goldsmith's early sympathy
with the sufferings of the peasantry, is eloquently expressed
in both his poems and frequently in his prose writings.
How expressive that lament for the destruction of the
`Ale-House'—that it would
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart.'
There is more true benevolence in the feeling which
prompted such a thought, than in all the cold and calculating
philosophy with which so many expect to elevate
the lower classes in these days of ultra-reform. When
shall we learn that we must sympathize with those we
would improve? At college, we are told, one bitter night
shivering at the gate, and having no money to give them
bringing out all his bed clothes to keep himself from freezing,
cut open his bed and slept within it. When hard at
work earning a scanty pittance in his garret, he spent every
spare penny in cakes for the children of his poorer neighbors,
and when he could do nothing else, taught them
dancing, by way of cheering their poverty. Notwithstanding
his avowed antipathy to Baretti, he visited and
relieved him in prison; and when returning home with
the £100 received from his book-seller for the `Deserted
Village,' upon being told by an acquaintance he fell
in with, that it was a great price for so little a thing, replied,
`perhaps it is more than he can afford,' and returning
offered to refund a part. To his poor countrymen
he was a coustant benefactor, and while he had a shilling
was ready to share it with them, so that they familiarly
styled him `our doctor.' In Leyden, when on the point
of commencing his tour, he stripped himself of all his
funds to send a collection of flower-roots to an uncle who
was devoted to botany; and on the first occasion that patronage
was offered him, declined aid for himself, to bespeak
a vacant living for his brother. In truth, his life
abounds in anecdotes of a like nature. We read one
day of his pawning his watch for Pilkington, another of
his bringing home a poor foreigner from Temple gardens
to be his amanuensis, and again of his leaving the card-table
to relieve a poor woman, whose tones as she chanted
some ditty in passing, came to him above the hum of
gaiety and indicated to his ear distress.. Though the frequent
never known to write severely against any one. His
talents were sacredly devoted to the cause of virtue and
humanity. No malignant satire ever came from his
pen. He loved to dwell upon the beautiful vindications in
nature of the paternity of God, and expatiate upon the
noblest and most universal attributes of man. `If I
were to love you by rule,' he writes to his brother, `I
dare say I never could do it sincerely.' There was in his
nature, an instinctive aversion to the frigid, ceremonial and
meaningless professions which so coldly imitate the language
of feeling. Goldsmith saw enough of the world,
to disrobe his mind of that scepticism born of custom
which `makes dotards of us all.' He did not wander
among foreign nations, sit at the cottage fire-side, nor
mix in the thoroughfare and gay saloon, in vain Travel
liberalized his views and demolished the barriers of local
prejudice. He looked around upon his kind with the
charitable judgment and interest born of an observing
mind and a kindly heart—`with an infinite love, an infinite
pity.' He delighted in the delineation of humble
life, because he knew it to be the most unperverted.
Simple pleasures warmed his fancy because he had learned
their preëminent truth. Childhood with its innocent
playfulness, intellectual character with its tutored wisdom,
and the uncultivated but `bold peasantry,' interested him
alike. He could enjoy an hour's friendly chat with his
fellow-lodger—the watchmaker in Green Arbor court—
not less than a literary discussion with Dr. Johnson. `I
must own,' he writes, `I should prefer the title of the ancient
of an Englishman, a Frenchman, an European, or that
of any appellation whatever.' And this title he has nobly
earned, by the wide scope of his sympathies and the
beautiful pictures of life and nature universally recognized
and universally loved, which have spread his name
over the world. Pilgrims to the supposed scene of the
Deserted Village have long since carried away every vestige
of the haw-thron at Lissoy, but the laurels of Goldsmith
will never be garnered by the hand of time, or
blighted by the frost of neglect, as long as there are minds
to appreciate, or hearts to reverence the household lore
of English literature.
POPE.
That system of compensation which is thought by
many to balance the apparent inequalities of human destiny,
is strikingly illustrated in the case of Alexander
Pope. Born in obscurity, he achieved a great reputation,
extremely feeble in frame, his mind was singulurly energetic,
cut off by deformity from many accomplishments,
he gave to his intellectual efforts an unrivalled elegance.
Who would have imagined, in contemplating the delicate
and misshapen child, that life, by any possibility, could
prove any thing to him but a weary experience, whose monotony
would be totally unrelieved? Yet glance at the adventures
of his poetical career, and in number and variety
they will be found equal to those of many a hale knight
or wild votary of fashion. At what a tender age he renounced
the dictation of masters, assumed the reins of
education, and resolutely launched into the profession of
a poet! How soon he was engaged in a quarrel with Ambrose
Phillips, and what a long satirical contest ensued
with Dennis and Cibber! Then followed his intimacy
their friendship, correspondence, and mutual enmity.
These and similar scenes of literary animosity, were
brightened by friendly intercourse with Gay, Swift, and
Bolingbroke: and relieved by long periods of study and
composition, visits to noblemen, short journeys, and domestic
duties. And thus the weak and diminutive poet
managed to rise above the dull existence his organization
seemed to ensure, and to find abundance of interest in
the excitement of critical warfare and the pursuit of poetical
renown. It is a wonderful evidence of the power of
mind, that this blighted germ of humanity—who was
braced in canvass in order to hold himself upright—put
to bed and undressed all his life like a child—often unable
to digest the luxuries he could not deny himself, or to
keep his eyes open at the honorable tables to which his
talents alone gave him access—should yet be the terror of
his foes, the envy of his rivals, and the admiration of his
friends. He could not manage the sword he so ostentatiously
displayed in society, but he wielded a pen whose
caustic satire was amply adequate to minister either to his
self-defence or revenge. He was `sent into this breathing
world but half made up,' and calls his existence `a
long disease;' but nature atoned for the unkindness, by
endowing him with a judgment marvellous for its refined
correctness. He could not enjoy with his neighbors the
healthful exercises of the chase; but while they were pursuing
a poor hare, with whose death ended the sport, his
mind was borne along in a race of rhyme destined to carry
his name with honor to posterity. He never laughed
weariness and the world. In the street, he was an object
of pity—at his desk, a king. His head was early deprived
of hair, and ached severely almost every day of his life;
but his eyes were singularly expressive, and his voice
uncommonly melodious. In youth he suffered the decrepitude
of age, but at the same time gave evidence of mental
precocity and superior sense. He was unequal to a
personal rencontre with those who ridiculed his works;
but he has bestowed upon them an immortal vengeance in
the Dunciad. His unfortunate person shut him out from
the triumphs of gallantry, but his talents and reputation
long secured him the society and professed friendship of
the most brilliant woman of the day; and obtained for
him, during most of his life, the faithful care and companionship
of Martha Blount. He never knew the buoyancy
of spirit which good health induces, but was very familiar
with that keen delight that springs from successful
mental enterprize. He could not command the consideration
attached to noble birth; but, on the strength of his
intellectual endowments, he was always privileged to tax
the patience of his titled acquaintance for his own convenience
and pleasure.
Men of letters have been called a race of creatures of
a nature between the two sexes. Pope is a remarkable
exemplification of the idea. There is a tone of decided
manliness in the strong sense which characterizes his
productions, and a truly masculine vigor in the patient
application with which he opposed physical debility. His
disposition on the other hand was morbidly vain. He
acquaintance, and a most effeminate caprice swayed
his attachments and enmities. Another prominent trait
increased his resemblance to the female sex. I allude to
a quality which the phrenologists call secretiveness. In
its healthy exercise its operation is invaluable. To its
influence is ascribed much of that address and tact, in
which women are so superior to men. The latter, in ordinary
affairs, generally adopt a very direct course. They
confide in strength rather than policy. They overlook
lesser means in the contemplation of larger ends. This,
indeed, is partly owing to their position. Nature always
gives additional resources where the relation is that of the
pursued rather than the pursuer. Hence, the insight into
character, the talent for observation, the skill in tracing
motives and anticipating results, which belong to women.
It is the abuse, however, of this trait that is obvious
in Pope. There seems little question that he was an
artful man. He made use of the most unnecessary stratagems
to compass a simple favor. His cunning, indeed,
was chiefly directed to the acquisition of fame; but nothing
subtracts more from our sense of reputation, than
a conviction that it is an exclusive end to its possessor.
Truly great men never trouble themselves about their
fame. They press bravely on in the path of honor and
leave their renown to take care of itself. It succeeds as
certainly as any law of nature. All elevated spirits have
a calm confidence in this truth. Washington felt it in
the darkest hour of the revolution, and Shakespeare unconsciously
realized it, when he concluded his last play,
Pope was a gifted mortal, but he was not of this calibre.
He thought a great deal about his reputation. He was
not satisfied merely to labor for it, and leave the result.
He disputed its possession inch by inch with the critics,
and resorted to a thousand petty tricks to secure its enjoyment.
The management he displayed in order to publish
his letters, is an instance in point. No one can read
them without feeling they were written for more eyes
than those of his correspondents. There is a labored
smartness, a constant exhibition of fine sentiment, which
is strained and unnatural. His repeated deprecation of
motives of aggrandizement, argues, `a thinking too precisely'
on the very subject; and no man, whose chief ambition
was to gain a few dear friends, would so habitually
proclaim it. These tender and delicate aspirations live
in the secret places of the heart. They are breathed in
lonely prayers, and uttered chiefly in quiet sighs. Scarcely
do they obtain natural expression amid the details of a
literary correspondence. True sentiment is modest. It
may tinge the conversation and give a feeling tone to the
epistle, but it makes not a confessional of every sentry-box,
or gallery. The letters of Pope leave upon the
mind an impression of affectation. Doubtless they contain
much that is sincere in sentiment and candid in opinion,
but the general effect lacks the freedom and heartiness
of genuine letter-writing. Many of the bard's
foibles should be ascribed to his bodily ailments, and the
indulgence which he always commanded. Nor should
we forget that he proved himself above literary servility—
always an exemplary son. Pope was the poet of wit
and fancy, rather than of enthusiasm and imagination.
His invention is often brilliant, but never grand. He
rarely excites any sentiment of sublimity, but often one of
pleasure. There is little in his poetry that seems the offspring
of emotion. He never appears to have written
from overpowering impulse. His finest verses have an
air of premeditation. We are not swept away by a torrent
of individual passion as in Byron, nor melted by a natural
sentiment as in Burns, nor exalted by a grandeur of
imagery as in Milton. We read Pope with a regular
pulse. He often provokes a smile, but never calls forth a
tear. His rationality approves itself to our understanding,
his fancifulness excites our applause; but the citadel
of the soul is uninvaded. We perceive, unawares perhaps,
that books have quickened the bard's conception far
more than experience. It may be fairly doubted whether
Pope possessed, in any great degree, the true poetical sensibility
to nature. He thought more of his own domains
than becomes a true son of the muse, and had a most
unpoetical regard for money, as well as contempt for poverty.
His favorite objects of contemplation were Alexander
Pope and Twickenham. We cannot wonder that
he failed as an editor of Shakspeare. Few objects or
scenes of the outward world awoke feelings in his bosom
“too deep for tears.” He never claimed such fellowship
with the elements as to fancy himself `a portion of the
tempest.' It is true he describes well; but where the
materials of his pictures are not borrowed, they resemble
does not personify nature with the ardor of a votary. He
never follows with a lover's perception the phases of a
natural phenomenon. The evening wind might have
cooled his brow forever, ere he would have been prompted
to trace its course with the grateful fondness of Bryant.
He might have lived upon the sea coast, and never revelled
in its grandeur as did the Peer, and passed a daisy every
day, nor felt the meek appeal of its lowly beauty, as
did the Ploughman. Even in his letters, Pope depicts
scenery with a very cool admiration; and never seems
to associate it with any sentiment of moral interest.
Where any thing of this appears, it is borrowed. The
taste of Pope was evidently artificial to the last degree.
He delighted in a grotto decked out with looking-glass and
colored stones, as much as Wordsworth in a mountain-path,
or Scott in a border antiquity. The Rape of the
Lock is considered his most characteristic production, and
abounds with brilliant fancy and striking invention.
But to what is it devoted? The celebration of a trivial
incident in fashionable life. Its inspiration is not of the
grove, but the boudoir. It is not bright with the radiance
of truth, but with the polish of art. It breathes not the
fragrance of wild-flowers, but the fumes of tea. It displays
not the simple features of nature, but the paraphernalia
of the toilet. We know what the heroine wears and
what she does, but must conjecture her peculiar sentiments,
and make out of the details of her dress and circumstances,
an idea of her character.
Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.
Faultless lines indeed, and they ring most harmoniously;
but the poet of feeling would have thrilled us with
his description of Belinda's charms, and the poet of imagination
would have carried us beneath both the cross and
the bosom it adorned, to the young heart of the maiden,
and made us `leap on its pants triumphant.' Yet this
poem is an extraordinary proof of Pope's fancy. He has
invented a long story out of a single and not very interesting
fact; and he has told this tale in language the most
choice, and rhymes the most correct. The poem is like
the fruits and flowers of precious stones set in the exquisite
pietra dura tables of Italy,—clear, fanciful, rarely
combined, but unwarmed with any glow of nature; and
better calculated to awaken admiration than excite sympathy.
It is usual to speak of Pope as a poet of the past—
one whose peculiarities have given place to a new order
of things. But we have ever representatives of his school,
both in literature and life. Men who have cultivated their
manners to an elegant degree of plausibility, orators who
have become masters of an engaging elocution, the
grace of which wins us from criticism and reflection,
poets who have perfectly learned how to versify, and have
more sense than sensibility, more wit than enthusiasm,
more fancy than imaginative power;—such are legitimate
disciples of Pope. They are useful, attractive, often delightful
beings, and effect much in their way; but humanity
can be `touched to finer issues' than these conventional
the mind elevated by great views and aims, the
spontaneous and overflowing soul—such spirits as Milton,
Burns, Coleridge, and Lamb, awaken a profounder regard.
The Essay on Man contains many truisms, a long array
of common-place facts, and a few interesting truths. The
theory it unfolds, whether the poet's or borrowed, affords
little consolation to an ardent and sensitive mind. Pope
cherished no very tender or comprehensive views of his
race. His observation enabled him only to `catch the
manners living as they rise;' and accordingly many of
his couplets have passed into proverbs. He inquires
What can we reason, but from what we know?'
the insight of a generous imagination, and whose
keen sympathies take him constantly from the narrow
limits of the actual, soften the angles of mere logical perception;
and `round them with a sleep'—the sweet and
dreamy repose of poetical reverie. Pope sings not of
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long.
faith of love, and paints, not uneffectively, the struggle of
that passion in a vestal's heart, but the bard himself refers
us to the original letter for the sentiment of the
poem. Even the pious invocation of `The Dying Christian
of a similar nature. The Translations and Imitations
of Pope, greatly outweigh his original pieces—a
sufficient proof that poetry was to him more of an art than
an impulse. The Iliad, however little it may credit his
scholarship and fidelity to the original, is truly an extraordinary
evidence of his facility in versifying, and of his
patient industry. Pope's ideal lay almost wholly in language.
He thought that
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.'
To him we are mainly indebted for a new revelation of
the capabilities of English heroic verse. He gave the
most striking examples of his favorite theory, that `sound
should seem an echo to the sense.' He carried out the
improvement in diction which Dryden commenced; and
while Addison was producing beautiful specimens of reformed
prose, Pope gave a polish and point to verse before
unknown. When the vast number of his couplets
are considered, their fastidious correctness is truly astonishing.
How many examples occur to the memory
of his correct and musical rhymes, ringing like the clear
chimes of a favorite bell through a frosty atmosphere!
How often do we forget the poverty of the thought—the
familiarity of the image—the triteness of the truths they
convey, in the fascinating precision of the verse! It becomes,
indeed, wearisome at length from sameness; and
to be truly enjoyed must be only resorted to occasionally.
His words, like the materials of that art, are fitted together
with a marvellous nicety. The pictures formed are
vivid, exact, and skilful. The consummate tact thus displayed
charms the fancy, and suggests a degree of patient
and tasteful labor which excites admiration. The best
mosaic paintings have a fresh vivacity of hue, and a distinctness
of outline, which gratifies the eye; but we yield
a higher tribute to the less formal and more spiritual products
of the pencil. And such is the distinction between
Pope and more imaginative poets. The bright enamel
of his rhymes, is like a frozen lake over which we glide,
as a skaiter before the wind, surrounded by a glittering
landscape of snow. There is a pleasing exhilaration in
our course, but little glow of heart or exultation of soul.
The poetry of a deeper and less artificial school is like
that lake on a summer evening, upon whose tide we float
in a pleasure-boat, looking upon the flowering banks, the
warm sunset, and the coming forth of the stars. To appreciate
justly the perfection to which Pope carried the
heroic verse, it is only necessary to consider how few
subsequent rhymers have equalled him. He created a
standard in this department which is not likely soon to
be superseded. Other and less studied metres have since
come into vogue, but this still occupies and must retain
an important place. It is doubtless the best for an occasional
poem intended for oral delivery. Few can manage
the Spenserian stanza with effect, and blank verse often
wearies an audience. There is a directness in the heroic
metre admirably adapted for immediate impression.
limits, and the quickly succeeding rhymes sweeten the
sentiment to the ear. Finely chosen words are very effective
in the heroic measure, and images have a striking
relievo. For bold appeal, and keen satire, this medium
is unsurpassed; and it is equally susceptible of touching
melody. Witness Byron's description of the dead Medora,
and Campbell's protest against scepticism. Rogers
and our own Sprague have won their fairest laurels in heroic
verse. With this school of poetry, Pope is wholly
identified. He most signally exhibited its resources, and
to him is justly ascribable the honor of having made it
the occasion of refining the English language. He illustrates
the power of correctness—the effect of precision.
His example has done much to put to shame careless
habits of expression. He was a metrical essayist of excellent
sense, rare fancy, and bright wit. He is the
apostle of legitimate rhyme, and one of the true masters
of the art of verse.
COWPER.
In the gallery of the English poets, we linger with
peculiar emotion before the portrait of Cowper. We
think of him as a youth, `gigling and making giggle' at
his uncle's house in London, and indulging an attachment
destined to be sadly disappointed; made wretched by the
idea of a peculiar destiny; transferred from a circle of
literary roysterers to the gloomy precincts of an Insane
Asylum; partially restored, yet shrinking from the responsibilities
incident to his age; restless, undecided,
desponding even to suicidal wretchedness, and finally
abandoning a world for the excitement and struggles of
which he was wholly unfit. We follow him into the
bosom of a devoted family; witness with admiration the
facility he exhibits in deriving amusements from trifling
employments—gathering every way-side flower even in
the valley of despair, finding no comfort but in `self-deception,'
and finding this in `self-discipline.' We behold
his singular re-appearance in the world in the capacity
of an author,—genius reviving the ties that misfortune
had broken. We trace with delight his intellectual
and his cousin, the vividness of his affections in his
poem to his mother's picture, the play of his fancy in
John Gilpin, his reflective ingenuity in the Task. We
recall the closing scene—the failing faculties of his faithful
companion,[1] his removal from endeared scenes, his sad
walks by the sea-shore, his patient, but profound melancholy
and peaceful death—with the solemn relief that
ensues from the termination of a tragedy. And when
we are told that an expression of “holy surprise” settled
on the face of the departed, we are tempted to exclaim
with honest Kent—
That would upon the rack of this rude world,
Stretch him out longer.
At an age when most of his countrymen are confirmed
in prosaic habits, William Cowper sat down to versify.
No darling theory of the art, no restless thirst for fame,
no bardic frenzy prompted his devotion. He sought in
poetic labor oblivion of consciousness. He strove to
make a Lethe of the waters of Helicon. The gift of a
beautiful mind was maried by an unhappy temperament;
the chords of a tender heart proved too delicate for the
winds of life; and the unfortunate youth became an intellectual
hypochondriac. In early manhood, when the
monastic vows—and turned aside from the busy metropolis,
where his career began, to seek the solace of rural retirement.
There, the tasteful care of a conservatory, the
exercise of mechanical ingenuity, repose, seclusion and
kindness, gradually restored his spirit to calmness; and
then the intellect demanded exercise, and this it found in
the service of the muse. Few of her votaries afford a
more touching instance of suffering than the bard of
Olney. In the records of mental disease, his case has a
melancholy prominence—not that it is wholly isolated,
but because the patient tells his own story, and hallows
the memory of his griefs by uniform gentleness of soul
and engaging graces of mind. To account for the misery
of Cowper, is not so important as to receive and act upon
the lesson it conveys. His history is an ever-eloquent
appeal in behalf of those, whose delicate organization
and sensitive temper expose them to moral anguish.
