The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and

institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived

the darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and

victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and

opinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to

the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations.

Whatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the

extinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress of

despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here

discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had

become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of

the will of others; lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud,

characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of

_creating_ in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of

such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of

events immediately connected with them, and those events are most

entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it most

expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish

words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been

incorporated into our popular religion.

It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry

of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves.

The principle of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in

his _Republic_, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the

materials of pleasure and of power, produced by the common skill and

labour of human beings, ought to be distributed among them. The

limitations of this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by

the sensibility of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato,

following the doctrines of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral

and intellectual system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past,

the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged

the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and

Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression

of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The

incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of

the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in

their mythology and institutions. The result was a sum of the action

and reaction of all the causes included in it; for it may be assumed

as a maxim that no nation or religion can supersede any other without

incorporating into itself a portion of that which it supersedes. The

abolition of personal and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of

women from a great part of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were

among the consequences of these events.

The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest

political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The

freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a

religion, the idols of whose worship were ever present. It was as if

the statues of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and

motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth

became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar

appearance and proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and

a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this

creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language

was the instrument of their art: 'Galeotto fù il libro, e chi lo

scrisse.' The Provençal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch,

whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted

fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is

impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty

which we contemplate: it were superfluous to explain how the

gentleness and the elevation of mind connected with these sacred

emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and wise, and lift

them out of the dull vapours of the little world of self. Dante

understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch. His

_Vita Nuova_ is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment and

language: it is the idealized history of that period, and those

intervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of

Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her

loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to

the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of

modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the judgement

of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the 'Divine Drama',

in the measure of the admiration which they accord to the Hell,

Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn of everlasting

love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the

ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest writers of

the renovated world; and the music has penetrated the caverns of

society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and

superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare,

Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age,

have celebrated the dominion of love, planting as it were trophies in

the human mind of that sublimest victory over sensuality and force.

The true relation borne to each other by the sexes into which human

kind is distributed, has become less misunderstood; and if the error

which confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two

sexes has been partially recognized in the opinions and institutions

of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which

chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets.

The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the

stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The

distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton

have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these

great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a

difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the

distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own

creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark

the full extent of it by placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls

_iustissimus unus_, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical

caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's

poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system,

of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief

popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the

character of Satan as expressed in _Paradise Lost_. It is a mistake to

suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular

personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a

sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an

enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not

to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles

his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his

conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far

superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he

has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to

one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most

horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of

inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the

alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has

so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a

violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his

God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is

the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He

mingled as it were the elements of human nature as colours upon a

single pallet, and arranged them in the composition of his great

picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is, according to the

laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external

universe and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite

the sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind. The _Divina

Commedia_ and _Paradise Lost_ have conferred upon modern mythology a

systematic form; and when change and time shall have added one more

superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon

the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the

religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it

will have been stamped with the eternity of genius.

Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the

second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and

intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of

the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it:

developing itself in correspondence with their development. For

Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the

sensible world; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius,

had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all

that he copied; and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their

notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan,

Statius, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of

epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic

in its highest sense be refused to the _Aeneid_, still less can it be

conceded to the _Orlando Furioso_, the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, the

_Lusiad_, or the _Faerie Queene_.

Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion

of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably

in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship

of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the

Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious

reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and

acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation.

Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a

language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of

inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of those great spirits

who presided over the resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that

starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from

republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted

world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a

burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in

the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet

found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first

acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be

undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A

great poem is a fountain for ever overflowing with the waters of

wisdom and delight; and after one person and one age has exhausted all

its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to

share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever

developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.

The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and

Boccaccio, was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and

architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the

superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials of

Italian invention.

But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of

poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out

the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon

their own and all succeeding times.

But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners

and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of

the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of

reason is more useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this

distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a

general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and

intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces.

There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal and permanent;

the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the

means of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense,

whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the

imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower

meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining it to express

that which banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature,

the surrounding men with security of life, the dispersing the grosser

delusions of superstition, and the conciliating such a degree of

mutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of

personal advantage.

Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have

their appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets,

and copy the sketches of their creations into the book of common life.

They make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest

value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of

the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the

superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions,

let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced,

the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst

the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labour,

let them beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence

with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not

tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the

extremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, 'To him

that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little

that he hath shall be taken away.' The rich have become richer, and

the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven

between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are

the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the

calculating faculty.