Whether his gloom is ascribable to a state of the brain as
physiologists maintain, to the ministry of spirits as is
argued by the Swedenborgians, or to the influence of a
creed as sectarians declare, is a matter of no comparative
moment—since there is no doubt the germs of insanity
existed in his very constitution. “I cannot bear much
thinking,” he says. “The meshes of the brain are composed
of such mere spinner's threads in me, that when a
long thought finds its way into them, it buzzes and twangs
and bustles about at such a rate as seems to threaten the
whole contexture.” Recent discoveries have proved that
there is more physiological truth in this remark, than the
about which his despair gathered, were probably accidental.
His melancholy naturally was referred to certain
external causes, but its true origin is to be sought among
the mysteries of our nature. The avenues of joy were
closed in his heart. He tells us, a sportive thought startled
him. “It is as if a harlequin should intrude himself
into the gloomy chamber were a corpse is deposited.”
In reading his productions, with a sense of his mental
condition, what a mingling of human dignity and woe is
present to the imagination! A mind evolving the most
rational and virtuous conceptions, yet itself the prey of
absurd delusions; a heart overflowing with the truest
sympathy for a sick hare, yet pained at the idea of the
church-honors paid to Handel; a soul gratefully recognizing
the benignity of God, in the fresh verdure of the
myrtle, and the mutual attachment of doves, and yet incredulous
of his care for its own eternal destiny! What
a striking incongruity between the thoughtful man, expatiating
in graceful numbers upon the laws of Nature
and the claims of Religion, and the poor mortal deferring
to an ignorant school-master, and “hunted by spiritual
hounds in the night-season;” the devout poet celebrating
his maker's glory, and the madman trembling at the waxing
moon; the affectionate friend patient and devoted,
and the timid devotee deprecating the displeasure of a
clergyman, who reproved his limited and harmless pleasures!
It has been objected to Hamlet, that the sportiveness of
the prince mars the effect of his thoughtfulness. It is
painful idea which it is necessary to conceal, to seek relief,
and at the same time increase the deception, by a kind
of playfulness. This is exemplified in Cowper's letters.
“Such thoughts,” he says, “as pass through my head
when I am not writing, make the subject of my letters to
you.” One overwhelming thought, however, was gliding
like a dark, deep stream beneath the airy structures he
thus reared to keep his mind from being swept off by its
gloomy current. To this end, he surrendered his pen to
the most obvious pleasantry at hand, and dallied with the
most casual thoughts of the moment, as Hamlet talks
about the “old true-penny in the cellerage,” when the
idea of his father's spirit is weighing with awful mysteriousness
upon his heart, and amuses himself with joking
Old Polonius, when the thought of filial revenge is swaying
the very depths of his soul. Cowper speculates on
baloons, moralizes on politics, chronicles the details of
his home-experience, even to the accidents resulting from
the use of a broken table, with the charming air of playfulness
that marks the correspondence of a lively girl.
How often are these letters the proofs of rare heroism!
How often were those flowers of fancy watered by a
bleeding heart! By what an effort of will was his mind
turned from its forebodings, from the dread of his wretched
anniversary, from the one horrible idea that darkened
his being, to the very trifles of common-life, the every-day
circumstances which he knew so well how to array with
fresh interest and agreeable combination! Cowper's
story indicates what a world of experience is contained in
bosom, and displays all the elements of suffering, adventure
and peace, which we are apt to think so dependant
upon outward circumstances! There is more to be
learned from such a record than most histories afford.
They relate things en masse, and battles, kings and courts
pass before us, like mists along a mountain-range; but
in such a life as that of Cowper, we tremble at the capacity
of woe involved in the possession of sensibility, and
trace with awe and pity the mystery of a “mind diseased.”
The anatomy of the soul is, as it were, partially
disclosed. Its conflicting elements, its intensity of reflection,
its marvellous action fill us with a new and more
tender reverence. Nor are the darker shades of this remarkable
mental portrait unrelieved. To the reader of
his life, Cowper's encounter with young Unwin, under
the trees at Huntingdon, is as bright a gleam of destiny
as that which visited his heart at Southampton. At the
very outset of his acquaintance with this delightful family,
he calls them “comfortable people.” This term may
seem rather humble compared with such epithets as `brilliant,'
`gifted' and `interesting;' but to a refined mind
it is full of significance. Would there were more comfortable
people in the world! Where there is rare talent
in a companion, there is seldom repose. Enthusiasm is
apt to make very uncomfortable demands upon our sympathies,
and strong-sense is not infrequently accompanied
by a dogmatical spirit. Erudite society is generally devoid
of freshness, and poetical spirits have the reputation
of egotism. However improving such companions may
There is a silent influence in the mere presence of every
one, which, whether animal magnetism is true or not,
makes itself felt, unless the nerves are insensible; and
then there is a decided character in the voice and manner,
as well as in the conversation. In comfortable people,
all these are harmonized. The whole impression is
cheering. We are at ease, and yet gratified; we are
soothed and happy. With such companionship was Cowper
blessed in the Unwins. No `stricken deer' that ever
left the herd of men, required such a solace more. We
cannot wonder it proved a balm. The matronly figure
of Mrs. Unwin and her `sweet, serene face,' rise before
the fancy as pictures of actual memory. We see her knitting
beside the fire on a winter day, and Cowper writing
opposite; hear her friendly expostulation when he overtasked
his mind, and see the smile with which she `restored
his fiddle,' when rest made it safe to resume the
pen. We follow them with a gaze of affectionate respect
as they walk at noon along the gravel-walk, and honor the
maternal solicitude that sustains her patient vigils beside
the sick-bed of the bard. In imagination we trace her demeanor,
as with true female tact she contrived to make the
people regard her charge only with reverence. Like a
star of peace and promise, beams the memory of this excellent
woman upon Cowper's sad history; and Lady
Hesketh and `Sister Anne' are the lesser, but still benignant
luminaries of that troubled sky. Such glimpses of
woman vindicate her true rights more than all the rhetoric
of Mary Wolstonecraft. They prove her claim to
genius. They exhibit her in all the dignity of pure affection,
in the discharge of duties and the exercise of sentitiment
more exalted than the statesman or soldier can ever
boast. They throw around Olney more sacred associations
than those which consecrate Vaucluse. Not to a
selfish passion, not to ambitious display, not to petty triumphs
did these women minister, but to a kindred nature
whose self-sustaining energies had been weakened, to a
rare spirit bereft of a hope, to a noble heart over-shadowed
by despair. It was an office worthy of angels; and
even on earth was it thus fulfilled.
It is not surprising that Byron denied to Cowper the
title of poet. To an impassioned imagination, the tone
of his writings cannot but appear subdued even to absolute
tameness. There are, however, in his poems flights
of fancy, fine comparisons and beautiful descriptive sketches,
enough to quicken and impart singular interest to the
`still life' so congenial to his muse. He compared her
array not inaptly to a quaker-costume. Verse was deliberately
adopted by Cowper at a mature age, as a medium
of usefulness. His poetry is not therefore the overflowing
of youthful feeling, and his good judgment probably warned
him to avoid exciting themes, even had his inclination
tended in that direction. He became a lay-preacher in
numbers. His object was to improve men, not like the
bard of Avon by powerfully unfolding their passions, nor
like Pope by pure satire; but rather through the quiet
teachings of a moralist. He discourses upon hunting,
cards, the abuses of the clerical profession and other prevailing
of worldly pleasure and anxious to dispel its illusions from
other minds. His strain is generally characterized by
good-sense, occasionally enlivened by quiet humor, and
frequently exhibits uncommon beauties of style and imagery.
It is almost invariably calm. Moral indignation is
perhaps the only very warm sentiment with which it
glows. It may be questioned whether Cowper's previous
experience was the best adapted to educate a reformer.
He was a member of a society of wits, called the `Nonsense
Club;' and from what we can learn of his associates,
it is highly probable that the moderate pursuit of pleasure
was a spectacle very unfamiliar to his youth. Hence,
perhaps, the severe light in which he viewed society, and
the narrow system upon which he judged mankind.
And observation taught me I would teach.'
It is obvious that the poet's observation was remarkably
nice and true in certain departments of life, but his early
diffidence, few companions and retiring habits must have
rendered his view of social characteristics, partial and imperfect.
His pictures of spiritual pride and clerical foppery
are indeed life-like, but prejudice blinded him to
many of the redeeming traits of human nature, and the
habit of judging all men by the mere light of his own consciousness
prevented him from realizing many of their
real wants, and best instincts. His notions on the subject
of music, the drama, life in cities, and some other
subjects, were one-sided and unphilosophical. He generally
truth. There is, too, a poetic remedy for human error,
that his melancholy temper forbade his applying. It is derived
from the religion of hope, faith in man—the genial
optimism which some later bards have delightfully
advocated. To direct men's thoughts to the redeeming
aspects of life, to celebrate the sunshine and the flower as
types of Eternal goodness and symbols of human joy, to
lead forth the sated reveller and make him feel the glory
of the stars and the freshness of the breeze, to breathe into
the ear of toil the melodies of evening, to charm the votary
of fashion by endearing portraitures of humble virtue—
these have been found moral specifics, superior to formal
expostulation or direct appeal. Cowper doubtless exerted
a happy influence upon his contemporaries, and there is
and order of minds to which his teachings are peculiarly
adapted. He speaks from the contemplative air of rural
retirement. He went thither “to muse on the perishing
pleasures of life,” to prove that
Is Virtue; the only lasting treasure, Truth.
and the strain was worthier than any that had long struck
their ears. Gradually it found a response, confirmed the
right intentions of lowly hearts, and carried conviction to
many a thoughtful youth. There was little, however, in
this improved poetry, of the “richest music of humanity,”
or of the electrifying cheerfulness of true inspiration, and
Olney is known chiefly by a few characteristic gems of
moral meditation and graphic portraiture. Our obligations
then to Cowper as a teacher, are comparatively limited.
He was conscious of a good design, and felt himself
a sincere advocate.
To feel one's self in hours serene and still,
One of the spirits chosen by Heaven to turn
The sunny side of things to human eyes.'
The most truly poetic phases of Cowper's verse, are the
portions devoted to rural and domestic subjects. Here he
was at home and alive to every impression. His disposition
was of that retiring kind that shrinks from the world,
and is free and at ease only in seclusion. To exhibit
himself, he tells us, was `mortal poison,' and his favorite
image to represent his own condition, was drawn from
the touching instinct which leads a wounded deer to quit
the herd and withdraw into lonely shades to die. He desired
no nearer view of the world than he could gain from
the `busy map of life'—a newspaper; or through the `loop-holes
of retreat, to see the stir of the great Babel and not
feel the crowd.' I knew a lady whose feelings in this
respect strongly resembled those of Cowper, who assured
me, she often wished herself provided like a snail, that she
might peep out securely from her shell, and withdraw in a
moment from a stranger's gaze behind an impenetrable
shield. Such beings find their chief happiness in the sacred
privacy of home. They leave every public shrine to
keep a constant vigil at the domestic altar. There burns
from the idols of fashion to worship their household gods.
The fire-side, the accustomed window, the familiar garden
bound their desires. To happy domestic influences
Cowper owed all the peace of mind he enjoyed. He eulogized
the blessing with grateful sincerity.
Friendly to thought, to virtue and to peace,
Domestic life in rural leisure passed!
“Constant occupation without care,” was his ideal of
existence. Even winter was endeared by its home-enjoyments.
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness.
hearts of his countrymen. He sung of the sofa—a memorial
of English comfort; of home the castle of English
happiness and independence;—of the newspaper—the
morning and evening pastime of Englishmen;—of the
`hissing urn' and `the cups that cheer, but not inebriate'—
the peculiar luxury of his native land;—of the `parlor-twilight,'
the `winter evening,' the `noon-day walk'—all
subjects consecrated by national associations. Goldsmith
and Thompson are the poets of rural life, and Cowper
completes the charming triumvirate. The latter's love for
the country was absolute.
That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss,
But there I laid the scene.
His description of the pursuits of horticulture, winter
landscapes and rustic pleasures, eloquently betray this
peculiar fondness for the scenery and habits of rural life.
Many of these pictures are unique, and constitute Cowper's
best title to poetic fame.
Like language uttered in a dream,
Yet me they charm, whate'er their theme,
My Mary.
SHELLEY
And learned in suffering what he taught in song.”
It is now about eighteen years since the waters of the
Mediterranean closed over one of the most delicately organized
and richly endowed beings of our era. A scion
of the English aristocracy, the nobility of his soul threw
far into the shade all conventional distinctions; while his
views of life and standard of action were infinitely broader
and more elevated than the narrow limits of caste.
Highly imaginative, susceptible and brave, even in boy-hood
he reverenced the honest convictions of his own
mind above success or authority. With a deep thirst for
knowledge, he united a profound interest in his race.
Highly philosophical in his taste, truth was the prize for
which he most earnestly contended; heroical in his temper,
freedom he regarded as the dearest boon of existence;
of a tender and ardent heart, love was the grand hope and
consolation of his being, while beauty formed the most
genial element of his existence.
Of such a nature, when viewed in a broad light, were
the elements of Shelley's character. Nor is it difficult
to reconcile them with the details of his opinions and the
tenor of his life. It is easy to imagine a state of society
in which such a being might freely develope, and felicitously
realize principles and endowments so full of promise;
while, on the other hand, it is only necessary to
look around on the world as it is, or back upon its past
records, to lose all surprise that this fine specimen of humanity
was sadly misunderstood and his immediate influence
perverted. The happy agency which as an independent
thinker and humane poet might have been prophecied
of Shelley, presupposed a degree of consideration
and sympathy, not to say delicacy and reverence, on
the part of society, a wisdom in the process of education,
a scope of youthful experience, an entire integrity of treatment,
to be encountered only in the dreams of the
Utopian. To have elicited in forms of unadulterated
good the characteristics of such a nature, “when his being
overflowed,” the world should have been to him,
teachings of the world, and the lessons of life, were calculated
to dam up its free tide in the formal embankments
of custom and power. What wonder, then, that
it overleaped such barriers, and wound waywardly aside
into solitude, to hear no sound “save its own dashings?”
The publication of the posthumous prose[3]
of Shelley,
is chiefly interesting from the fact that it perfectly confirms
our best impressions of the man. We here trace
in his confidential letters, the love and philanthropy to
which his muse was devoted. All his literary opinions
evidence the same sincerity. His refined admiration of
nature, his habits of intense study and moral independence,
have not been exaggerated. The noble actions ascribed
to him by partial friends, are proved to be the natural results
of his native feelings. The peculiar sufferings of
body and mind, of experience and imagination, to which
his temperament and destiny subjected him, have in no
degree been overstated. His generosity and high ideal
of intellectual greatness and human excellence, are more
than indicated in the unstudied outpourings of his familiar
correspondence.
Love, according to Shelley, is the sum and essence of
goodness. While listening to the organ in the Cathedral
of Pisa, he sighed that charity instead of faith was not
regarded as the substance of universal religion. Self he
considered as the poisonous “burr” which especially deformed
modern society; and to overthrow this “dark
idolatry,” he embarked on a lonely but most honorable
crusade. The impetuosity of youth doubtless gave to
the style of his enterprise an aspect startling to some of
his well-meaning fellow-creatures. All social reformers
must expect to be misinterpreted and reviled. In the
case of Shelley, the great cause for regret is that so few
that so many should have credited the countless
slanders heaped on his name; and that a nature so gifted
and sensitive, should have been selected as the object of
such wilful persecution. The young poet saw men reposing
supinely upon dogmas, and hiding cold hearts behind
technical creeds, instead of acting out the sublime
idea of human brotherhood. His moral sense was shocked
at the injustice of society in heaping contumely upon
an erring woman, while it recognizes and honors the author
of her disgrace. He saddened at the spectacle so often
presented, of artificial union in married life, the enforced
constancy of unsympathizing beings, hearts dying
out in the long struggle of an uncongenial bond. Above
all, his benevolent spirit bled for the slavery of the mass—
the superstitious enthralment of the ignorant many. He
looked upon the long procession of his fellow-creatures
plodding gloomily on to their graves, conscious of social
bondage, yet making no effort for freedom, groaning under
self-imposed burdens, yet afraid to cast them off, conceiving
better things, yet executing nothing. Many have
felt and still feel thus. Shelley aspired to embody in action,
and to illustrate in life and literature the reform
which his whole nature demanded. He dared to lead
forth at a public ball the scorned victim of seduction, and
appal the hypocritical crowd by an act of true moral courage.
As a boy, he gave evidence of his attachment to
liberty by overthrowing a system of school tyranny; and
this sentiment, in after life, found scope in his Odes to
the Revolutionists of Spain and Italy. He fearlessly discussed
an institution which he sincerely believed perverted
the very sentiment upon which it is professedly based.
“If I have conformed to the usages of the world, on the
score of matrimony,” says one of his letters, “it is that
disgrace always attaches to the weaker sex.” In relation
to this and other of his theories, the language of a fine
writer in reference to a kindred spirit is justly applicable
to Shelley. “He conceived too nobly for his fellows—
he raised the standard of morality above the reach of humanity;
and, by directing virtue to the most airy and romantic
heights, made her paths dangerous, solitary, and
impracticable.” Shelley entertained a perfect disgust for
the consideration attached to wealth, and observed, with
impatient grief, the shadow property throws over modest
worth and unmonied excellence. Upon this sentiment,
also, he habitually acted. The maintenance of his opinions
cost him, among other sacrifices, a fine estate. So
constant and profuse was his liberality towards impoverished
men of letters, and the indigent in general, that he
was obliged to live with great economy. He subjected
himself to serious inconvenience while in Italy, to assist
a friend in introducing steam-navigation on the Mediterranean.
It was his disposition to glory in and support
true merit wherever he found it. He was one of the first
to recognize the dawning genius of Mrs. Hemans, to
whom he addressed a letter of encouragement when she
was a mere girl. He advocated a dietetic reform, from a
strong conviction that abstinence from spirituous liquors
and animal food, would do much to renovate the human
the most obnoxious of Shelley's avowed opinions, was
his non-concurrence in the prevalent system of Religion.
To the reflective student of his writings, however, the
poet's atheism is very different from what interested critics
have made it. School and its associations were inexpressibly
trying to his free and sensitive nature; and
a series of puzzling questions of a metaphysical character,
which he encountered in the course of his recreative
reading, planted the seeds of skepticism in his mind,
which enforced religious observances and unhappy experience
soon fertilized. Queen Mab, the production
of a collegian in his teens, is rather an attack upon a
creed than Christianity; and was never published with
the author's consent. It should be considered as the
crude outbreak of juvenile talent eager to make trial of
the new weapons furnished by the logic of Eton. Yet it
was impertinently dragged into notice to blight the new
and rich flowers of his maturer genius, and meanly quoted
against Shelley in the chancery suit by which he was
deprived of his children. Instead of smiling at its absurdities,
or rejecting, with similar reasoning its arguments,
the force of authority, the very last to alarm such a spirit,
was alone resorted to. What wonder if the ardent boy's
doubts of the popular system was increased, his views of
social degradation confirmed; that he came to regard custom
as the tyrant of the universe, and proposed to abandon
a world from whose bosom he had been basely spurned?
If an intense attachment to truth, and an habitual spirit
of disinterestedness constitute any part of religion, Shelley
portrayed in the Gospels, he probably, in his latter years,
had a truer reverence than the majority of Christians.
If we are to credit one of his most intimate friends, the
Beatitudes constituted his delight and embodied his principles
of faith. As far as the Deity is worshipped by a
profound sensibility to the wonders and beauty of his
universe, a tender love of his creatures and a cherished
veneration for the highest revelations of humanity, the
calumniated poet was singularly devout. “Fools rush
in where angels fear to tread,” is true of human conduct
not less in its so called religious than its other aspects.
We live in an atmosphere of doubt. To attain to clear
and unvarying convictions, in regard to the mysteries of
our being, is not the lot of all. There are those who
cannot choose but wonder at the unbounded confidence
of theologians. It is comparatively easy to be a churchgoer,
to conform to religious observances, to acquiesce in
prevailing opinions; but to how many all this is but a
part of the mere machinery of life! There are those who
are slow to profess and quick to feel, who can only bow
in meekness, and hope with trembling. Shelley's nature
was peculiarly reverential, but he entertained certain speculative
doubts—and with the ordinary displays of Christianity
he could not sympathize. The popular conception
of the Divinity did not meet his wants; and so the world
attached to him the brand of atheist, and, under this anathema,
hunted him down. “The shapings of our Heavens,”
says Lamb, “are the modificatiens of our constitu
And all that it contains, contains not thee:
Thou whom seen nowhere, I feel everywhere,
Dim object of my soul's idolatry.”[4]
His Hymn to Intellectual Beauty is instinct with the
spirit of pure devotion, directed to the highest conception
of his nature. Unthinking, indeed, is he who can for a
moment believe that such a being could exist without adoration.
Dr. Johnson says that Milton grew old without
any visible worship. The opinions of Shelley are no
more to be regarded as an index to his heart, than the
blind bard's quiet musings as a proof that the fire of devotion
did not burn within. Shelley's expulsion from college,
for questioning the validity of Christianity, or perhaps
more justly, asserting its abuses, was the turning
point in his destiny. This event, following immediately
upon the disappointment of his first attachment, stirred
the very depths of his nature—and in all probability,
transformed the future man, from a good English squire,
to a politician and reformer. Then came his premature
marriage, to which impulsive gratitude was the blind motive,
the bitter consequences of his error, his divorce and
separation from his children, his new and happy connection
founded on true affection and intellectual sympathy,
his adventurous exile and sudden death. How long, we
are tempted to ask in calmly reviewing his life, will it re
that opinions are independent of the will, and therefore
not, in themselves, legitimate subjects of moral approbation
or blame? It has been said that the purposes of
men most truly indicate their characters. Where can we
find an individual in modern history of more exalted aims
than Shelley? While a youth, he was wont to stray from
his fellows, and thoughtfully resolve
When suffering poverty in London, after his banishment,
his benevolence found exercise in the hospitals,
which he daily visited to minister to the victims of pain
and disease. The object of constant malice, he never
degenerated into a satirist.
In hating such a hateless thing as me?
There is no sport in hate, when all the rage
Is on one side.
Of your antipathy
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.”[6]
enjoyment by physicial anguish, love and hope still
triumphed over misanthropy and despair. He was adored
by his friends, and beloved by the poor. Even Byron
curbed his passions at Shelley's wise rebuke, hailed him
tone into the later emanations of his genius.
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;
Liberal he was of soul and frank of heart;
And to his dearest friends, who loved him well,
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart.”[7]
for his opinions—deemed by a court of his country unworthy
to educate his own children—disowned by his
kindred, and forced from his native land! What a reflection
to a candid mind, that slander long prevented acquaintance
and communion between Shelley and Lamb!
How disgusting the thought of those vapid faces of the
travelling English, who have done more to disenchant
Italy than all her beggars, turned in scorn from the poet,
as they encountered him on the Pincian or Lung'Arno!
With what indignation do we think of that beautiful head
being defaced by a blow! Yet we are told, when Shelley
was inquiring for letters at a continental post-office, some
ruffian, under color of the common prejudice, upon hearing
his name, struck him to the earth.
As a poet Shelley was strikingly original. He maintained
the identity of poetry and philosophy; and the
bent of his genius seems to have been to present philosophical
speculations, and “beautiful idealisms of moral
excellence,” in poetical forms. He was too fond of looking
poet, and too metaphysical in his taste to be a purely
sentimental one. He has neither the intense egotism of
Byron, nor the simple fervor of Burns. In general, the
scope of his poems is abstract, abounding in wonderful
displays of fancy and allegorical invention. Of these
qualities, the Revolt of Islam is a striking example. This
lack of personality and directness, prevents the poetry of
Shelley from impressing the memory like that of Mrs.
Hemans or Moore. His images pass before the mind like
frost-work at moonlight, strangely beautiful, glittering and
rare, but of transient duration, and dream-like interest.
Hence, the great body of his poetry can never be popular.
Of this he seemed perfectly aware. “Prometheus
Unbound,” according to his own statement, was composed
with a view to a very limited audience; and the “Cenci,”
which was written according to more popular canons of
taste, cost him great labor. The other dramas of Shelley
are cast in classical moulds, not only as to form but in
tone and spirit; and scattered through them are some of
the most splendid gems of expression and metaphor to be
found in the whole range of English poetry. Although
these classical dramas seem to have been most congenial
to the poet's taste, there is abundant evidence of his superior
capacity in more popular schools of his art. For
touching beauty, his “Lines written in Dejection near
Naples,” is not surpassed by any similar lyric; and his
“Sky-Lark” is perfectly buoyant with the very music it
commemorates. “Julian and Maddalo” was written according
to Leigh Hunt's theory of poetical diction, and is
the greatest evidence we have of the poet's power over his
own genius. Horrible and difficult of refined treatment
as is the subject, with what power and tact is it developed!
When I beheld the pensive loveliness of Beatrice's portrait
at the Barbarini palace, it seemed as if the painter
had exhausted the ideal of her story. Shelley's tragedy
should be read with that exquisite painting before the
imagination. The poet has surrounded it with an interest
surpassing the limner's art. For impressive effect
upon the reader's mind, exciting the emotions of “terror
and pity” which tragedy aims to produce, how few
modern dramas can compare with “The Cenci!” Perhaps
“Adonais” is the most characteristic of Shelley's
poems. It was written under the excitement of sympathy;
and while the style and images are peculiar to the poet, an
uncommon degree of natural sentiment vivifies this elegy.
In dwelling upon its pathetic numbers, we seem to trace
in the fate of Keats, thus poetically described, Shelley's
own destiny depicted by the instinct of his genius.
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,—
Wander no more.
`O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart,
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den,
Defenceless as thou wert, oh! where was then
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have fill'd its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion-kites that scream below;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal.
He has outsoar'd the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown,
Rose from their thrones built beyond mortal thought
Far in the Unapparent.
`Thou art become as one of us,' they cry.
And he is gather'd to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
Life, like a dome of many-color'd glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
My spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.”
The elements of Shelley's genius were rarely mingled.
The grand in nature delighted his muse. Volcanoes and
glaciers, Alpine summits and rocky caverns filled his fancy.
It was his joy to pass the spring-days amid the ruined
baths of Caracalla, and to seek the corridors of the Coliseum
at moonlight. He loved to watch the growth of
thunder-showers, and to chronicle his dreams. German
literature, to which he was early attracted, probably
originated much of his taste for the wild and wonderful.
Plato and the Greek poets, sculpture and solitude,
fed his spirit. Such ideas as that of will unconquered by
tyranny, the brave endurance of suffering, legends like
the “Wandering Jew”—the poetry of evil as depicted in
the Book of Job—“Paradise Lost,” the story of “Prometheus,”
and the traditions of “The Cenci,” interested
him profoundly. He revelled in “the tempestuous loveliness
of terror.” The sea was Shelley's idol. Some of
his happiest hours were passed in a boat. The easy motion,
Passive without listliness,”
expause of wave and sky, the countless phenomena of
cloud and billow, and the awful grandeur of storms entranced
his soul. Hence his favorite illustrations are drawn
from the sea, and many of them are as perfect pearls of
poesy as ever the adventurous diver rescued from the deep
of imagination. Nor were they obtained without severe
struggle and earnest application. Shelley's life was in
beloved element wrapped him in the embrace of death, the
snows of premature age already flecked his auburn locks;
and, in sensation and experience, he was wont to say, he
had far outsped the calendar. Shelley was a true disciple
of love. He maintained with rare eloquence the
spontaneity and sanctity of the passion, and sought to
realize the ideal of his affections with all a poet's earnestness.
Alastor typifies the vain search.
Time—the great healer of wounded hearts—the mighty
vindicator of injured worth—is rapidly dispersing the
mists which have hitherto shrouded the fame of Shelley.
Sympathy for his sufferings, and a clearer insight into his
motives, are fast redeeming his name and influence.
Whatever views his countrymen may entertain, there
is a kind of living posterity in this young republic,
who judge of genius by a calm study of its fruits,
wholly uninfluenced by the distant murmur of local prejudice
and party rage. To such, the thought of Shelley is
hallowed by the aspirations and spirit of love with which
his verse overflows; and in their pilgrimage to the old
world, they turn aside from the more august ruins of Rome,
to muse reverently upon the poet, where
Pavilioning the dust of him who plann'd
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transform'd to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we love with scarce extinguish'd breath.”[8]
Note.—This article having been censured and misunderstood, the
following letter was afterwards published in the magazine in which it
appeared.
“Your letter informing me of the manner in which
some of your readers have seen fit to regard my remarks
on Shelley, is at hand. I am at a loss to conceive how
any candid or discriminating mind can view the article
in question as a defence of Shelley's opinions. It was
intended rather to place the man himself in a more just
point of view, than that which common prejudice assigns
him. I only contend that mere opinions—especially those
of early youth, do not constitute the only or the best
criterion of character. I have spoken in defence rather
of Shelley's tendencies and real purposes, than of his
theories, and endeavored to vindicate what was truly lovely
and noble in his nature. To these gifts and graces the
many have long been blinded. We have heard much of
Shelley's atheistical philosophy and little of his benevolent
heart, much of his boyish infidelity and little of his kind
acts and elevated sentiments. That I have attempted to
call attention to these characteristics of the poet, I cannot
regret; and to me such a course seems perfectly
consistent with a rejection of his peculiar views of society
and religion. These we know were in a great degree
visionary and contrary to well established principles of
human nature. Still they were ever undergoing modifications,
and his heart often anticipated the noblest teachings
of faith. A careful study of the life and writings
of Shelley, will narrow the apparent chasm between
him and the acknowledged ornaments of our race. It
will lead us to trace much that is obnoxious in his views
the inmost sanctuary of his soul much to venerate
and love, much that will sanctify the genius which
the careless and bigoted regard as having been wholly
desecrated.
One of your correspondents says “I do not pretend to
be minutely acquainted with the details of his life, having
never read his letters recently published.” And yet,
confessedly ignorant of the subject, as he is, he yet goes on
to repeat and exaggerate the various slanders which have
been heaped upon the name of one who I still believe
should rank among the most noble characters of modern
times. It is not a little surprising that while, in all questions
of science, men deem the most careful inquiry requisite
to form just conclusions, in those infinitely more
subtle and holy inquiries which relate to human character,
they do not scruple to yield to the most reckless prejudice.
Far otherwise do I look upon such subjects. When an
individual has given the most undoubted proof of high
and generous character, I reverence human nature too
much to credit every scandalous rumor, or acquiesce in
the suggestions of malevolent criticism, regarding him.
Had your correspondent examined conscientiously the
history of Shelley, he would have discovered that he never
abandoned his wife, and thus drove her to self-destruction.
They were wholly unfit companions. Shelley married her
from gratitude, for the kind care she took of him in illness.
It was the impulsive act of a generous but thoughtless
youth. They separated by mutual consent, and
sometime elapsed before she committed suicide. That
that he felt himself in any manner to blame, but that he
had not sufficiently considered his wife's incapacity for
self-government, and provided by suitable care for so
dreadful an exigency. After this event, Shelley married
Miss Godwin, with whom he enjoyed uninterrupted
domestic felicity during the short remainder of his life.
His conduct accorded perfectly with the views, and, in a
great measure, with the practice of Milton. With that
prying injustice, which characterizes the English press,
in relation to persons holding obnoxious opinions, the
facts were misrepresented, and Shelley described as one of
the most cruel monsters. So much for his views of Religion
and Marriage. “A Friend to Virtue” is shocked
at my remark, that “opinions are not in themselves legitimate
subjects of moral approbation or censure.” He
should have quoted the whole sentence. The reason
adduced is, that they are “independent of the will.”
This I maintain to be correct. I know not what are the
grounds upon which “A Friend of Virtue” estimates his
kind. For myself, it is my honest endeavor to look
through the web of opinion, and the environment of
circumstances, to the heart. Intellectual constitutions
differ essentially. They are diversified by more or less
imagination and reasoning power, and are greatly influenced
by early impressions. Accordingly, it is very
rarely that we find two individuals who think precisely
alike on any subject. Even in the same person opinions
constantly change. Their formation originally depends
upon the peculiar traits of mind with which the individual
afterward modifies them, so that, except as far as faithful
inquiry goes, he is not responsible in the premises. We
must then look to the heart, the native disposition, the
feelings, if we would really know a man. Thus regarded,
Shelley has few equals. Speculatively he may have
been an Atheist; in his inmost soul he was a Christian.
This may appear paradoxical, but I believe it is more frequently
the case than we are aware. An inquiring, argumentative
mind, may often fail in attaining settled convictions;
while at the same time the moral nature is so
true and active, that the heart, as Wordsworth says, may
“do God's work and know it not.” Thus I believe it
was with Shelley. Veneration was his predominant sentiment.
His biographer and intimate friend, Leigh
Hunt, says of him, “He was pious towards nature—towards
his friends—towards the whole human race—towards
the meanest insect of the forest. He did himself
an injustice with the public, in using the popular name
of the Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it
solely with the most tyrannical notions of God, made after
the worst human fashion; and did not sufficiently reflect
that it was often used by a juster devotion to express
a sense of the Great Mover of the Universe. An impatience
in contradicting worldly and pernicious notions of
a supernatural power, led his own aspirations to be unconstrued.
As has been justly remarked by a writer
eminent for his piety—`the greatest want of religious feeling
is not to be found among the greatest infidels, but
among those who only think of religion as a matter of
he thought himself bound to investigate it; the greater the
demand upon his assent, the less upon their own principles
of reasoning he thought himself bound to grant it.”
Logical training was the last to which such a nature as
Shelley's should have been subjected. Under this discipline
at Oxford, he viewed all subjects through the medium
of mere reason. Exceedingly fond of argument,
in a spirit of adventurous boldness he turned the weappons
furnished him by his teachers, against the venerable
form of Christianity, and wrote Queen Mab. Be it remembered,
however, he never published it. The MSS
was thus disposed of without his knowledge, and against
his will. Yet at this very time his fellow-student tells us
that Shelley studied fifteen hours a-day—lived chiefly
upon bread, in order to save enough from his limited income
to assist poor scholars—stopped in his long walks
to give an orange to a gipsey-boy, or purchase milk for
a destitute child—talked constantly of plans for the amelioration
of society—was roused to the warmest indignation
by every casual instance of oppression—yielded up
his whole soul to the admiration of moral excellence—
and worshipped truth in every form with a singleness of
heart, and an ardor of feeling, as rare as it was inspiring.
He was, according to the same and kindred testimony,
wholly unaffected in manner, full of genuine modesty,
and possessed by an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Although
a devoted student, his heart was unchilled by
mental application. He at that time delighted in the
Platonic doctrine of the preëxistence of the soul, and loved
Gentle and affectionate to all, benevolent to a
fault, and deeply loved by all who knew him, it was his
misfortune to have an early experience of ill, to be thrown
rudely upon the world—to be misunderstood and slandered,
and especially to indulge the wild speculations of an
ardent mind without the slightest worldly prudence.
Shelley, phrenologically speaking, had no organ of cautiousness.
Hence his virtues and graces availed him not
in the world, much as they endeared him to those who
enjoyed his intimacy. In these remarks I would not be
misunderstood. I do not subscribe to Shelley's opinions.
I regret that he thought as he did upon many subjects for
his own sake as well as for that of society. The great
mass of his poetry is not congenial to my taste. And
yet these considerations do not blind me to the rare quality
of his genius—to the native independence of his mind
—to the noble aspirations after the beautiful and the true,
which glowed in his soul. I honor Shelley as that rare
character—a sincere man. I venerate his generous sentiments.
I recognise in him qualities which I seldom find
among the passive recipients of opinion—the tame followers
of routine. I know how much easier it is to conform
prudently to social institutions; but, as far as my
experience goes, they are full of error, and do great injustice
to humanity. I respect the man who in sincerity
of purpose discusses their claims, even if I cannot coincide
in his views. Nor is this all. I cannot lose sight
of the fact, that Shelley's nature is but partially revealed
to us. We have as it were a few stray gleams of his
of being prematurely quenched in the sea, perchance
its beams would have clearly reflected at last, the holy effulgence
of the Star of Bethlehem. Let us pity, if we will, the
errors of Shelley's judgment; but let not prejudice blind
us to his merits. “His life,” says his wife, “was spent
in arduous study, and in acts of kindness and affection.
To see him was to love him.” Surely there is a redeeming
worth in the memory of one whose bosom was ever
ready to support the weary brow of a brother—whose
purposes were high and true—whose heart was enamored
of beauty, and devoted to his race:
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.
Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. By
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley: London. 1810.
BURNS.
There are certain sentiments which “give the world
assurance of a man.” They are inborn, not acquired.
Before them fade away the trophies of scholarship and the
badges of authority. They are the most endearing of human
attractions. No process of culture, no mere grace of
manner, no intellectual endowment, can atone for their
absence, or successfully imitate their charms. These
sentiments redeem our nature; their indulgence constitutes
the better moments of life. Without them we grow
mechanical in action, formal in manner, pedantic in mind.
With them in freshness and vigor, we are true, spontaneous,
morally alive. We reciprocate affection, we luxuriate
in the embrace of nature, we breathe an atmosphere of
love, and glow in the light of beauty. Frankness, manly
independence, deep sensibility and pure enthusiasm are
the characteristics of the true man. Against these fashion,
trade and the whole train of petty interests wage an
unceasing war. In few hearts do they survive; but
wherever recognized they carry every unperverted soul
human nature with irresistible eloquence, and like the
air of mountains and the verdure of valleys, allure
us from the thoroughfare of routine and the thorny
path of destiny. When combined with genius, they
utter an appeal to the world, and their possessor becomes
a priest of humanity, whose oracles send forth an
echo even from the chambers of death. Such is Robert
Burns. How refreshing, to turn from the would-be-prophets
of the day, and contemplate the inspired ploughman!
No mystic emblems deform his message. We have no
hieroglyphics to decipher. We need no philosophic critic
at our elbow. It is a brother who speaks to us;—no singular
specimen of spiritual pride, but a creature of flesh
and blood. We can hear the beatings of his brave heart,
not always like a “muffled drum,” but often with the joy
of solemn victory. We feel the grasp of his toil-hardened
hand. We see the pride on his brow, the tear in his
eye, the smile on his lip. We behold not an effigy of
buried learning, a tame image from the mould of fashion,
but a free, cordial, earnest man;—one with whom we can
roam the hills, partake the cup, praise the maiden, or
worship the stars. He is a human creature, only overflowing
with the characteristics of humanity. To him
belong in large measure the passions and the powers of
his race. He professes no exemption from the common
lot. He pretends not to live on rarer elements. He expects
not to be ethereal before death. He conceals not
his share of frailty, nor turns aside from penance. He
takes `with equal thanks' a sermon or a song. No one
loves. The voice that “wales a portion with judicious
care,” anon is attuned to the convivial song. The same
eye that glances with poetic awe upon the hills at twilight,
gazes with a less subdued fervor on the winsome
features of the Highland lassie. And thus vibrated the
poet's heart from earth to heaven,—from the human to the
godlike. Rarely and richly were mingled in him the
elements of human nature. His crowning distinction is
a larger soul; and this he carried into all things,—to the
altar of God and the festive board, to the ploughshare's
furrow and the letter of friendship, to the martial lyric
and the lover's assignation. That such a soul should
arise in the midst of poverty is a blessing. So do men
learn that all their appliances are as nothing before the creative
energy of nature. They may make a Parr; she
alone can give birth to a Burns. It is to be rejoiced at
that so noble a brother was born in a “clay-built cottage.”
Had his eyes first opened in a palace, so great a joy would
not have descended upon the lowly and the toil-worn.
These can now more warmly boast of a common lineage.
Perchance, too, that fine spirit would have been meddled
with till quite undone, had it first appeared in the dwelling
of a wealthy citizen. Books and teachers, perhaps,
would have subdued its elastic freedom,—artificial society
perverted its heaven-born fire. Better that its discipline
was found in “labor and sorrow,” rather than in social
restraint and conformity. Better that it erred through excess
of passion, than deliberate hypocrisy. So rich a
stream is less marred by overflowing its bounds than by
from wayward appetite than through “malignity or design.”