It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the

definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an

inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature,

the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of

the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair

itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the

highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this

principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure

which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which

is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in

sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the

saying, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the

house of mirth.' Nor that this highest species of pleasure is

necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and friendship, the

ecstasy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and

still more of the creation of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.

The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true

utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or

poetical philosophers.

The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,[12] and

their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are

entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the

degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would

have exhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would

have been talked for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men,

women, and children, burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment

have been congratulating each other on the abolition of the

Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what

would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante,

Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor

Milton, had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been

born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of

the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments

of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of

the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with

its belief. The human mind could never, except by the intervention of

these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser

sciences, and that application of analytical reasoning to the

aberrations of society, which it is now attempted to exalt over the

direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself.

[12] Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was

essentially a poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere

reasoners.

We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how

to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical

knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the

produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought,

is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.

There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in

morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what is wiser

and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let '_I dare

not_ wait upon _I would_, like the poor cat in the adage.' We want the

creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous

impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our

calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can

digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the

limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of

the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the

internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself

a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree

disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which is the

basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention

for abridging and combining labour, to the exasperation of the

inequality of mankind? From what other cause has it arisen that the

discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to the

curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which

money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.

The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold; by one it creates

new materials of knowledge and power and pleasure; by the other it

engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according

to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and

the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than

at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating

principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed

the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of

human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which

animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and

circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,

and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time

the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from

which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if

blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren

world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of

life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all

things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture

of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded

beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue,

love, patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful

universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of

the grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not

ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the

owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not

like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination

of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest

poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal,

which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to

transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour

of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the

conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its

approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its

original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness

of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on

the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been

communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original

conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present

day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of

poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay

recommended by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than

a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial

connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture

of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the

limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the

_Paradise Lost_ as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have

his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him the

'unpremeditated song'. And let this be an answer to those who would

allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the

_Orlando Furioso_. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic

is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is

still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great

statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in

the mother's womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in

formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the

gradations, or the media of the process.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest

and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and

feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding

our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing

unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that

even in the desire and regret they leave, there cannot but be

pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is

as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own;

but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the

coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled

sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are

experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and

the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them

is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love,

patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions;

and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a

universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits

of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they

combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a

trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the

enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced

these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.

Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the

world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the

interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form,

sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to

those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal

of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into

the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of

the divinity in man.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that

which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most

deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure,

eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all

irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every

form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous

sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret

alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from

death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world,

and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of

its forms.

All things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to the

percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a

heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which

binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.

And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's

dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a

being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to

which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe

of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our

inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder

of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to

imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has

been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted

by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: _Non

merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta_.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure,

virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best,

the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time

be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of

human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the

happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally

incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most

spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would

look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and

the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty

in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to

confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the

arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own

persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and

executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that

certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not

soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard,

that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was

a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a

libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with

this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has

done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors

have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their

sins 'were as scarlet, they are now white as snow': they have been

washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in

what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime

have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and

poets; consider how little is, as it appears--or appears, as it is;

look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it

is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and

that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the

consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are

the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects

are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. The frequent

recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may

produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with its

own nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals

of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet

becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences

under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately

organized than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his

own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the

one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this

difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he

neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of

universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one

another's garments.

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty,

envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have never

formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.

I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down

these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to

my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of

observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which

they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of

the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first

division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have

moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel

with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be

stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and

Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But

it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than

confound.

The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements

and principles; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits

assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a

restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms of order

and of beauty, according to which the materials of human life are

susceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in a universal

sense.

The second part[13] will have for its object an application of these

principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a

defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and

opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative and

creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic

development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free

development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new

birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue

contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual

achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass

beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national

struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald,

companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a

beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such

periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and

receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and

nature. The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as

regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent

correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the

ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet

compelled to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their

own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most

celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the

electric life which burns within their words. They measure the

circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a

comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves

perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is

less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the

hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the

gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words

which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to

battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved

not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the

world.

[13] This was never written.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

1778-1830

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS (1823)

My father was a Dissenting Minister at Wem in Shropshire; and in the

year 1798 (the figures that compose the date are to me like the

'dreaded name of Demogorgon') Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to

succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation

there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he

was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a

state of anxiety and expectation to look for the arrival of his

successor, could find no one at all answering the description but a

round-faced man in a short black coat (like a shooting-jacket) which

hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking

at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned

to give an account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in

black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning

to talk. He did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I

know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense

for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the _proud

Salopians_ like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welsh mountains that

skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have

heard no such mystic sounds since the days of

High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewelyn's lay!