More worthy is it that melancholy should take
the form of a sad sympathy with nature, than a bitter hatred
of man; that the flowers of the heart should be
blighted by the heat of its lava-soil, than wither in the
deadening air of artificial life. Burns lost not the susceptibility
of his conscience, or the sincerity and manliness
of his character. In a higher sphere of life, these
characteristics would have been infinitely more exposed.
The muse of Burns is distinguished by a pensive tenderness.
His mind was originally of a reflective cast. His
education, destiny and the scenery amid which he lived
deepened this trait, and made it prevailing. True sensibility
is the fertile source of sadness. A heart constantly
alive to the vicissitudes of life and the pathetic appeals of
nature, cannot long maintain a lightsome mood. From
his profound feeling sprang the beauties of the Scottish
bard. He who could so pity a wounded hare and elegize
a crushed daisy, whose young bosom favorites were Sterne
and Mackenzie, lost not a single sob of the storm, nor
failed to mark the gray cloud and the sighing trees. In
this intense sympathy with the mournful, exists the germ
of true poetical elevation. The very going out into the
vastly sad, is sublime. Personal cares are forgotten;
and as Byron calls upon us to forget our “petty misery”
in view of the mighty ruins of Rome, so the dirges of
Nature invite us into a grand funereal hall, where mortal
sighs are lost in mightier wailing. This element of pensiveness
distinguishes alike the poetry and character of
on an autumn morning, when listening to the
cry of a troop of grey plover or the solitary whistle of the
curlew. The elements raged around him as he composed
Bannockburn, and he loved to write at night, or
during a cloudy day, being most successful in “a gloamin'
shot at the muses.”
There was a through and pervading honesty about
Burns,—that freedom from disguise and simple truth of
character, to the preservation of which rustic life is eminently
favorable. He was open and frank in social intercourse,
and his poems are but the sincere records and
outpourings of his native feelings.
My barmie noddle's working prime
My fancy yerkit up sublime
Wi' hasty summon:
Hae ye a leisure-moment's time
To hear what's comin?
Hence he almost invariably wrote from strong emotion.
“My passions,” he says, “raged like so many devils
until they found vent in rhyme.” This entire truthfulness
is one of the greatest charms of his verse. For the
most part song, satire and lyric come warm from his
heart. Insincerity and pretension completely disgusted
him. Scarcely does he betray the slightest impatience of
his fellows, except in exposing and ridiculing these traits.
Holy Willie's prayer and a few similar effusions were
penned as protests against bigotry and presumption.
Nor am I even the thing I could be,
But twenty times, I rather would be,
An' atheist clean
Than under Gospel colors hid be,
Just for a screen.
give expression to benevolent feeling and generous affection.
The native liberality of his nature cast a mantle of
charity over the errors of his kind, in language which, for
touching simplicity, has never been equalled.
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang;
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.
Wha made the heart, 'tis 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.
Burns had a truly noble soul. He cherished an honest
ride. Obligation oppressed him, and with all his rusticity
he firmly maintained his dignity in the polished circles
keenly felt the sting of poverty, his whole nature recoiled
from dependence. He desired money, not for the distinction
and pleasure it brings, but chiefly that he might
be free from the world. He recorded the creed of the
true man;—
Assiduous wait upon her;
And gather gear by ev'ry wile
That's justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Not for a train-attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
He hung with rapture over the hare-bell, fox-glove, budding
birch and hoary hawthorn. Though chiefly alive to
its sterner aspects, every phase of the universe was inexpressibly
dear to him.
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!
Whether the simmer kindly warms,
Wi' life an' light,
Or winter howls, in gusty storms,
The lang, dark night!
yield up his spirit in blest oblivion of his lot. He walked
beside the river, climhed the hill and wandered over the
moor, with a more exultant step and more bounding heart
than ever conqueror knew. In his hours of sweet reverie,
all consciousness was lost of outward poverty, in the richness
his heritage. He felt drawn to her by the glowing bond
of a kindred spirit. Every wild-flower from which he
brushed the dew, every mountain-top to which his eyes
were lifted, every star that smiled upon his path, was a
token and a pledge of immortality. He partook of their
freedom and their beauty; and held fond communion
with their silent loveliness. The banks of the Doon became
like the bowers of Paradise, and Mossgiel was as a
glorious kingdom.
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
At pleugh or cart,
My muse, tho' hamely in attire,
May touch the heart.
belonged strikingly to Burns. He threw himself, all sensitive
and ardent as he was, into the arms of Nature.
He surrendered his heart unreservedly to the glow of social
pleasure, and sought with equal heartiness the peace
of domestic retirement.
Just now we're living sound and hale,
Then top and maintop crowd the sail,
Heave care o'er side!
And large, before enjoyment's gale,
Let's tak the tide.
This life has joys for you and I,
And joys that riches ne'er could buy,
There's a' the pleasures o' the heart,
The lover and the frien;
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part,
And I my darling Jean!
purpose, and completeness of devotion. This is illustrated
in many of his poems. In his love and grief, in his
joy and despair, we find no medium;—
And yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.
Burns, is love. With the first awakening of this passion
in his youthful breast, came also the spirit of poetry.
“My heart,” says one of his letters, “was complete tinder,
and eternally lighted up by some goddess or other.”
He was one of those susceptible men to whom love is no
fiction or fancy; to whom it is not only a “strong necessity,”
but an overpowering influence. To female attractions
he was a complete slave. An eye, a tone, a
grasp of the hand, exercised over him the sway of destiny.
His earliest and most blissful adventures were following
in the harvest with a bonnie lassie, or picking
nettles out of a fair one's hand. He had no armor of
philosophy wherewith to resist the spell of beauty. Genius
betrayed rather than absolved him; and his soul found
its chief delight and richest inspiration in the luxury of
loving.
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've paced much this weary mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare—
“If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In others' arms breathe out the tendar tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn, that scents the evening gale.”
He loved like a man. His was no mere sentimental
passion, but a hearty attachment. He sighed
not over the pride of a Laura, nor was satisfied with a
smile of distant encouragement. Genuine passion was
only vivified and enlarged in his heart by a poetical mind.
He arrayed his rustic charmer with few ideal attractions.
His vows were paid to
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
He sought not to exalt them, but only to exhibit the fervor
of his attachment. Even in his love was there this
singular honesty. Exaggerated flattery does not mark
his amatory poems, but a warm expression of his passionate
regard, a sweet song over the joys of affection. Perhaps
no poet has better depicted true love, in its most
common manifestation. Of the various objects of his regard,
the only one who seems to have inspired any purely
poetical sentiment was Highland Mary. Their solemn
familiar to every reader of Burns. Her memory seemed
consecrated to his imagination, and he has made it immortal
by his beautiful lines to Mary in Heaven. Nor
was the Scottish bard unaware how deep an inspiration
he derived from the gentler sex. He tells us that when he
desired to feel the pure spirit of poetry and obey successfully
its impulse, he put himself on a regimen of admiring
a fine woman.
Wi' merry dance in winter days,
An' we to share in common;
The gust o' joy, the balm of woe,
The soul o' life, the heaven below,
Is rapture-giving woman.
this. Written eloquence, the voice of the bard, the music
of creation, will often fail to awaken the heart. We cannot
always yield ourselves to the hidden spell. But in the
soft light of her eye genius basks, till it is warmed into a
new and sweeter life. The poet is indeed kindled by
communion with the most lovely creation of God, He
is subdued by the sweetest of human influences. His
wings are plumed beside the fountain of love, and he soars
thence to heaven.
The poetical temperament is now better and more generally
understood than formerly. Physiologists and moral
philosophers have labored, not without success, to diffuse
correct ideas of its laws and liabilities. Education now
averts, in frequent instances, the fatal errors to which beings
more truly described some features of the poet's fate
than the author of Tam O'Shanter and the Cotter's Saturday
Night:—
When blest to-day, unmindful of to-morrow;
A being formed t' amuse his graver friends,
Admired and praised—and there the homage ends;
A mortal quite unfit for fortune's strife,
Yet oft the sport of all the ills of life;
Prone to enjoy each pleasure riches give,
Yet haply wanting wherewithal to live;
Longing to wipe each tear, to heal each groan,
Yet frequent all unheeded in his own.
the extremes of mood, which belong to this class of
men, require a certain discipline on the one hand and indulgence
on the other, which is now more readily accorded.
Especially do we look with a more just eye upon the
frailties of poets. It is not necessary to defend them.
They are only the more lamentable from being connected
with high powers. But it is a satisfaction to trace their
origin to unfavorable circumstances of life and peculiarities
of organization. Burns labored under the disadvantage
of a narrow and oppressive destiny, opposed to a sensitive
and exalted soul. From the depths of obscure poverty
he awoke to fame. Strong and adroit as he was at
the several vocations of husbandry, he possessed no tact
as a manager or financier. With the keenest relish for
enjoyment, his means were small, and the claims of his
family unceasing. Susceptible to the most refined influences
a rich fancy, his animal nature was not less strongly developed.
His flaming heart lighted not only the muse's
torch, but the tempest of passion. He often sought to
drown care in excess. He did not faithfully struggle
with the allurements which in reality he despised. How
deeply he felt the transitory nature of human enjoyment,
he has told us in a series of beautiful similes:—
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
by his gifts, depressed by his condition, the heir of
fame, but the child of sorrow—gloomy in view of his actual
prospects, elated by his poetic visions,—the life of
Burns was no ordinary scene of trial and temptation.
While we pity, let us reverence him. Let us glory in
such fervent song as he dedicated to love, friendship, patriotism
and nature. True bursts of feeling came from
the honest bosom of the ploughman. Sad as was his career
at Dumfries, anomalous as it seems to picture him
as an exciseman, how delightful his image as a noble
peasant and ardent bard! What a contradiction between
his human existence and his inspired soul! Literature
enshrines few more endeared memorials than the poems
tones are simple and glowing. Their music is like the
cordial breeze of his native hills. It still cheers the banquet,
and gives expression to the lover's thought. Its
pensive melody has a twilight sweetness; its tender ardor
is melting as the sunbeams. Around the cottage and
the moor, the scene of humble affection, the rite of lowly
piety, it has thrown a hallowed influence, which embalms
the memory of Burns, and breathes perpetual masses for
his soul.
WORDSWORTH.
In an intellectual history of our age, the bard of Rydal
Mount must occupy a prominent place. His name is so
intimately associated with the poetical criticisms of the
period, that, even if his productions are hereafter
neglected, he cannot wholly escape consideration. The
mere facts of his life will preserve his memory. It will
not be forgotten that one among the men of acknowledged
genius in England, during a period of great political excitement,
and when society accorded to literary success
the highest honors, should voluntarily remain secluded
amid the mountains, the uncompromising advocate of
a theory, from time to time sending forth his effusions,
as uncolored by the poetic taste of the time, as statues
from an isolated quarry. It has been the fortune of
Wordsworth, like many original characters, to be almost
wholly regarded from the two extremes of prejudice and
admiration. The eclectic spirit, which is so appropriate
to the criticism of Art, has seldom swayed his commentators.
It has scarcely been admitted, that his works may
please to a certain extent, and in particular traits, and in
his beauties is held responsible for his system;
and those who have stated his defects; have been unfairly
ranked with the insensible and unreasonable reviewers
who so fiercely assailed him at the outset of his career.
There is a medium ground, from which we can survey
the subject to more advantage. From this point of observation,
it is easy to perceive that there is reason on
both sides of the question. It was natural and just that
the lovers of poetry, reared in the school of Shakspeare,
should be repelled at the outset by a new minstrel, whose
prelude was an argument. It was like being detained at
the door of a cathedral by a dull cicerone, who, before
granting admittance, must needs deliver a long homily
on the grandeur of the interior, and explain away its deficiencies.
“Let us enter,” we impatiently exclaim: “if
the building is truly grand, its sublimity needs no expositor;
if it is otherwise, no reasoning will render it impressive.”
The idea of adopting for poetical objects “the
real language of men, when in a state of vivid sensation,”
was indeed, as Coleridge observes, never strictly attempted;
but there was something so deliberate, and even cold,
in Wordsworth's first appeal, that we cannot wonder it
was unattractive. Byron and Burns needed no introduction.
The earnestness of their manner secured instant
attention. Their principles and purposes were matters
of after-thought. Whoever is even superficially acquainted
with human nature, must have prophecied a doubtful
reception to a bard, who begins by calmly stating his
reasons for considering prose and verse identical, his
and the several considerations which induced him to
adopt rhyme for the purpose. Nor is this feeling wholly
unworthy of respect, even admitting, with Wordsworth,
that mere popularity is no evidence of the genuineness of
poetry. Minds of poetical sensibility are accustomed to
regard the true poet as so far inspired by his experience,
as to write from a spontaneous enthusiasm. They regard
verse as his natural element—the most congenial form of
expression. They imagine he can scarcely account
wholly to himself, far less to others, for his diction and
imagery,—any farther than they are the result of emotion
too intense and absording to admit of any conscious or
reflective process. Even if “poetry takes its origin
from emotion recollected in tranquillity,” it must be of
that earnest and tender kind, which is only occasionally
experienced. Trust, therefore, was not readily accorded
a writer who scarcely seemed enamored of his Art, and
presented a theory in prose to win the judgment, instead
of first taking captive the heart by the music of his lyre.
Nor is this the only just cause of Wordsworth's early
want of appreciation. He has not only written too much,
from pure reflection, but the quantity of his verse is
wholly out of proportion to its quality. He has too often
written for the mere sake of writing. The mine he opened
may be inexhaustible, but to him it is not given to
bring to light all its treasures. His characteristics are
not universal. His power is not unlimited. On the
contrary, his points of peculiar excellence, though rare,
are comparatively few. He has endeavored to extend his
written too much, and too indiscriminately. It is to be
feared that habit has made the work of versifying necessary,
and he has too often resorted to it merely as an occupation.
Poetry is too sacred to be thus mechanically
pursued. The true bard seizes only genial periods, and
inciting themes. He consecrates only his better moments
to “the divinest of arts.” He feels that there is a
correspondence between certain subjects and his individual
genius, and to these he conscientiously devotes his
powers. Wordsworth seems to have acted on a different
principle. It is obvious to a discerning reader that his
muse is frequently whipped into service. He is too often
content to indite a series of common-place thoughts, and
memorialize topics which have apparently awakened in
his mind only a formal interest. It sometimes seems as
if he had taken up the business of a bard, and felt bound
to fulfil its functions. His political opinions, his historical
reading, almost every event of personal experience,
must be chronicled, in the form of a sonnet or blank
verse. The language may be chaste, the sentiment unexceptionable,
the moral excellent, and yet there may be
no poetry, and perhaps the idea has been often better
expressed in prose. Even the admirers of Wordsworth
are compelled, therefore, to acknowledge, that with all his
unrivalled excellencies, he has written too many
Correctly cold, and regularly slow.”
less-gifted minstrel; but with one of Wordsworth's genius
it is more difficult to compromise. The number of his
indifferent attempts shade the splendor of his real merit.
The poems protected by his fame, which are uninspired
by his genius, have done much to blind a large class of
readers to his intrinsic worth. Another circumstance has
contributed to the same result. His redeeming graces often,
from excess, become blemishes. In avoiding the
tinsel of a meretricious style, he sometimes degenerates
into positive homeliness. In rejecting profuse ornament,
he often presents his conceptions in so bald a manner as
to prove utterly unattractive. His simplicity is not unfrequently
childish, his calmness stagnation, his pathos
puerility. And these impressions, in some instances,
have been allowed to outweigh those which his more
genuine qualities inspire. For when we reverse the picture,
Wordsworth presents claims to grateful admiration,
second to no poet of the age; and no susceptible and observing
mind can study his writings without yielding him
at least this cordial acknowledgment. It is not easy to
estimate the happy influence Wordsworth has exerted upon
poetical taste and practice, by the example he has given
of a more simple and artless style. Like the sculptors
who lead their pupils to the anatomy of the human frame,
and the painters who introduced the practice of drawing
from the human figure, Wordsworth opposed to the artifificial
and declamatory, the clear and natural in diction.
He exhibited, as it were, a new source of the elements of
expression. He endeavored, and with singular success,
the experiment of introducing plain viands, at a banquet
garnished with all the art of gastronomy. He offered to
substitute crystal water for ruddy wine, and invited those
accustomed only to “a sound of revelry by night,” to go
forth and breathe the air of mountains, and gaze into the
mirror of peaceful lakes. He aimed to persuade men
that they could be “moved by gentler excitements” than
those of luxury and violence. He essayed to calm their
beating hearts, to cool their fevered blood, to lead them
gently back to the fountains that “go softly.” He bade
them repose their throbbing brows upon the lap of Nature.
He quietly advocated the peace of rural solitude, the pleasure
of evening walks among the hills, as more salutary
than more ostentatious amusements. The lesson was
suited to the period. It came forth from the retirement
of Nature as quietly as a zephyr; but it was not lost in
the hum of the world. Insensibly it mingled with the
noisy strife, and subdued it to a sweeter murmur. It fell
upon the heart of youth, and its passions grew calmer.
It imparted a more harmonious tone to the meditations of
the poet. It tempered the aspect of life to many an eager
spirit, and gradually weaned the thoughtful from the encroachments
of false taste and conventional habits. To
a commereial people it portrayed the attractiveness of
tranquillity. Before an unhealthy and flashy literature,
it set up a standard of truthfulness and simplicity. In an
age of mechanical triumph, it celebrated the majestic resources
of the universe.
To this calm voice from the mountains, none could
sometimes monotonous?—they were hopeful and serene.
To listen exclusively, might indeed prove wearisome; but
in some placid moments those mild echoes could not but
bring good cheer. In the turmoil of cities, they refreshed
from contrast; among the green fields, they inclined the
mind to recognize blessings to which it is often insensible.
There were ministers to the passions, and apostles
of learning, sufficient for the exigencies of the times.
Such an age could well suffer one preacher of the simple,
the natural and the true; one advocate of a wisdom
not born of books, of a pleasure not obtainable from society,
of a satisfaction underived from outward activity.
And such a prophet proved William Wordsworth.
Sensibility to Nature is characteristic of poets in general.
Wordsworth's feelings in this regard have the character
of affection. He does not break out into ardent
apostrophes like that of Byron addressed to the Ocean, or
Coleridge's Hymn at Chamouni; but his verse breathes
a constant and serene devotion to all the charms of natural
scenery—from the mountain-range that bounds the
horizon, to the daisy beside his path:
And one chance look to thee I turn,
I drink, out of an humbler urn,
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sypmathy that heeds
The common life our nature breeds,
A wisdom, fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.”
the country for occasional recreation, as to live and
breathe only in their tranquil atmosphere. His interest
in the universe has been justly called personal. It is not
the passion of a lover in the dawn of his bliss, nor the
unexpected delight of a metropolitan, to whose sense rural
beauty is arrayed in the charms of novelty; but rather the
settled, familiar, and deep attachment of a friend:
These forms of beauty have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration.”
most intimately associated with lakes and mountains.
Amid them he was born, and to them has he ever looked
for the necessary aliment of his being. Nor are his feelings
on the subject merely passive or negative. He has
a reason for the faith that is in him. To the influences
of Nature he brings a philosophic imagination. No transient
pleasure, no casual agency, does he ascribe to the
outward world. In his view, its functions in relation to
man are far more penetrating and efficient than has ever
been acknowledged. Human education he deems a process
for which the Creator has made adequate provision
in this “goodly frame” of earth and sea and sky.
Traditionary, round the mountains hung;
And many a legend peopled the dark woods,
Nourished Imagination in her growth,
And gave the Mind that apprehensive power,
By which it is made quick to recognize
The moral scope and aptitude of things.”
“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”
been the object of his long and earnest study. To illustrate
her unobserved and silent ministry to the heart, has
been his favorite pursuit. From his poems might be
gleaned a compendium of mountain influences. Even
the animal world is viewed in the same light. In the
much-ridiculed Peter Bell, Susan, and the White Doe of
Rylstone, we have striking instances. To present the
affecting points of its relation to mankind has been one of
the most daring experiments of his muse:
Taught both by what she shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
to celebrate. The rare and startling seldom find a place
in his verse. That calm, soothing, habitual language,
addressed to the mind by the common air and sky, the
ordinary verdure, the field-flower, and the sunset, is the
almost invariable theme of his song. And herein have
make us more reverent listeners to the daily voices of earth,
to make us realize the goodness of our common heritage,
and partake, with a more conscious and grateful sensibility,
of the beautiful around us. In the same spirit has
Wordsworth looked upon human life and history. To lay
bare the native elements of character in its simplest form,
to assert the essential dignity of life in its most rude and
common manifestations, to vindicate the interest which
belongs to human beings, simply as such, have been the
darling objects of his thoughts. Instead of Corsairs and
Laras, peerless ladies and perfect knights, a waggoner, a
beggar, a potter, a pedlar, are the character of whose
feelings and experience he sings. The operation of industry,
bereavement, temptation, remorse and local influences,
upon these children of humble toil, have furnished
problems which he has delighted to solve. And who shall
say that in so doing, he has not been of signal service to his
kind? Who shall say that through such portraits a wider
and truer sympathy, a more vivid sense of human brotherhood,
a more just self-respect, has not been extensively
awakened? Have not our eyes been thus opened to the
better aspects of ignorance and poverty? Have we
not thus been made to feel the true claims of man? Allured
by the gentle monitions from Rydal Mount, do we
not now look upon our race in a more meek and susceptible
mood, and pass the lowliest being beside the highway,
with more of that new sentiment of respect and hope
which was heralded by the star of Bethlehem? Can we
not more sincerely exclaim with the hero of Sartor Resartus:
tried, beaten with many stripes, even as I am? Ever,
whether thou wear the royal mantle or the beggar's gaberdine,
art thou not so weary, so heavy laden? O! my
brother, my brother! why cannot I shelter thee in my
bosom, and wipe away all tears from thine eyes?”
In accordance with this humane philosophy, Childhood
is contemplated by Wordsworth. The spirit of the Saviour's
sympathy with this beautiful era of life, seems to
possess his muse. Its unconsciousness, its ignorance of
death, its trust, hope and peace, its teachings, and promise
he has portrayed with rare sympathy. Witness,
“We are Seven,” the “Pet Lamb,” and especially the
Ode, which is perhaps the finest and most characteristic
of Wordsworth's compositions. A reader of his poetry,
who imbibes its spirit, can scarcely look upon the young
with indifference. The parent must thence derive a new
sense of the sacredness of children, and learn to reverence
their innocence, to leave unmarred their tender traits, and
to yield them more confidently to the influences of Nature.
In his true and feeling chronicles of the “heaven” that
“lies about us in our infancy,” Wordsworth has uttered a
silent but most eloquent reproach upon all the absurdities
and sacrilegious abuses of modern education. He has
made known the truth, that children have their lessons to
convey as well as receive:
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundreth part
Of what from thee I learn.”
repose and hopefulness of happy childhood, and the cynical
distrust of worldly age. He thus indirectly but forcibly
appeals to men for a more guarded preservation of the
early dew of existence, so recklessly lavished upon the
desert of ambition:
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.”
than inherited, and vindicated the beneficent designs
of the Creator, by exhibiting humanity when fresh
from his hand. This is a high moral service. Upon
many of those who have become familiar with Wordsworth
in youth, such impressions must have been permanent
and invaluable, greatly influencing their observation of
life and nature, and touching “to finer issues” their unpledged
sympathies. It is with the eye of a meditative
poet that Wordsworth surveys life and nature. And thus
inspired, a new elevation is imparted to “ordinary moral
sensations,” and it is the sentiment rather than the subject
which gives interest to the song. Hence it is absolutely
necessary that the reader should sympathize with the
feelings of the poet, to enjoy or understand him. He appeals
to that contemplative spirit which does not belong
“a sadness that has its seat in the depths of reason;” he
professes to “follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind
when agitated by the great and simple affections of our
nature.” To enter into purposes like these, there must
exist a delicate sympathy with human nature, a reflective
habit, a mingling of reason and fancy, an imagination
active but not impassioned. The frame of mind which
he labors to induce, and in which he must be read, is
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;”
“—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.
While, with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
This calm and holy musing, this deep and intimate
communion with Nature, this spirit of peace, should sometimes
visit us. There are periods when passionate poetry
wearies, and a lively measure is discordant. There are
times when we are calmed and softened, and it is a luxury
to pause and forget the promptings of desire and the cares
of life; when it is a relief to leave the crowd and wander
into solitude, when, faint and disappointed, we seek, like
serenity of her maternal smile, find rest and solace. Such
moments redeem existence from its monotony, and refresh
the human heart with dew from the urns of Peace. Then
it is that the bard of Rydal Mount is like a brother, and
we deeply feel that it is good for us to have known him.
COLERIDGE.
Coleridge appears to have excelled all his contemporaries
in personal impressiveness. Men of the highest
talent and cultivation have recorded, in the most enthusiastic
terms, the intellectual treat his conversation afforded.
The fancy is captivated by the mere description
of his fluent and emphatic, yet gentle and inspired language.
We are haunted with these vivid pictures of the
`old man eloquent,' as by those of the sages of antiquity,
and the renowned improvisatores of modern times.
Hazlitt and Lamb seem never weary of theme. They
make us realize, as far as description can, the affectionate
temper, the simple bearing, and earnest intelligence of
their friend. We feel the might and interest of a living
soul, and sigh that it was not our lot to partake directly of
its overflowing gifts.
Though so invaluable as a friend and companion, unfortunately
for posterity, Coleridge loved to talk and read
far more than to write. Hence the records of his mind
bear no proportion to its endowments and activity. Ill-health
early drew him from “life in motion, to life in
labor. He was too unambitious, and found too much
enjoyment in the spontaneous exercise of his mind,
to assume willingly the toils of authorship. His mental
tastes were not of a popular cast. In boy-hood he “waxed
not pale at philosophic draughts,” and there was in his
soul an aspiration after truth—an interest in the deep
things of life—a `hungering for eternity', essentially
opposed to success as a miscellaneous writer. One of
the most irrational complaints against Coleridge, was his
dislike of the French. Never was there a more honest
prejudice. In literature, he deemed that nation responsible
for having introduced the artificial school of poetry,
which he detested; in politics, their inhuman atrocities,
during the revolution, blighted his dearest theory of man;
in life, their frivolity could not but awaken disgust in a
mind so serious, and a heart so tender, where faith and
love were cherished in the very depths of reflection and
sensibility. It is, indeed, easy to discover in his works
ample confirmation of the evidence of his friends, but
they afford but an unfinished monument to his genius.
We must be content with the few memorials he has left
of a powerful imagination and a good heart. Of these
his poems furnish the most beautiful. They are the
sweetest echo of his marvellous spirit;—
To their own music chaunted.
The eyes of the ancient Mariner holds us, in its wild
spell, as it did the wedding-guest, while we feel the truth that
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The charm of regretful tenderness is upon us with as
sweet a mystery, as the beauty of the “lady of a far
countrie,” when we read these among other musical lines
of Christabel:
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
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.
“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at
the same time a profound philosopher.” True as this
may be in one sense, we hold it an unfortunate rule for a
poetical mind to act upon. It was part of the creed of
Coleridge, and his works illustrate its unfavorable influence.
His prose generally speaking, is truly satisfactory
only when it is poetical. The human mind is so constituted
as to desire completeness. The desultory character
of Coleridge's prose writings is often wearisome and disturbing.
He does not carry us on to a given point by a regular
road, but is ever wandering from the end proposed.
We are provoked at this waywardness the more, because,
ever and anon, we catch glimpses of beautiful localities,
and look down most inviting vistas. At these promising
fields of thought, and vestibules of truth, we are only permitted
to glance, and then are unceremoniously
guide's vagrant humor. This desultory style essentially
mars the interest of nearly all the prose of this distinguished
man. Not only the compositions, but the opinions,
habits, and experience of Coleridge, partake of the same
erratic character. His classical studies at Christ's hospital
were interwoven with the reading of a circulating library.
He proposed to become a shoemaker while he
was studying medicine. He excited the wonder of every
casual acquaintance by his schoolboy discourse, while he
provoked his masters by starting an argument instead of
repeating a rule. He incurred a chronic rheumatism by
swimming with his clothes on, and left the sick ward to
enlist in a regiment of dragoons. He laid magnificent
plans of primitive felicity to be realized on the banks of
the Susquehanna, while he wandered penniless in the
streets of London. He was at different times a zealous
Unitarian, and a high Churchman—a political lecturer—
a metaphysical essayist—a preacher—a translator—a
traveller—a foreign secretary—a philosopher—an editor—
a poet. We cannot wonder that his productions, particularly
those that profess to be elaborate, should in a measure,
partake of the variableness of his mood. His works,
like his life, are fragmentary. He is, too, frequently
prolix, labors upon topics of secondary interest and excites
only to disappoint expectation. By many sensible readers
his metaphysical views are pronounced unintelligible,
and by some German scholars declared arrant plagiarisms.
These considerations are the more painful from our sense of
the superiority of the man. He proposes to awaken thought,
the claims of important truth. Such designs claim
respect. We honor the author who conscientiously entertains
them. We seat ourselves reverently at the feet of
a teacher whose aim is so exalted. We listen with curiosity
and hope. Musical are many of the periods, beautiful
the images, and here and there comes a single idea
of striking value; but for these we are obliged to hear
many discursive exord ums, irrelevant episodes and random
speculations. We are constantly reminded of Charles
Lamb's reply to the poet's inquiry if he had ever heard
him preach—`I never knew you do any thing else,' said Elia.
It is highly desirable that the prose writings of Coleridge
should be thoroughly winnowed. A volume of delightful
aphorisms might thus be easily gleaned. Long after we
have forgotten the general train of his observations, isolated
remarks, full of meaning and truth, linger in our
memories. Scattered through his works are many sayings,
referring to literature and human nature, which
would serve as maxims in philosophy and criticism.
Their effect is often lost from the position they occupy, in
the midst of abstruse or dry discussions that repel the
majority even of truth-seekers. His Biographia is the
most attractive of his prose productions.
It is not difficult, in a measure at least to explain, or
rather account for, these peculiarities. Coleridge himself
tells us that in early youth, he indulged a taste for metaphysical
speculations to excess. He was fond of quaint
and neglected authors. He early imbibed a love of contro
ersy, and took refuge in first principles, in the elements
few of his school-fellows could follow him; and we cannot
wonder that he became attached to a field of thought seldom
explored, and, from its very vague and mystical character,
congenial to him. That he often reflected to good purpose
it would be unjust to deny; but that his own consciousness,
at times, became morbid, and his speculations, in
consequence, disjointed and misty, seems equally obvious.
We are not disposed to take it for granted that this irregular
development of mental power is the least useful.
Perhaps one of Coleridge's evening conversations or
single aphorisms has more deeply excited some minds to
action, than the regular performances of a dozen inferior
men. It is this feeling which probably led him to express,
with such earnestness, the wish that the “criterion
of a scholar's utility were the number and value of the
truths he has circulated and minds he has awakened.”
A distinguishing trait of Coleridge's genius was a rare
power of comparison. His metaphors are often unique
and beautiful. Here also the poet excels the philosopher.
It may be questioned if any modern writer whose works
are equally limited, has illustrated his ideas with more
originality and interest. When encountered amid his
grave disquisitions, the similitudes of Coleridge strikingly
proclaim the poetical cast of his mind, and lead us to
regret that its energies were not more devoted to the
imaginative department of literature. At times he was
conscious of the same feeling. “Well were it for me
perhaps,” he remarks in the Biographia, “had I never
relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued
surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver
mines of metaphysic depths.” That he formed as
just an estimate of the superficial nature of political labor,
is evident from the following allusion to partizan characters:
A radical causation to a few
Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
Who borrow all their hues and qualities
From our own folly and rank wickedness,
Which gave them birth and nursed them.
A few examples taken at random, will suffice to show
his “dim similitudes woven in moral strains.”
“To set our nature at strife with itself for a good purpose,
implies the same sort of prudence as a priest of
Diana would have manifested, who should have proposed
to dig up the celebrated charcoal foundations of the mighty
temple of Ephesus, in order to furnish fuel for the burnt-offerings
on its altars.”
“The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the
summit of the absolute principle of any one important
subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He
cannot carry us on his shoulders: we must strain our
sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on
the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from
our own feet.”
“In the case of libel, the degree makes the kind, the
circumstances constitute the criminality; and both degree
and circumstances, like the ascending shades of color, or
other, incapable of definition or outline.”
“Would to Heaven that the verdict to be passed on my
labors depended on those who least needed them! The
water-lily in the midst of waters lifts up its broad leaves
and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower,
and rejoices in the rain with a quicker sympathy than the
parched shrub in the sandy desert.”
“Human experience, like the stern lights of a ship at
sea, illumines only the path which we have passed
over.”
“I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this
wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich
oblivion. The greater part, indeed, have been trod under
foot, and are forgotten; but yet no small number have
crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps
of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quivers
of my enemies.”
That gracious thing made up of smiles and tears,
Mid the wild rack and rain that slant below
Stands—
As though the spirits of all lovely flowers
Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,
And ere they sunk to earth in vernal showers,
Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison tree, that, pierced to the inmost,
Weeps only tears of poison.
The more elaborate poetical compositions of Coleridge
display much talent and a rare command of language.
His dramatic attempts, however, are decidedly inferior in
interest and power to many of his fugitive pieces. Wallenstein,
indeed, is allowed to be a master-piece of translation—and,
although others have improved upon certain
passages, as a whole it is acknowledged to be an unequalled
specimen of its kind. But to realize the true elements
of the poet's genius, we must have recourse to his minor
poems. In these, his genuine sentiments found genial
development. They are beautiful emblems of his personal
history, and admit us to the secret chambers of his heart.
We recognize, as we ponder them, the native fire of his
muse, “unmixed with baser matter.” Of the juvenile
poems, the Monody on Chatterton strikes us as the most
remarkable. It overflows with youthful sympathy, and
contains passages of singular power for the effusions of so
inexperienced a bard. Take, for instance, the following
lines, where an identity of fate is suggested from the consciousness
of error and disappointment:
Who would have praised and loved thee, ere too late.
Poor Chatterton! farewell! of darkest hues
This chaplet cast I on thy unshapen tomb;
But dare no longer on the sad theme muse,
Lest kindred woes persuade a kindred doom:
For oh! big gall-drops, shook from Folly's wing,
Have blackened the fair promise of my spring;
And the stern Fate transpierced with viewless dart
The last pale Hope that shivered at my heart.
Few young poets of English origin have written more
beautiful amatory poetry than this:
Or mine the power of Proteus, changeful god!
A flower-entangled arbor I would seem
To shield my love from noontide's sultry beam:
Or bloom a myrtle, from whose odorous boughs
My love might weave gay garlands for her brows.
When twilight stole across the fading vale
To fan my love I'd be the evening gale;
Mourn in the soft folds of her swelling vest,
And flutter my faint pinions on her breast!
On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight:—
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies,
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes!
Nor were religious sentiments unawakened:
Fair the high grove, the sea, the sun, the stars;
True impress each of their creating Sire!
Yet nor high grove, nor many-colored mead,
Nor the green Ocean with his thousand isles,
Nor the starred azure, nor the sovran sun,
E'er with such majesty of portraiture
Imaged the supreme being uncreate,
As thou, meek Saviour! at the fearless hour
When thy insulted anguish winged the prayer
Harped by archangels, when they sing of mercy!
Which when the Almighty heard from forth his throne
Diviner light filled heaven with ecstacy!
Heaven's hymnings paused: and hell her yawning mouth
Closed a brief moment.
It is delightful to dwell upon these early outpourings
of an ardent and gifted soul. They lay bare the real
his genius would be far more obscure. When these juvenile
poems were written `existence was all a feeling,
not yet shaped into a thought.' Here is no mysticism or
party-feeling, but the simplicity and fervor of a fresh
heart, touched by the beauty of the visible world, by the
sufferings of genius, and the appeals of love and religion.
The natural and the sincere here predominate over the
studied and artificial. Time enlarged the bard's views,
increased his stores of knowledge, and matured his mental
powers; but his genius, as pictured in his writings,
though strengthened and fertilized, thenceforth loses much
of its unity. Its emanations are frequently more grand
and startling, but less simple and direct. There is more
machinery, and often a confusion of appliances. We
feel that it is the same mind in an advanced state;—the
same noble instrument breathing deeper strains, but with
a melody more intricate and sad.
In the Sibylline Leaves we have depicted a later stage
of the poet's life. Language is now a more effective expedient.
It follows the thought with a clearer echo. It
is woven with a firmer hand. The subtle intellect is
evidently at work in the very rush of emotion. The poet
has discovered that he cannot hope
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.”
A new sentiment, the most solemn that visits the breast
of humanity, is aroused by this reflective process—the
sentiment of duty. Upon the sunny landscape of youth
bosom of the minstrel that he is not free to wander at
will to the sound of his own music. His life cannot be
a mere revel in the embrace of beauty. He too is a man,
born to suffer and to act. He cannot throw off the responsibility
of life. He must sustain relations to his fellows.
The scenery that delights him assumes a new aspect.
It appeals not only to his love of nature, but his
sense of patriotism:
And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!
More tender ties bind the poet-soul to his native
isle—
Yea, in the very name of wife.
Then was I thrilled and melted, and most warm
Impressed a father's kiss.
Thus gather the many-tinted hues of human destiny
around the life of the young bard. To a mind of philosophical
cast, the transition is most interesting. It is
the distinguishing merit of Coleridge, that in his verse
we find these epochs warmly chronicled. Most just is his
vindication of himself from the charge of egotism. To
what end are beings peculiarly sensitive, and capable of
rare expression, sent into the world, if not to make us
feel the mysteries of our nature, by faithful delineations,
of the individual, but of man in general, to feel the sublimity
of the mountain—the loveliness of the flower—the
awe of devotion—and the ecstacy of love; and we should
bless those who truly set forth the traits and triumphs of
our nature—the consolations and anguish of our human
life. We are thus assured of the universality of Nature's
laws—of the sympathy of all genuine hearts. Something
of a new dignity invests the existence, whose common
experience is susceptible of such portraiture. In the
keen regrets, the vivid enjoyments, the agonizing remorse
and the glowing aspirations recorded by the poet, we find
the truest reflection of our own souls. There is a nobleness
in the lineaments thus displayed, which we can
scarcely trace in the bustle and strife of the world. Self-respect
is nourished by such poetry, and the hope of immortality
rekindled at the inmost shrine of the heart. Of
recent poets, Coleridge has chiefly added to such obligations.
He has directed our gaze to Mont Blanc as to an
everlasting altar of praise; and kindled a perennial flame
of devotion amid the snows of its cloudy summit. He
has made the icy pillars of the Alps ring with solemn anthems.
The pilgrim to the Vale of Chamouni shall not hereafter
want a Hymn by which his admiring soul may
“wreak itself upon expression.”
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
Earth, and her thousand voices praises God.
To one other want of the heart has the muse of Coleridge
given genuine expression. Fashion, selfishness,
and the mercenary spirit of the age, have widely and deeply
profaned the very name of Love. To poetry it flies as to
an ark of safety. The English bard has set apart and
consecrated a spot sacred to its meditation—`midway on
the mount,' `beside the ruined tower;' and thither may
we repair to cool the eye fevered with the glare of art,
by gazing on the fresh verdure of nature, when
Has blended with the lights of eve,
And she is there, our hope, our joy,
Our own dear Genevieve.
MRS. HEMANS.
We have heard much of late regarding the rights and
sphere of woman. The topic has become trite. One
branch of the discussion, however, is worthy of careful
notice—the true theory of cultivated and liberal men on the
subject. This has been greatly misunderstood. The
idea has been often suggested that man is jealous of his
alleged intellectual superiority, while little has been advanced
in illustration of his genuine reverence for female
character. Because the other sex cannot always find erudition
so attractive as grace in woman, and strong mental
traits so captivating as a beautiful disposition, it is
absurdly argued that mind and learning are only honored
in masculine attire. The truth is, men of feeling instinctively
recognize something higher than intellect.
They feel that a noble and true soul is greater and more
delightful than mere reason, however powerful; and
they know that to this, extensive knowledge and active logical
powers are not essential. It is not the attainments,
or the literary talent, that they would have women abjure.
They only pray that through and above these may appear
not be disturbed; that the essential foundations of love
may not be invaded; that the sensibility, delicacy and
quiet enthusiasm of the female heart may continue to awaken
in man the tender reverence, which is one of the most
elevating of his sentiments.