As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue

tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of

the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a

Siren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but

I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my

admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the

light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering

in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate,

helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless;

but now, bursting from the deadly bands that 'bound them,

With Styx nine times round them,'

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch

the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its

original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and

unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,

has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that

my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length

found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is

not to my purpose.

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of

exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch

(nine miles farther on) according to the custom of Dissenting

Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is

thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is

kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the

fires in the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, placed at different stations,

that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids

the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my

father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's

probable successor; but in the meantime I had gone to hear him preach

the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into

a Unitarian pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance in these

degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of

Christianity, which was not to be resisted.

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to

walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.

Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk

as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.

_Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent

effacer. Dussé-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux temps de ma

jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma

mémoire._ When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th psalm,

and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, 'And

he went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out

this text, his voice 'rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,'

and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud,

deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the

sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that

prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The

idea of St. John came into mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness, who

had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.'

The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying

with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and

state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit of the

world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed

to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of

Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical and

pastoral excursion,--and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a

striking contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team

afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 'as though

he should never be old,' and the same poor country-lad, crimped,

kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a

wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and

pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome

finery of the profession of blood.

Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung.

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard

the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together,

Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of

Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well

satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the

sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;

and the cold dank drops of dew that hung half-melted on the beard of

the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there

was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything

into good The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on

it:

Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called

down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He

received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without

uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For

those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing

with W. H.'s forehead!' His appearance was different from what I had

anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim

light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect,

a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His

complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--

As are the children of yon azure sheen.

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with

large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a

sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face

o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful

complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez.

His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin

good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the

index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.

It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed

and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into

the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support

or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his

adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or

compass. So at least I comment on it after the event. Coleridge in his

person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent,

or like Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair (now, alas!

grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth

masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to

enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is

traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the

pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character to all who

preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of

those!

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who

was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years.

He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and

sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith)

to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother's

proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back

to past generations (as far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes,

fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the

human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising up for

ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human breast!

After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in the

heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American

war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to

spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only converse

that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture and the

cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days,

repining but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of

the Commentators--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which

would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night

(with the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to

gather broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with no

small degree of pride and pleasure)?--Here were 'no figures nor no

fantasies,'--neither poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing

to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there

appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected

tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by

the weight of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the

understanding, there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the

patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and

processions of camels at the distance of three thousand years; there

was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes,

types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were

discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty

speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's

Ark and at the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of

the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses

of time, the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with the

voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and though the soul might slumber

with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet

it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of

sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was comparatively a

dream; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the

resurrection, and a judgement to come!

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his

guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever

added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly

have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings.

Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled round

our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles

over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a

smile of delight beamed across his rugged cordial face, to think that

Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![14] Besides, Coleridge seemed to

take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He

talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of

subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very

edifying manner on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he

said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his _Vindiciae

Gallicae_ as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic man--a

master of the topics,--or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who

knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods

were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style

or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician.

Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because

he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a

rhetorician, who had only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured

to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and

that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt might

be made the test of a vulgar democratical mind. This was the first

observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just

and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips

on the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge

added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke

highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr.

Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them--'He strides on so far before

you, that he dwindles in the distance!' Godwin had once boasted to him

of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with

dubious success; Coleridge told him--'If there had been a man of

genius in the room he would have settled the question in five

minutes.' He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wollstonecraft, and I

said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn

off Godwin's objections to something she advanced with quite a

playful, easy air. He replied, that 'this was only one instance of the

ascendancy which people of imagination exercised over those of mere

intellect.' He did not rate Godwin very high[15] (this was caprice or

prejudice, real or affected) but he had a great idea of Mrs.

Wollstonecraft's powers of conversation, none at all of her talent for

book-making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if

he was not much struck _with_ him, and he said, he thought himself in

more danger of being struck _by_ him. I complained that he would not

let me get on at all, for he required a definition of every the

commonest word, exclaiming, 'What do you mean by a _sensation_, Sir?