Portia is highly intellectual; but even while arrayed
in male costume and enacting the public advocate, the
essential and captivating characteristics of her true sex
inspire her mien and language. Vittoria Colonna was
one of the most gifted spirits of her age—the favorite
companion of Michael Angelo, but her life and works
were but the eloquent development of exalted womanhood.
Madame Roland displayed a strength of character singularly
heroic, but her brave dignity was perfectly feminine.
Isabella of Spain gave evidence of a mind remarkably
comprehensive, and a rare degree of judgment; yet in
perusing her history, we are never beguiled from the feeling
of her queenly character. There is an essential quality
of sex, to be felt rather than described, and it is when this
is marred, that a feeling of disappointment is the consequence.
It is as if we should find violets growing on a
tall tree. The triumphs of mind always command respect,
but their style and trophies have diverse complexions in
the two sexes. It is only when these distinctions are
lost, that they fail to interest. It matters not how erudite
or mentally gifted a woman may be, so that she remains
in manner and feeling a woman. Such is the idea that
man loves to see realized; and in cherishing it, he gives
the highest proof of his estimation of woman. He delights
He is charmed to behold her in the most effective attitude.
He appreciates too truly the beauty and power of her nature
to wish to see it arrayed in any but a becoming dress.
There is such a thing as female science, philosophy and
poetry, as there is female physiognomy and taste; not
that their absolute qualities differ in the two sexes, but
their relative aspect is distinct. Their sphere is as large
and high, and infinitely more delicate and deep than that
of man, though not so obvious. When they overstep their
appropriate domain, much of their mentul influence is lost.
Freely and purely exerted, it is at once recognized and
loved. Man delights to meet woman in the field of letters
as well as in the arena of social life. There also is
she his better angel. With exquisite satisfaction he learns
at her feet the lessons of mental refinement and moral
sensibility. From her teachings he catches a grace and
sentiment unwritten by his own sex. Especially in
poetry, beams, with starlike beauty, the light of her soul.
There he reads the records of a woman's heart. He hears
from her own lips how the charms of nature and the
mysteries of life have wrought in her bosom. Of such
women, Mrs. Hemans is the most cherished of our day.
Life is the prime source of literature, and especially of
its most effective and universal departments. Poetry
should therefore be the offspring of deep experience.
Otherwise it is superficial and temporary. What phase
of existence is chiefly revealed to woman? Which domain
of experience is she best fitted by her nature and
position to illustrate? Undoubtedly, the influence and
completely involved, through these her mind more exclusively
acts, than is the case with our sex. Accordingly,
her insight is greater, and her interest more extensive in
the sphere of the heart. With a quicker sympathy, and a
finer perception, will she enter into the history and results
of the affections. Accordingly, when the mantle of
song falls upon a woman, we cannot but look for new
revelations of sentiment. Not that the charms of nature
and the majesty of great events may not appropriately attract
her muse; but with and around these, if she is a
true poetess, we see ever entwined the delicate flowers
that flourish in the atmosphere of home, and are reared to
full maturity only under the training of woman. Thus
the poetic in her character finds free development. She
can here speak with authority. It is, indeed, irreverent
to dictate to genius, but the themes of female poetry are
written in the very structure of the soul. Political economy
may find devotees among the gentler sex; and so an
approach to the mental hardihood of Lady Macbeth may
appear once in the course of an age; whereas, every year
we light on the traces of a Juliet, a Cleopatra and an Isabel.
The spirit of Mrs. Hemans in all she has written,
is essentially feminine. Various as are her subjects,
they are stamped with the same image and superscription.
She has drawn her prevailing vein of feeling from one
source. She has thrown over all her effusions, not so
much the drapery of knowledge, or the light of extensive
observation, as the warm and shifting hues of the heart.
These she had at command. She knew their effects,
which she devoted them to the creations of fancy and the
illustration of truth.
From the voice of her own consciousness, Mrs. Hemans
realized what a capacity of joy and sorrow, of
strength and weakness, exists in the human heart. This
she made it her study to unfold. The Restoration of the
Works of Art to Italy is, as Byron said when it appeared,
a very good poem. It is a fine specimen of heroic verse.
The subject is treated with judgment and ability, and the
spirit which pervades the work is precisely what the occasion
demanded. Still we feel that any cultivated and
ideal mind might have produced the poem. There are no
peculiar traits, no strikingly original conceptions. The
same may be said of several of the long pieces. It is in
the Songs of the Affections and the Records of Woman
that the poetess is preëminently excellent. Here the field
is emphatically her own. She ranges it with a free step
and a queenly bearing; and everywhere rich flowers
spring up in her path, and a glowing atmosphere, like
the rosy twilight of her ancestral land, enlivens and illumines
her progress. In these mysterious ties of love,
there is to her a world of poetry. She not only celebrates
their strength and mourns their fragility, but with pensive
ardor dwells on their eternal destiny. The birth, the
growth, the decline, the sacrifices, the whole morality and
spirituality of human love, is recognized and proclaimed
by her muse. Profoundly does she feel the richness and
the sadness, the glory and the gloom, involved in the
affections. She thinks it
In the same world!
In his calm glory, will forgive the love
His creatures bear each other, even if blent
With a vain worship; for its close is dim
Ever with grief, which leads the wrung soul back to Him.
Devotion continually blends with and exalts her views
of human sentiment:
Shall yet call gentle angels from above,
By its undying fervor.
Oh! we have need of patient faith below,
To clear away the mysteries of wo!
Bereavement has found in Mrs. Hemans a worthy recorder
of its deep and touching poetry:
Till Death has robed with soft and solemn light
The image we enshrine!—Before that hour,
We have but glimpses of the o'ermastering power
Within us laid!—then doth the spirit-flame
With sword-like lightning rend its mortal frame;
The wings of that which pants to follow fast,
Shake their clay bars, as with a prisoned blast,—
The sea is in our souls!
But thou! whose thoughts have no blest home above,
Captive of earth! and canst thou dare to love?
To nurse such feelings as delight to rest
Within that hallowed shrine a parent's breast?
To fix each hope, concentrate every tie,
Yet mock the faith that points to worlds of light,
Where severed souls, made perfect, re-unite?
Then tremble! cling to every passing joy
Twined with the life a moment may destroy!
If there be sorrow in a parting tear.
Still let “forever” vibrate on thine ear!
If some bright hour on rapture's wind hath flown,
Find more than anguish in the thought—'tis gone;
Go! to a voice such magic influence give,
Thou canst not lose its melody and live;
And make an eye the lode-star of thy soul,
And let a glance the springs of thought control;
Gaze on a mortal form with fond delight,
Till the fair vision mingles with thy sight;
There seek thy blessings, there repose thy trust,
Lean on the willow, idolize the dust!
Then when thy treasure best repays thy care,
Think on that dread “forever,” and despair.
The distinguishing attribute of the poetry of Mrs. Hemans
is sentiment. She sings fervently of the King of
Arragon, musing upon his slain brother, in the midst of a
victorious festival,—of the brave boy perishing at the battle
of the Nile, at the post assigned him by his father,—
of Del Carpio, upbraiding the treacherous king:—
Bid these white lips a blessing speak, this earth is not my sire!
Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed,—
Thou canst not—and a king?—His dust be mountains on thy head!”
He loosed the steed; his slack hand fell,—upon the silent face
He cast one long, deep, troubled look,—then turned from that sad place.
His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold in martial strain,—
His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain.
With how true a sympathy does she trace the prison
in the Greek bride, and the fidelity of woman in the wife
soothing her husband's dying agonies on the wheel!
What a pathetic charm breathes in the pleadings of the
Adopted Child, and the meeting of Tasso and his Sister.
How well she understood the hopelessness of ideal love!
Of sympathy below—
Few are the hearts whence one same touch
Bid the sweet fountains flow:
Few and by still conflicting powers
Forbidden here to meet—
Such ties would make this world of ours
Too fair for aught so fleet.
Nor is it alone in mere sensibility that the poetess excels.
The loftiness and the dignity of her sex has few
nobler interpreters. What can be finer in its kind than
the Swiss wife's appeal to her husband's patriotism?
Her poems abound in the worthiest appeals to woman's
faith:
And patient smiles to wear through suffering's hour,
And sumless riches from Affection's deep,
To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail their worship—therefore pray!
To depict the parting grief of the Hebrew mother, the
repentant tears of Cœur de Lion at his father's bier, the
home-associations of the Eastern stranger at the sight of
a palm-tree—these, and such as these, were congenial
themes to Mrs. Hemans. Joyous as is her welcome to
She invokes the Ocean not for its gems and buried gold,
but for the true and brave that sleep in its bosom. The
bleak arrival of the New England Pilgrims, and the evening
devotion of the Italian peasant-girl, are equally consecrated
by her muse. Where there is profound love, exalted
patriotism, or “a faith touching all things with hues
of Heaven,” there she rejoiced to expatiate. Fair as Elysium
appeared to her fancy, she celebrates its splendor
only to reproach its rejection of the lowly and the loved:
Of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion voice
In regal halls! the shades o'erhung their way,
The vale with its deep fountain is their choice,
And gentle hearts rejoice
Around their steps! till silently they die,
As a stream shrinks from summer's burning eye.
And the world knows not then,
Not then, nor ever, what pure thoughts are fled!
Yet these are they that on the souls of men
Come back, when night her folding veil hath spread,
The long remembered dead!
But not with thee might aught save glory dwell—
Fade, fade away, thou shore of Asphodel!
It was the opinion of Dr. Spurzheim, an accurate and
benevolent observer of life, that suffering was essential to
the rich development of female character. It is interesting
to trace the influence of disappointment and trial in
deepening and exalting the poetry of Mrs. Hemans.
From the sentimental character of her muse, results the
sameness of which some readers complain in perusing her
we attempt to read them consecutively. But such is not the
manner in which we should treat a poetess who so exclusively
addresses our feelings. Like Petrarch's sonnets,
her productions delight most when separately enjoyed.
Her careful study of poetry as an art, and her truly conscientious
care in choosing her language and forming her
verse, could not, even if it were desirable, prevent the
formation of a certain style. It is obvious, also, that
her efforts are unequal. The gems, however, are more
profusely scattered, than through the same amount of writing
by almost any other modern poet. The department
of her muse was a high and sacred one. The path she
pursued was one especially heroic, inasmuch as her efforts
imply the exertion of great enthusiasm. Such lyrics as
we admire in her pages are “fresh from the fount of feeling.”
They have stirred the blood of thousands. They
have kindled innumerable hearts on both sides of the
sea. They have strewn imperishable flowers around the
homes and graves of two nations. They lift the
thoughts, like an organ's peal, to a “better land,” and
quicken the purest sympathies of the soul into a truer life
and more poetic beauty.
The taste of Mrs. Hemans was singularly elegant.
She delighted in the gorgeous and imposing. There is
a remarkable fondness for splendid combination, warlike
pomp and knightly pageantry betrayed in her writings.
Her fancy seems bathed in a Southern atmosphere. We
trace her Italian descent in the very flow and imagery of
her verse. There is far less of Saxon boldness of design
luxuriant grouping of a warmer clime. Akin to this
trait was her passion for Art. She used to say that Music
was part of her life. In fact, the mind of the poetess was
essentially romantic. Her muse was not so easily awakened
by the sight of a beautiful object, as by the records
of noble adventure. Her interest was chiefly excited by
the brave and touching in human experience. Nature attracted
her rather from its associations with God and humanity,
than on account of its abstract and absolute qualities.
This forms the great distinction between her poetry
and that of Wordsworth. In the midst of the fine
scenery of Wales, her infant faculties unfolded. There
began her acquaintance with life and books. We are told
of her great facility in acquiring languages, her relish of
Shakspeare at the age of six, and her extraordinary memory.
It is not difficult to understand how her ardent feelings
and rich imagination developed, with peculiar individuality,
under such circumstances. Knightly legends,
tales of martial enterprize—the poetry of courage and devotion,
fascinated her from the first. But when her deeper
feelings were called into play, and the latent sensibilities
of her nature sprung to conscious action, much of
this native romance was transferred to the scenes of real
life, and the struggles of the heart.
The earlier and most elaberate of her poems are, in a
great measure, experimental. It seems as if a casual
fancy for the poetic art gradually matured into a devoted
love. Mrs. Hemans drew her power less from preception
than sympathy. Enthusiasm, rather than graphic talent,
any remarkable pictures of the outward world. Her great
aim was not so much to describe as to move. We discover
few scenes drawn by her pen, which strike us as
wonderfully true to physical fact. She does not make us
see so much as feel. Compared with most great poets,
she saw but little of the world. The greater part of her
life was passed in retirement. Her knowledge of distant
lands was derived from books. Hence she makes little
pretension to the poetry of observation. Sketches copied
directly from the visible universe are rarely encountered
in her works. For such portraiture her mind was not
remarkably adapted. There was another process far
more congenial to her—the personation of feeling. She
loved to sing of inciting events, to contemplate her race
in an heroic attitude, to explore the depths of the soul, and
amid the shadows of despair and the tumult of passion,
point out some element of love or faith unquenched by
the storm. Her strength lay in earnestness of soul.
Her best verses glow with emotion. When once truly interested
in a subject, she cast over it such an air of feeling
that our sympathies are won at once. We cannot but
catch the same vivid impression; and if we draw from
her pages no great number of definite images, we cannot
but imbibe what is more valuable—the warmth and the
life of pure, lofty and earnest sentiment.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LAMB.[9]
In adding our tribute to the memory of Lamb, we are
conscious of personal associations of peculiar and touching
interest. We recall the many listless hours he has
beguiled; and the very remembrance of happy moments
induced by his quiet humor, and pleasing reveries inspired
by his quaint descriptions and inimitable pathos, is refreshing
to our minds. It is difficult to realise that these
feelings have reference to an individual whose countenance
we never beheld, and the tones of whose voice never fell
upon our ear. Frequent and noted instances there are
in the annals of literature, of attempts, on the part of authors,
to introduce themselves to the intimate acquaintance
of their readers. In portraying their own characters in
those of their heroes, in imparting the history of their
lives in the form of an epic poem, a popular novel, or
through the more direct medium of a professed autobiography,
writers have aimed at a striking presentation of
themselves. The success of such attempts is, in general,
very limited. Like letters of introduction, they indeed,
to the friendship of those to whom they are addressed.
At best, they ordinarily afford us an insight into the mind
of the author, but seldom render us familiar and at home
with the man. Charles Lamb, on the contrary,—if our
own experience does not deceive us—has brought himself
singularly near those who have once heartily entered into
the spirit of his lucubrations. We seem to know his
history, as if it were that of our brother, or earliest friend.
The beautiful fidelity of his first love, the monotony of
his long clerkship, and the strange feeling of leisure succeeding
its renunciation, the excitement of his “first
play,” the zest of his reading, the musings of his daily
walk, and the quietude of his fireside, appear like visions
of actual memory. His image, now bent over a huge
ledger, in a dusky compting-house, and now threading the
thoroughfares of London, with an air of abstraction, from
which nothing recalls him but the outstretched hand of
a little sweep, an inviting row of worm-eaten volumes upon
an old book stall, or the gaunt figure of a venerable beggar;
and the same form sauntering through the groves about
Oxford in the vacation solitude, or seated in a little back
study, intent upon an antiquated folio, appear like actual
reminiscences rather than pictures of the fancy. The
face of his old school-master is as some familiar physiognomy;
and we seem to have known Bridget Elia
from infancy, and to have loved her, too, notwithstanding
her one “ugly habit of reading in company.”
Indeed we can compare our associations of Charles
Lamb only to those which would naturally attach to an
habits of delightful intercourse,—stepping over his
threshold, to hold sweet commune, whenever weariness
was upon our spirits, and we desired cheering and amiable
companionship. And when death actually justified the
title affixed to his most recent papers—which we had
fondly regarded merely as an additional evidence of his
unique method of dealing with his fellow beings,—when
they really proved the last essays of Elia, we could unaffectedly
apply to him the touching language, with which an
admired poet has hallowed the memory of a brother bard;—
Friend of my better days,
None knew thee, but to love thee,
Nor named thee, but to praise.”
And were it only for the peculiar species of fame which
Lamb's contributions to the light literature of his country
have obtained him,—were it only for the valuable lesson
involved in this tributary heritage,—in the method by
which it was won,—in the example with which it is associated,
there would remain ample cause for congratulation
among the real friends of human improvement; there
would be sufficient reason to remember, gratefully and
long, the gifted and amiable essayist. Instead of the feverish
passion for reputation, which renders the existence of
the majority of professed literateurs of the present day, a
wearing and anxious trial, better becoming the dust and
heat of the arena, than the peaceful shades of the academy,
a calm and self-reposing spirit pervades and characterises
the writings of Lamb. They are obviously the offspring
in this consists their peculiar charm. We are disposed to
value this characteristic highly, at a time which abounds,
as does our age, with a profusion of forced and elaborate
writings. It is truly delightful to encounter a work, however
limited in design and unpretending in execution,
which revives the legitimate idea of literature,—which
makes us feel that it is as essentially spontaneous as the
process of vegatation, and is only true to its source and
its object, when instinct with freshness and freedom. No
mind, restlessly urged by a morbid appetite for literary
fame, or disciplined to a mechanical development of
thought, could have originated the attractive essays we are
considering. They indicate quite a different parentage.
A lovely spirit of contentment, a steadfast determination
towards a generous culture of the soul, breathes through
these mental emanations. Imaginative enjoyment,—the
boon with which the Creator has permitted man to meliorate
the trying circumstances of his lot, is evidently the
great recreation of the author, and to this he would introduce
his readers. It is interesting to feel, that among the
many accomplished men, whom necessity or ambition inclines
to the pursuit of literature, there are those who find
the time and possess the will to do something like justice
to their own minds. Literary biography is little else than
a history of martyrdoms. We often rise from the perusal
of a great man's life, whose sphere was the field of letters,
with diminished faith in the good he successfully pursued.
The story of disappointed hopes, ruined health, and a life in
no small degree isolated from social pleasure and the incitement
its melancholy aspect by the simple record of literary
success. Earnestly as we honor the principle of self-devotion,
our sympathy with beings of a strong intellectual
and imaginative bias is too great not to awaken, above
every other consideration, a desire for the self-possessed
and native exhibition of such a heaven-implanted tendency.
We cannot but wish that natures thus endowed
should be true to themselves. We feel that, in this way,
they will eventually prove most useful to the world. And
yet one of the rarest results which such men arrive at, is
self-satisfaction in the course they pursue—we do not mean
as regards the success, but the direction of their labors.
Sir James Mackintosh continually lamented, in his diary,
the failure of his splendid intentions, consoled himself
with the idea of additional enterprises, and finally died without
completing his history. Coleridge has left only, in a
fragmentary and scattered form, the philosophical system
he proposed to develop. Both these remarkable men
passed intellectual lives, and evolved, in conversation and
fugitive productions, fruits which are worthy of a perennial
existence; yet they fell so far short of their aims, they
realised so little of what they conceived, that an impression
the most painful remains upon the mind that, with
due susceptibility, contemplates their career. We find,
therefore, an especial gratification in turning from such
instances, to a far humbler one indeed, but still to a man
of genius, who richly enjoyed his pleasant and sequestered
inheritance in the kingdom of letters, and whose comparatively
few productions bear indubitable testimony to
imaginative and yet contented life. It is as illustrative
of this, that the essays of Elia are mainly valuable.
In our view, the form of these writings is a great recommendation.
We confess a partiality for the essay. In the
literature of our vernacular tongue, it shines conspicuous,
and is environed with the most pleasing associations. To
the early English essayists is due the honor of the first and
most successful endeavors to refine the language and manners
of their country. The essays of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith,
Addison, and Steele, while they answered a most
important immediate purpose, still serve as instructive
disquisitions and excellent illustrations of style. The essay
is to prose literature, what the sonnet is to poetry;
and as the narrow limits of the latter have enclosed some
of the most beautiful poetic imagery, and finished expressions
of sentiment within the compass of versified writing,
so many of the most chaste specimens of elegant periods,
and of animated and embellished prose, exist in the form
of essays. The lively pen of Montaigne, the splendid
rhetoric of Burke, and the vigorous argument of John
Foster, have found equal scope in essay-writing: and
among the various species of composition at present in
vogue, how few can compare with this in general adaptation.
Descriptive sketches and personal traits, speculative
suggestions and logical deductions, the force of direct
appeal, the various power of illustration, allusion and
comment, are equally available to the essayist. His essay
may be a lay-sermon or a satire, a criticism or a reverie.
“Of the words of men,” says Lord Bacon, “there
they are more natural than orations, and more advised
than sudden conferences.” Essays-combine the qualities
here ascribed to the epistolary composition; indeed, they
may justly be regarded as letters addressed to the public;
embodying—in the delightful style which characterises the
private correspondence of cultivated friends—views and
details of more general interest.
There is more reason to regret the decline of essay-writing,
from the fact, that the forms of composition now
in vogue, are so inferior to it both in intrinsic excellence
and as vehicles of thought. There is, indeed, a class of
writers whose object is, professedly and solely, to amuse;
or if a higher purpose enters into their design, it does not
extend beyond the conveyance of particular historical information.
But the majority of prominent authors cherish
as to their great end, the inculcation of certain principles
of action, theories of life, or views of humanity.
We may trace in the views of the most justly admired
writers of our own day, a favorite sentiment or theory pervading,
more or less, the structure of their several volumes,
and constantly presenting itself under various aspects,
and in points of startling contrast or thrilling impression.
We honor the deliberate and faithful presentation of a
theory, on the part of literary men, when they deem it essential
to the welfare of their race. Loyalty to such an
object bespeaks them worthy of their high vocation; and
we doubt if an author can be permanently useful to his
fellow beings and true to himself, without such a light
to guide, and such an aim to inspire. Dogmatical attachment
progression in thought, but fidelity in the development
and vivid portraiture of a sentiment knit into the well-being
of man, and coincident with his destiny, is among
the most obvious of literary obligations. Something of
chivalric interest is attached to “Sidney's Defence of
Poesy;” the anxiety for the reform of conventional customs
and modes of thinking in society, so constantly
evinced in the pages of the Spectator, commands our
sympathy and respect; and we think the candid objector
to Wordsworth's view of his divine art, cannot but honor
the steadiness with which he has adhered to, and unfolded
it. Admitting, then, the dignity of such literary
ends,—the manner in which they can be most effectually
accomplished, must often be a subject of serious consideration.
It is generally taken for granted, that the public will
give ear to no teacher who cannot adroitly practise the expedient
so beautifully illustrated by Tasso, in the simile of
the chalice of medicine with a honeyed rim. True as it
is, that in an age surfeited with books of every description,
there exists a kind of necessity for setting decoys afloat
upon the stream of literature—is not the faith in literary
lures altogether too perfect? Does the mental offspring
we have cherished, obtain the kind of attention we desire,
when ushered into the world arrayed in the garb of fiction?
The experiment, we acknowledge, succeeds in one respect.
The inviting dress will attract the eyes of the multitude;
but how few will penetrate to the theory, appreciate
the moral, or enter into the thoughts to which the
The truth is, the very object of writers who would present
a philosophical problem through the medium of a novel, is
barely recognized. Corinna is still regarded as a romance
sui generis. Several efforts of the kind, on the
part of living British writers of acknowledged power, seem
to have utterly failed of their purpose, as far as the mass of
readers, whom they were especially intended to affect, are
concerned. The plan in such instances, is strictly psychological.
Public attention, however, is at once riveted
on the plot and details; and some strong delineation of
human passion, some trivial error in the external sketching,
some over intense or too minute personation of feeling,
suffices, we do not say how justly, to condemn the
work in the view—even of the discriminating. Now we
are confident, that should the writers in question choose
the essay as a vehicle of communication, their success in
many cases would be more complete. Their ideas of life,
of a foreign land, of modern society, or of human destiny,
presented in this shape, with the graces of style, the attraction
of anecdote, and the vivacity of wit and feeling,
could not but find their way to the only class of readers
who will ever estimate such labors; those who read to
excite thought, as well as beguile time; to gratify an intellectual
taste, as well as amuse an ardent fancy. The
novel, too, is in its very nature ephemeral. The very
origin of the word associates such productions with the
gazettes and magazines—the temporary caskets of literature.
And with the exception of Scott's, and a few admirable
historical romances, novels seem among the most
class of authors to whom we have alluded, those who have
a definite and important point in view, who are enthusiastic
in behalf of a particular moral or mental enterprise,
the evanescent nature of the popular vehicle is an important
consideration. We would behold a more permanent
personification of their systems, a more lasting testimony
of their interest in humanity. And such we consider the
essay. When presented, condensed, and embellished in
this more primitive form, a fair opportunity will be afforded
for the candid examination of their sentiments; and
we are persuaded that these very ideas, thus arranged and
disseminated, will possess a weight and an interest which
they can never exhibit when displayed in the elaborate
and desultory manner incident to popular fiction. An
interesting illustration of these remarks may be found in
the circumstance that many intelligent men, who are quite
inimical to Bulwer, as a novelist, have become interested
in his mind by the perusal of “England and the English,”
and “The Student”—works which are essentially
specimens of essay writing. The dramatic form of composition
has recently been adopted in England, to subserve
the theoretical purposes of authors. This, it must
be confessed, is a decided improvement upon the more
fashionable method; and the favor with which it has
been received, is sufficiently indicative of the readiness
of the public to become familiar with nobler models of
literature.
We are under no slight obligations to Charles Lamb,
for so pleasantly reviving a favorite form of English composition.
It is interesting to be amused and instructed after the
manner of that delectable coterie of lay-preachers, humorists,
and critics, of which Sir Roger de Coverly was so
distinguished a member. It is peculiarly agreeeble to be
talked to in a book, as if the writer addressed himself to
us particularly. Next to a long epistle from an entertaining
friend, we love, of all things in the world, a charming
essay;—a concise array of ideas—an unique sketch, which
furnishes subjects for an hour's reflection, or gives rise to
a succession of soothing day-dreams. Few books are more
truly useful than such as can be relished in the brief intervals
of active or social life, which permit immediate
appreciation, and, taken up when and where they may be,
present topics upon which the attention can at once fix
itself, and trains of speculation into which the mind easily
glides. To such a work we suppose a celebrated writer
alludes, in the phrase “parlor window-seat book.” Collections
of essays are essentially of this order. We would
not be understood, however, as intimating that this kind
of literature is especially unworthy of studious regard;
Bacon's Essays alone would refute such an idea; but from
its conciseness and singleness of aim, the essay may
be enjoyed in a brief period, and when the mind is unable
to attach itself to more elaborate reading. A volume
of essays subserves the purpose of a set of cabinet pictures,
or a port-folio of miniature drawings; they are the
multum in parvo of literature; and, perused, as they generally
are, in moments of respite from ordinary occupation,
turned to on the spur of mental appetite, they not
of greater pretension. It is seldom that any desirable
additions are made in this important department
of writing; and among the contributions of the present
age, the essays of Elia will deservedly hold an elevated
rank.
Much of the interest awakened by these papers, has
been ascribed to the peculiar phraseology in which they
are couched. Doubtless, this characteristic has had its
influence; but we think an undue importance has been
given it, and we feel that the true zest of Elia's manner
is as spontaneous as his ideas, and the shape in which
they naturally present themselves. If we analyse his mode
of expression, we shall find its charm consists not a little
in the expert variation rather than in a constant maintenance
of style. He understood the proper time and place
to introduce an illustration; he knew when to serve up
one of his unequalled strokes of humor, and when to
change the speculative for the descriptive mood. He had
a happy way of blending anecdote and portraiture; he
makes us see the place, person, or thing, upon which he
is dwelling; and, at the moment our interest is excited,
presents an incident, and then, while we are all attention,
imparts a moral, or lures us into a theorising vein. He
personifies his subjcet, too, at the appropriate moment;
nor idealises, after the manner of many essayists, before
the reader sympathises at all with the real picture. Lamb's
diction breathes the spirit of his favorite school. He
need not have told us of his partiality for the old English
writers. Every page of Elia bears witness to his frequent
British literature. Yet the coincidence is, in no degree,
that which obtains between an original and a copyist.
The tinge which Lamb's language has caught from intimacy
with the quaint folios he so sincerely admired, is a reflected
hue, like that which suffuses the arch of clouds far
above the setting sun; denoting only the delightful influence
radiated upon the mind which loves to dwell devotedly
upon what is disappearing, and turns with a kind of
religious interest from the new-born luminaries which the
multitude worship, to hover devotedly round the shrine of
the past. If any modern lover of letters deserved
a heritage in the sacred garden of old English literature,
that one was Charles Lamb. Not only did he possess
the right which faithful husbandry yields, but his disposition
and taste rendered him a companion meet for the
noble spirits that have immortalized the age of Elizabeth.
In truth, he may be said to have been on more familiar
terms with Shakspeare, than with the most intimate of
his contemporaries; and it may be questioned whether the
Religio Medici, that truly individual creed, had a more
devout admirer in its originator, than was Elia. He assures
us that he was “shy of facing the prospective,” and
no antiquarian cherished a deeper reverence for old china,
or black letter. Most honestly, therefore, came our
author by that charming relish of olden time, which sometimes
induces in our minds, as we read his lucubrations,
a lurking doubt whether, by some mischance, we have not
fallen upon an old author in a modern dress.
There is another feature in the style of these essays, to
We allude to a certain confessional tone, that is
peculiarly attractive. There is something exceedingly
gratifying to the generality of readers in personalities.
On the same principle that we are well pleased to become
the confident of a friend, and open our breasts to receive
the secret of his inmost experience, we readily become
interested in a writer who tells us, in a candid, naïve manner,
the story not merely of his life, in the common acceptation
of the term, but of his private opinions, humors,
eccentric tastes, and personal antipathies. A tone of this
kind, is remarkably characteristic of Lamb. And yet
there is in it nothing egotistical; for we may say of him
as has been said of his illustrious schoolfellow, whom he
so significantly, and, as it were, prophetically, called “the
inspired charity boy;”—that “in him the individual is
always merged in the abstract and general.” Writers
have not been slow to avail themselves of the advantage
of thus occasionally and incidentally presenting glimpses
of their private notions and sentiments; indeed, this
has been called the age of confessions; but with Elia,
they are so delicately yet so familiarly imparted, that they
become a secret charm inwrought through the whole tissue
of what he denominates his “weaved up follies.”
There are passages scattered through these volumes, which
exemplify the very perfection of our language. There
are successive periods, so adroitly adapted to the sentiment
they embody, so easy and expressive, and, at the
same time, so unembellished, that they suggest a new idea
of the capabilities of our vernacular. There are words,
another, to institute a grave inquiry into their legitimacy,
or, perchance, prefer against their author the charge of
senseless affectation. But with what we know of Elia, in
catching ourselves at such a process, we could not but
waive the ceremony, and say, as he said on some equally
heartless occasion—“it argues an insensibility.”
Another striking trait of the Essays of Elia, is the familiarity
of their style. In this respect they frequently combine
the freedom of oral with the more deliberative spirit
of epistolary expression. We have already alluded to one
effect of this method of address; it annihilates the distance
between the reader and the author, and so to speak,
brings them face to face. Facility in this kind of writing,
is one of the principal elements in what is called magazine
talent. It consists in maintaining a conversational tone
while discussing a topic of great interest in a humorous
way, or making a light one the nucleus for spirited, amusing,
or instructive ideas. The dearth of this popular tact
in this country and its fertility in England, are well known.
We think the discrepance can be accounted for by reference
to the essential difference in the social habits of the
two countries. The literary clubs are the nurseries of
this attractive talent in Great Britain. The custom of
convening for intellectual recreation, favors the growth of
a ready expression of thought, and of a direct and inviting
flow of language. Writers are habituated to an attractive
style by being trained in a school of conversation. Intimate
connection with the best minds, not only informs
and kindles, but induces vivacity of delivery both in speech
even to the colloquial powers of an intelligent man,
like direct communion with such an individual as Mackintosh;
and we can find no cause for wonder, that one
blessed with the companionship of the literati of London
and Edinburgh, should acquire the power of talking on
paper in a delightful and finished manner. Such society
affords, if we may be allowed the expression, a kind of
intellectual gymnasium, where the art of interesting with
the pen may be, and naturally is, acquired by such as are
endowed with native wit, and reflective or graphic ability.
With us the case is so widely different, the opportunities
for general and exciting association so rare, that it is no
matter of surprise that magazine talent, as it is termed,
should be of slow growth. How far Charles Lamb was
indebted to his social privileges for his style, we are not
prepared to say. Yet there are numerous indications of
the happy influence of which we speak, interspersed
through his commentaries on men and things. We refer,
of course, altogether to the style; for as to the ideas, they are
entirely his own, bearing the genuine stamp of originality.
It seems essential to an efficient light literature, that those
interested in its culture should be brought into frequent
contact with each other, and with general society. A poet
who would evolve representations of humanity in abstract
forms, who would present models beyond and above his
age, may indeed find, in the shades of retirement, greater
scope and a less disturbed scene where in to rear his imaginary
fabric; and the philosopher whose aim is the application
of truth to history, or the delineation of some
comparative solitude. The position of both is contemplative.
The fancy of the one would plume itself for flight,
and the eyry of the noblest birds is always among uninvaded
haunts; the reflection of the other would grapple
with the abstract, and the deepest elemental strife of nature
is ever amid her lofty cloud-retreats, or solitary depths.
But the writer who would beguile, amuse or teach his contemporaries
by some winning literary device, who would
accomplish all these objects at once, and “do it quickly,”
must mix with his fellow-creatures, and make a study of
the passers-by. He must hold familiar intercourse with
the ruling school; not to adopt their principles, but to
become disciplined by their conversation; and he should
note the multitude warily, in order to discover both the
way and the means of affecting them. The legitimate
essayist has need of a rich vocabulary, and a flexible
manner; a quick perception, and a candid address. And
these equipments, if not attainable, are at least improvable,
by social aids. Conversation, were it not utterly misunderstood
and perverted might prove a mighty agent in the
culture of the noblest of human powers, and the sweetest
of human graces. There was a beautiful fidelity to nature
in the habits of the philosophers of the Garden. There
are few pictures so delightful in ancient history, as the
noble figure of a Grecian sage moving through a rural resort,
or beneath a spacious portico, imparting to his youthful
companion lessons of wisdom, or curbing his own
advanced mind to pioneer that of his less mature auditor
through the early mazes of mental experience. The teeming
eloquence, the appeal to sympathy lurking in the very
tones of wisdom, the mere inspiration of human presence,
combine to create an impression infinitely more vivid than
lonely gleanings among written lore could awaken. We
are slow to comprehend the capabilities of conversation,
or we should cultivate it sedulously, and with a deeper
faith. The single effect which we have noticed in relation
to English literature, is of itself no inconsiderable argument.
If to social culture we may in a great degree
ascribe the exuberance of talent for periodical literature on
the other side of the water, there is surely no small inducement
to elevate and quicken the conversational spirit of
our country; for whatever rank be assigned to this form of
writing, its history sufficiently attests the great influence
it is capable of exerting, and the important purposes it
may subserve. Elia, we think, gives very satisfactory
indications of his origin. Without the local allusions and
constant references to native authors, there is something
about him which smacks of London. Individual as Lamb
is, he is not devoid of national characteristics; and a reader,
well aware of the composite influences operative upon
men of letters who hail from the British metropolis, will
readily discover, though not informed of the fact, that
Elia was blessed with a score of honorable friends, who
have contributed to the literary fame of Great Britain.
Lamb is not singular in his attachment to minutiæ; it
is characteristic of the literature of the day. In former
times, writers dealt in the general; now they are devoted
to the particular. In almost every book of travels
is made to entertain us, with exceedingly detailed
descriptions of the features of a landscape, the grouping
in a picture, or the several parts of a fashionable dress.
By such wearisome nomenclature, it is expected that an
adequate conception will be imparted, when in many
cases, a single phrase, revealing the impression made by
these objects, would convey more than a hundred such inventories.
Lamb, by virtue of his nice perception, renders
details more effective than we should imagine was
practicable. In a single line, we have the peculiarities of
a person presented; and by a brief mention of the gait,
demeanor, or perhaps a single habit, the ceremony of introduction
is over; we not only stand and look in the direction
we are desired, but we see the object, be it an old
bencher, or a grinning chimney sweep; an ancient courtyard,
or a quaker meeting; a roast pig, or an old actor;
Captain Jackson, or a poor wretch in the pillory, consoling
himself by fanciful soliloquies. We have compared
essays, in their general uses, to a set of cabinet pictures.
Elia's are peculiarly susceptible of the illustration. They
are the more valuable, inasmuch as the mellow hue of old
paintings broods over them; here and there a touch of
beautiful sadness, that reminds us of Raphael; now a line
of penciling, overflowing with nature, which brings some
favorite Flemish scene to mind; and again, a certain
dreamy softness and delicate finish that whisper of Claude
Lorraine.
There are two points in which Charles Lamb was eminent,
where tolerable success is rare; these are pathos and
humorous and pathetic. He seems to have been intuitively
learned in the secret and delicate nature of these
attributes of the mind; or rather, it would appear that his
own nature, in these respects, furnished a happy criterion
by which to address the same feelings in others. We cannot
analyse, however casually, the humor and pathos of
Elia, without perceiving that they are based on a discerning,
and, if the expression may be allowed, a sentimental
fellow-feeling for his kind. So ready and true was this
feeling, that we find him entering, with the greatest facility,
into the experience of human beings whom the
mass of society scarcely recognize as such. He talks about
a little chimney sweep, and aged mendicant, or an old actor,
as if he had, in his own person, given proof of the
doctrine to which his ancient friend, Sir Thomas Browne
inclined, and actually, by a kind of metempsychois, experienced
these several conditions of life. His pathos
and humor are, for the most part, descriptive; he appeals
to us, in an artist-like and dramatic way, by pictures; we
are not wearied with any preparatory and worked up process;
we are not led to anticipate the effect. But our
associations are skilfully awakened; an impression is
unostentatiously conveyed, and a smile or tear first leads
us to inquire into the nature of the spell. It is as though
in riding along a sequestered road, we should suddenly
pass a beautiful avenue, and catch a glimpse of a garden, a
statue, an old castle, or some object far down its green
vista, so interesting that a reminiscence, an anticipation,
or, perchance, a speculative reverie, is thereby at once
quiet mirth fail, generally, because the design is too obvious,
or a strain of exaggeration is indulged in, fatal to
the end in view. Frequently, too, the call upon our mirthful
or compassionate propensities is too direct and strong.
These feelings are not seldom appealed to, as if they were
passions, and to be excited by passionate means. Indignation,
enthusiasm, and all powerful impulses, are doubtless
to be roused by fervent appeals; but readers are best
allured into a laugh, and it is by gentle encroachments upon
its empire, that the heart is best moved to sympathy. In
drawing his pictures, Lamb indulged not in caricature.
It is his truth, not less than his quaintness and minute
touches, that entertains and affects us. He avoids, too,
the vulgar modes of illustration. Not by description of
physiognomy or costume, does he excite our risible tendencies,
nor thinks he to win our pity by over-drawn statements
of the insignia and privations of poverty. Elia is
is no poor metaphysician. He comprehends the delicacy
of touch required in the limner who would impressively
delineate, even in a quaint style, any element or form of humanity.
By what would almost seem a casual suggestion,
we often have a conception imparted worth scores of wire-drawn
exemplifications. Well aware was our essayist
that a single leaf whirled by the breeze of accident upon
the soul's clear fountain, would awaken successive undulations
of thought. He was versed in the philosophy of association.
He possessed the susceptibility of an affectionate
nature, and that fine sense of the appropriate which is one
of the most valuable of our insights; and accordingly, he
faintly mingle, yet distinctly rise.” He wishes us to
realise the sufferings of poor children, and, by briefly indicating
the mere tenor of their street-talk, causes our
hearts to melt at the piteous accents of care, from lips so
young. He would vindicate that excellent precept in the
counsel of old Polonius,—“Neither a borrower nor a lender
be;” and draws such a full-length portrait of the former
character, that when one of the species has once inspected
it, he can never again lay the flattering unction of self-ignorance
to his heart. He reprimands book-stealers by
describing his own impoverished shelves, and points out
the blessings of existence, by quaintly discussing the
privations attendant upon its loss. The anniversaries of
time pass not by without their several merits being canvassed
by his pen; and although he tells us little that is
absolutely new, he holds the light of his pleasant humor up
to the faces of these annual visitants, and thenceforth
their features possess greater reality and are more easily
recognised. Not a little of Lamb's humor is shadowed
forth in the subject of his essays. Had we fallen upon
such titles in the index of any other anonymous author,
we should have set him down as one who, in straining after
the novel, evidenced a morbid taste; but there is nothing
more characteristic of Elia, than the topics he selects.
They are as legitimate as an undoubted signature. Should
this be questioned, let the treatment bestowed upon these
uninvestigated themes, be examined. They will prove
as well adapted to their author's genius as the life of the
Scottish peasant was to Burn's muse, or the praise of Laura
England, among the many who have tried their skill in
that illustrious task, may be a matter of doubt; and to what
American Scott are we to look for a series of romances
illustrative of our history, is yet a subject of speculation;
but no man, of ordinary perception, we presume, can for
a moment question that “The Melancholy of Tailors,”—
“the Character of an Undertaker,”—“the Praise of
Chimney-sweepers,”—the “Inconvenience of being
Hanged,” and sundry kindred subjects, were reserved for
the pen of Elia.
That writer is wise who avails himself of a somwhat
familiar idea, in presenting his mental creations to the
public. There is need of as much consideration in bestowing
a name upon an essay or a poem, which we wish
should be read, as in naming a child whom we would dedicate
to fame. The same reasons for circumspection
obtain in both cases. The more original the appellation,
provided it is not utterly foreign to all general associations,
the better. But it is essential that there should be something
which will create an interest at a glance. Our
essayist has been happy in his choice of subjects; his
wit failed him not here. Though no one has previously
written the “Praise of Chimney-sweepers,” yet every one
sees the dusky urchins daily, and would fain know what
can be said in their behalf. Most people have noticed
the “Melancholy of Tailors,” and are glad to find that some
one has undertaken philosophically to explain it. The
headings of all Elia's papers are exactly such as would
beguile us into reading when we desire to enter the region
pastime. There is one element of genius, the influence
of which we have never seen acknowledged, that ever
impresses our minds in reflecting on the themes to which
gifted men apply themselves. We allude to a certain
daring which induces them to grapple with topics, and
give expression to thoughts, which many have mused upon
without thinking of giving them utterance. There is
much of Byron's poetry which seems almost like a literal
transcript of our past or occasional emotions; the more
powerful and acknowledged a genius, the more fervently
do we declare the coincidence of our feelings with his
delineations. Many odd speculations have occurred to us
in reference to the strange subjects to which Lamb is
partial; we respond to most of his portraitures, and sympathise
in the feelings he avows. His humor and pathos,
therefore, are true, singulary, beautifully true, to human
nature; in this consists their superiority. Many have
aimed at the same results in a similar way; but the genius
of Lamb, in this department, has achieved no ordinary
triumph.
The drama was a rich source of pleasure and reflection
to Lamb. During a life passed almost wholly in the metropolis,
the theatre afforded him constant recreation, and
the species of exitement his peculiar genius required. It
was to him an important element in the imaginative being
he cherished. By means of it, he continually renewed
and brightened the rich vein of sentiment inherent in his
nature. To him it addressed language rife with the meaning
which characterised its ancient voice,—full of suggestive
whole range of dramatic literature, master of the philosophy
of Shakspeare, and overflowing with a highly cultivated
taste for the dramatic art, the drama was ranked by
Elia among the redeeming things of life. He did not
coldly recognise, but deeply felt, its importance to modern
society. Surrounded by the bustle, the worldliness and
the material agencies of a populous capital, he daily saw
man struggling on beneath the indurating pressure of
necessity, or presenting only artificial aspects,—and to
the strong and true representation of human nature, on
the stage and in the works of the dramatist, he looked as
a noble means of renovation. It gratified his humane
spirit, that the poor mechanic should lose, for an hour, the
memory of his toilsome lot, in sympathy with some vivid
personation of that love which once sent a glow to his
now hallow temples; that the creature of fashion and
pride should, occasionally, be led back to the primal fountains
of existence by the hand of Thespis; that an unwonted
tear should sometimes be drawn, like a pearl from
the deep, to the eye of some fair worlding, at the mighty
appeal of nature, in the voice of an affecting portrayer of
her truth. Elia had faith in the legitimate drama, as the
native offspring of the human mind, significant of its
successive eras, and as fitted to supply one of its truest
and deepest wants; and well he might have had, for its
history was as familiar to him as a household tale; he
had explored its chronicles with the assiduity of an enthusiast,
and the acumen of a virtuoso; he had garnered up
its gems as the true jewels of his country's literature; he
humanity; and, above all, in his own experience, he had
learned what human taste, judgment and feeling, may
derive from the wise appropriation of dramatic influence.
He knew, as well as his readers, how much he was indebted
to an intelligent devotion to them, for the vividness
of his pencilings, the fertility of his associations, and the
beauty of his imagery. Not in vain did he seek, in Hamlet's
musings, “grounds more relative” than popular reading
could afford, or turn from the inconsistencies of modern
gallantry, which he so admirably delineated, to bestow
his fond attentions upon the “bright angel” of Verona,
and “the gentle lady wedded to the Moor.”
Lamb's interest in the drama was too well founded to
be periodical, as is generally the case. He shared, indeed,
the common destiny, in beholding his youthful
visions of theatrical glory fade; the time came to him, as
it comes to all, when the mysterious curtain was reduced
to its actual quality, and became bona fide green baize,
and when the polished pilasters lost their likeness to
“glorified sugar candy;” but the histrionic art retained
its interest, and the literature of the drama yielded a
continual pastime. From the rainy afternoon which the
“child Elia” spent in such hope and fear, lest the wayward
elements should deprive him of his “first play”—to
the night when the sleep of the man Elia was disturbed
with visions of old Muden—he sought and found, in the
drama, food for his reflective humor and pleasurable occupancy
in his weary moods—if such e'er came to him—
us. Notwithstanding his partiality for theatrical representations,
few play-goers entertained a more just idea
of their frequent and necessary inadequateness. He
recognised the limits of the dramatic art. He realised,
beyond the generality of Shakspeare's admirers, the impossibility
of presenting, by the most successful performance,
our deepest conception of his characters. He
knew that the wand of that enchanter dealt with things
too deep, not only for speech, but for expression. He
was impatient at the common interpretation of Shakspeare's
mind. In the stillness of his retired study, the
creations of the bard appeared to him, as in an exalted
dream. In the attentive perusal of his plays,—the delicate
touches, the finer shades, the under current of philosophy,
were revealed to the mind of Lamb with an
impressiveness, of which personification is unsusceptible;
and few of his essays are more worthy of his
genius than that which embodies his views on this subject.
It should be attentively read by all who habitually honor
the minstrel of Avon, without being perfectly aware why
the honor is due. It will lead such to new investigations
into the mysteries of that wonderful tragic lore, upon
which the most gifted men have been proud to offer
one useful comment, or advance a single illustrative hint.
To the acted and written drama, Lamb assigned an
appropriate office; he believed each had its purpose
and that he who would derive the greatest benefit
from either, should study them relatively and in conjunction.
Such was his own method, and to the steadiness
the most interesting testimony. The goût with which he
dwells upon his dramatic reminiscences, the delight he
takes in living over scenes of this kind,—in recalling,
after an interval of years, the enjoyment of a single evening
of Liston's or Bensley's acting, indicate the intelligence
and warmth of his love of theatrical performances;
while his successful efforts in reviving the nearly forgotten
dramatic literature of the English stage, and his admirable
essays, directly or indirectly devoted to the general
subject, evince his application and attachment to it.
His talents as a dramatic critic are everywhere visible.
There is one feature of our author's devotion to the drama,
which is too characteristic of the man, and too intrinsically
pleasing, to be unnoticed. He never forgot those who
had contributed to his pleasure in this manner. They
were not to him the indifferent, unestimated beings they
are to the majority of those who are amused and instructed
by their labors. Charles Lamb respected the genius
of a splendid tragedian on the same grounds that that of a
fine sculptor won his admiration. He believed one as
heaven-bestowed as the other. He recognized his intellectual
or moral obligations to an affecting actor as readily
as to a favorite author. He sincerely respected the
ideality of the profession, sympathised in the life of toil
and comparative isolation it imposes, and felt for the deserving
and ambitious who had, by assiduous culture and
native energy, risen to its summit only to look forward
from that long sought elevation, to a brief continuance of
neglect, and the world's oblivion.
One of Lamb's most winning traits is his sincerity.
The attractiveness of this beautiful virtue, even in literature,
is worthy of observation. It seems to be an ordination
of the intellectual world, and a blessed one it is to
those who cherish faith in a spiritual philosophy—that
truth of expression shall alone prove powerfully and permanently
effective. It is happy that we are so constituted
as to be moved chiefly, if not solely, by voices attuned
and awakened by genuine emotion; it is well when foreign
aids and the most insinuating of conventional appliances
fail to deceive us into admiration of an artificial
literary aspirant; it is a glorious distinction of our common
nature, that soul-prompted language is the only universally
acknowledged eloquence. The mission of individual
genius is to exhibit itself. The advocacy of
popular opinions, the illustration of prevailing theories—
the literary party-work of the day, may be undertaken by
such as are unconscious of any more special and personal
calling. But let there be a self-preaching priesthood
in the field of letters and of art, to teach the great lesson
of human individuality. Let some gifted votaries of literature
and philosophy breathe original symphonies, instead
of merging their rich tones in the general chorus. Unfortunate
is the era when such men are not; and thrice
illustrious that in which they abound. The history of the
world proves this; and in proportion as an author is sincere,
in whatever age, he deserves our respect. We spontaneously
honor minds of this order, in whatever form
douce Davie Deans, in Scott's most beautiful tale, hears
himself denominated a Deanite, recommends him to our
esteem. And when a poet or an essayist is as habitually
and earnestly candid as is Elia, we feel and acknowledge
his worth, whatever may be the calibre of his genius.
Many and singular are the advantages attendant upon
this characteristic. The most obvious is that it brings
out the true power—the propium ingenium—of the individual.
Look at the history of Milton and Dante. They
surveyed their immediate social circumstances for a reflection
of themselves in vain; and then in calm confidence
they turned to the mirror fountain within themselves,
and thence evolved thoughts—unappreciated, indeed,
by their contemporaries, yet in the view of posterity
none the less oracular. And such intellectual laborers—
however confined and comparatively unimportant the
sphere of effort—being absolved from any undue allegiance
to merely temporary influences, give to their productions
a free and personal stamp. Truth is to literature,
what, in the view of the alchymists, the philosopher's
stone was to the base metals; it converts all it touches into
gold. And, although our author had to do mainly with
topics which a superficial reasoner would term trifling,
yet his lovely sincerity gives them a character, and sheds
upon them a warm and soothing light more pleasing than
weightier themes, less ingenously treated, can often boast.
Being sincere, of course Elia wrote only from the inspiration
of his overflowing spirit; he seems to have penned
every line, to have thrown off every essay, con amore.
who covered the face of one of his great figures with a
mantle, not daring to attempt a portraiture of the intense
grief which he represented him as suffering. Lamb endeavored
not to express what he did not feel; he wrote
not from necessity or policy, but from enthusiasm, from
his own gentle, sweet, yet deep enthusiasm. He had a
feeling for the art of writing, and therefore he would not
make it the hackneyed conventional agent it often is;
but ever regarded it as a crystalline mould wherein he could
faithfully present the form, hues, and very spirit of his
sentiments and speculations.
A striking and delightful consequence of this literary
sincerity is, that it preserves and developes the proper
humanity of the author. Literati of this class are utterly
devoid of pedantry. In society, and the common business
of life, they are as other men, except that a finer sensibility,
and more elevated general taste, distinguishes
them. In becoming writers, they cease not to be men.
Literature is then, indeed, what the English poet would
have it,—“an honorable augmentation” to our arms; it
is not exclusively pursued as if it were life's only good,
and a human being's sole aim; but it is applied to as a
beautiful accomplishment—a poetical recreation amid less
humanizing influences. Thus, instead of serving merely
as an arena for the display of selfish ambition, or a cell
wherein unsocial and barren devotion may find scope, it
is valued chiefly as the means of embodying the unforced
impressions of our own natures, for the happiness and
improvement of our fellow creatures. We say that such
because they cannot but feel that by the very constitution of
their natures, literature is only a part of the great whole
of the soul's being—a single form of its development, and
one among the thousand offices to which the versatile
mind is called.
It is needless to prove, in detail, Lamb's sincerity. It
is, perhaps, his most prominent characteristic; but in tracing
out and dwelling upon its influence, we are newly
impressed with the truth of Shaftesbury's declaration, that
“wisdom is more from the heart than from the head.”
We have ever remarked that the most delightful and truly
sincere writers are the most suceptible, affectionate, and
unaffected men. We have felt, that however intellectually
endowed, the feelings of such individuals are the true
sources of their power. Sympathy we consider one of the
primal principles of efficient genius. It is this truth of
feeling which enabled Shakspeare to depict so strongly
the various stages of passion, and the depth, growth, and
gradations of sentiment. In whom does this primitive
readiness to sympathize—to enter into all the moods of the
soul—continue beyond early life, so often as in men devoted
to imaginative objects? How frequently are we
struck with the child-like character of artists and poets!
It sometimes seems as if, along with childhood's ready
sympathy, many of the other characteristics of that epoch
were projected into the more mature stages of being.
“There is often,” says Madame de Staël, “in true genius
a sort of awkwardness, similar, in some respects, to the
credulity of sincere and noble souls.”
This readiness to catch impressions, this delicacy and
warmth of sympathy which belongs to the sincere school
of writers, is inestimable. It is said that a musical amateur
traversed the whole of Ireland, and gathered from the
peasants the delightful airs to which Moore's beautiful
Irish melodies were afterwards adapted. How much of
the charm of those sweet songs is owing to their associations
with the native and simple music thus gleaned
from voices to which it had traditionally descended!
And it is by their sympathy—their sincere and universal
interest in humanity, that the sweetest poets, the most renowned
dramatists, and such humble gleaners in the field
of letters, as our quaint essayist, are enabled to write in a
manner corresponding with the heaven-attuned, unwritten
music of the human heart. Sincerity gives them the
means of interpreting for their fellow beings—not only
the lofty subjects which filled the soul of the “blind bard
of Paradise,” and the broad range of life upon which the
observant mind of the poet of human nature was intent,
but those lesser and more unique themes which Elia loved
to speculate about, and humorously illustrate.
There is a unity of design in the essays of Elia. Disconnected
and fugitive as we should deem them at first
sight, an attentive persual reveals, if not a complete theory,
yet a definite and pervading spirit which is not devoid of
philosophy. After being amused by Lamb's humor, interested
by his quaintness, and fascinated by his style, there
yet remains a more deep impression upon our minds.
We feel that he had a specific object as an essayist; or, at
least, that the ideas he suggests tend to a particular result.
does he fulfil? We think Charles Lamb is to life what
Wordsworth is to nature. The latter points out the
field flowers, and the meadow rill, the soul's most primal and
simple movements, the mind's most single and unsophisticated
tendencies; the former indicates the lesser, and
scarcely noticed sources of pleasure and annoyance, mirth
and reflection, which occur in the beaten track of ordinary
life. It was remarked, by an able critic, of the author
of the Lyrical Ballads, that, “he may be said to take a
personal interest in the universe;” with equal truth Elia
may be regarded as taking a personal interest in life. He
delighted in designating its every-day, universal, and for
that very reason—disregarded experiences. Leaving the
delineation of martyrdoms, and the deeper joys of the
heart, to more ambitious writers, he preferred to dwell upon
the misery of children when left awake in their solitary
beds in the dark; to shadow forth the peace destroying
phantom of a “poor relation;” to draw up eloquent
bacheloric complaints of the behavior of “married people;”
to describe in touching terms, the agony of one condemned
to hear music “without an ear;” and to lament pathetically
the unsocial aspect of a metropolitan Sabbath, and
the disturbing, heartless conduct of those who remove
old landmarks. He did not sorrow only over minor miseries,
but gloried in minor pleasures. To him, “Elysian
exemptions” from ordinary toil—a sweet morning's nap—
a “sympathetic solitude”—an incidental act or emotion of
benevolence, and, especially, those dear “treasures cased
in leathern covers,” for which he was so thankful that he
these, and such as these, were to Charles Lamb absolute
and recognized blessings. He seems to have broken away
from the bondage of custom and to have seen all things
new. One would think, to note the freshness of his perceptions
in regard to the most familiar objects of London,
that in manhood he was for the first time initiated into city
life—that he was a new comer in the world at an advanced
age. Hogarth found no more delight in his street-pencilings,
than Lamb in his by-way speculations. In the
voyage of life he seemed to be an ordained cicerone, directing
attention to that lesser world of experience to
which the mass of men are insensible,—drawing their attention
from far-off visions of good, and oppressive reminiscences
of grief, to the low green herbage, springing up
in their way, and the soft gentle voices breathing at their
firesides, and around their daily steps. And there is truth
in Elia's philosophy, for,—
Humanity is humble,—finds no spot
Her heaven-guided feet refuse to tread.”
We never rise from one of his essays without a feeling
of contentment. He leads our thoughts to the actual, available
springs of enjoyment. He reconciles us to ourselves;
causing home-pleasures, and the charms of the wayside,
and the mere comforts of existence, to emerge from the
shadow into which our indifference has cast them, into
the light of fond recognition. The flat dull surface of common
life, he causes to rise into beautiful basso-relievo. In
He rejuvenates our worn and weary feelings, revives the
dim flame of our enthusiasm, opens our eyes to real
and present good, and with his humorous accents, and unpretending
manner, reads us a homily on the folly of desponding,
and the wisdom of appreciating the cluster of
minor joys which surround, and may be made continually
to cheer our being.
We have endeavored to designate the most prominent
of Charles Lamb's traits as an essayist. There is, however,
one point to which all that we know of the man converges.
His literary and personal example tends to one
striking lesson, which should not be thoughtlessly received.
We allude to his singular and constant devotion to
the ideal. Indeed he is one of those beings who make us
deeply and newly feel how much there is within a human
spirit,—how independent it may become of extrinsic aids,—
how richly it may live to itself. Here is an individual
whose existence was, for the most part, spent within the
smoky precincts of London; first a school-boy at a popular
institution, then a laborious clerks, and at length a
“lean annuitant.” Public life, with its various mental incitements,—foreign
travel, with its thousand fertilizing
associations,—fortune, with the unnumbered objects of
taste she affords,—ministered not to him. Yet with what
admirable constancy did he follow out that sense of the
beautiful, and the perfect, which he regarded as most essentially
himself! How ardently did he cherish an
ideal life! When outward influences and social restrictions
encroached upon this, his great end,—the drama,
proved restoratives. He did not gratify his fondness for
antiquity among the ruins of the ancient world; but the
Temple cloisters, or an old folio, were more eloquent to
him of the past, than the Coloseum is to the mass of travellers.
He knew not the happiness of conjugal affection;
but his attachment to a departed object was to him a
spring of as deep joy, as the unimaginative often find in
an actual passion. No little prattlers came about him at
even-tide; but dream-children, as lovely as cherubs, solaced
his lonely hours. The taste, the love, the very
being of Charles Lamb, was ideal. The struggles for
power and gain went on around him; but the tumult disturbed
not his repose. The votaries of pleasure swept by
him with all the insignia of gaiety and fashion; but the
dazzle and laugh of the careless throng lured him not
aside. He felt it was a blessed privilege to stand beneath
the broad heavens, to saunter through the fields, to
muse upon the ancient and forgotten, to look into the
faces of men, to rove on the wings of fancy, to give scope
to the benevolent affections, and especially to evolve from
his own breast a light “touching all things with hues of
heaven;” in a word to be Elia. And is there not a delight
in contemplating such a life beyond that which the
annals of noisier and more heartless men inspire? In an
age of restless activity, associated effort, and a devotion to
temporary ends, is there not an unspeakable charm in the
character of a consistent idealist? When we can recall so
many instances of the perversion of the poetical temperament
in gifted natures, through passion and error, is
with which it blessed Lamb? He has now left
forever, the haunts accustomed to his presence. No
more will Elia indite quaint reminiscences and humorous
descriptions for our pleasure; no more will his criticism
enlighten, his pathos affect, or his aphorisms delight us.
But his sweet and generous sympathies, his refined taste
for the excellent in letters, his grateful perception of the
true good of being, his ideal spirit, dwells latently in
every bosom. And all may brighten andr adiate it, till
life's cold pathway is warm with the sunshine of the soul.
| Rambles and reveries | |