What do you mean by an _idea_?' This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing

the road to truth:--it was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we

took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I remember;

but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge

was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found

that he had just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood,

making him an offer of 150_l._ a year if he chose to waive his present

pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and

philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this

proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an

additional damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite

from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old

romance. Instead of living at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor

of a Dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to

inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable

Mountains. Alas! I knew not the way thither, and felt very little

gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently relieved from

this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going

to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me

with undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that

that was his address, _Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_;

and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks' time, and,

if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised

than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in _Cassandra_) when

he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I stammered out my

acknowledgements and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr.

Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and this mighty

business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I

accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine morning in the

middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer

is described as going

----Sounding on his way.

[14] My father was one of those who mistook his talent after

all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred

his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the

first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words,

and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen

them equalled.

[15] He complained in particular of the presumption of his

attempting to establish the future immortality of man,

'without' (as he said) 'knowing what Death was or what Life

was'--and the tone in which he pronounced these two words

seemed to convey a complete image of both.

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from

subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on

ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have

preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,

one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he

could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified

him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me

on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other.

This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect

it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle,

as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line.

He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was

stolen from an objection started in one of South's Sermons--_Credat

Judaeus Apella!_). I was not very much pleased at this account of

Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that

completest of all metaphysical _choke-pears_, his _Treatise on Human

Nature_, to which the _Essays_, in point of scholastic subtlety and

close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer-reading.

Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I

think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends

by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on

his _Essay on Vision_ as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it

undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking

the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory of Matter

and Spirit, and saying, 'Thus I confute him, Sir.' Coleridge drew a

parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connexion) between

Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a

subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be

more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the

characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true

philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of

nature and his own mind. He did not speak of his _Analogy_, but of his

_Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel_, of which I had never heard. Coleridge

somehow always contrived to prefer the _unknown_ to the _known_. In

this instance he was right. The _Analogy_ is a tissue of sophistry, of

wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the _Sermons_ (with the

Preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a

candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and

without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was

sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the

same subject (the _Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind_)--and

I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great

willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat

down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, got new

pens and paper, determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few

meagre sentences in the skeleton style of a mathematical

demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after

trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions,

facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in which I had

plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt

as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank

unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was

then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being

able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in

the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we

not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the

quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a _Sonnet

to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury_, and immortalize every step

of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very

milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines,

to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of

discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness

and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him

a mere time-serving casuist, and said that 'the fact of his work on

Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our

Universities was a disgrace to the national character.' We parted at

the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much pleased.

I had met with unexpected notice from a person whom I believed to have

been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and affable to me had been his

condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.' He

was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that

inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation,

and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all

like them, either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts

which were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies

and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory,

when he made the whole material universe look like a transparency of

fine words; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere told

himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his smoking

tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where the company

found him to their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder

when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about

him, and launched into a three hours' description of the third

heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr. Southey's

Vision of Judgement, and also from that other Vision of Judgement,

which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge Street Junto, has taken

into his especial keeping.

On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I

had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still

lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth

met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been

won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable

sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months

the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was

balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of

evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. _I was to

visit Coleridge in the Spring._ This circumstance was never absent

from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at

the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit

for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise

then. This delay did not damp, but rather increase my ardour. In the

meantime I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the

mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it.

I had been reading Coleridge's description of England, in his fine

_Ode on the Departing Year_, and I applied it, _con amore_, to the

objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a

new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was

baptized in the waters of Helicon!

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn

heart and untried feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester,

and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the

muff. I remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping

at an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to

read _Paul and Virginia_. Sweet were the showers in early youth that

drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books

I read! I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book, that

nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the

entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the

behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from

a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life,

because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was

this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to

Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I

thought he had borrowed the idea of his _Poems on the Naming of

Places_ from the local inscriptions of the same kind in _Paul and

Virginia_. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction

without a difference, in defence of his claim to originality. And the

slightest variation would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind;

for whatever _he_ added or omitted would inevitably be worth all that

any one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment.--I was

still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken

care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater,

and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river,

returned to the inn, and read _Camilla_. So have I loitered my life

away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing,

thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one

thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything!

I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is

beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the

other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near

Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me, as the map

of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me

over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family mansion of the St. Aubins,

where Wordsworth lived. It was then in the possession of a friend of

the poet's, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow that period (the

time just after the French Revolution) was not a time when _nothing

was given for nothing_. The mind opened, and a softness might be

perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath 'the scales

that fence' our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but

his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had

free access to her brother's poems, the _Lyrical Ballads_, which were

still in manuscript, or in the form of _Sibylline Leaves_. I dipped

into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a

novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and

covered with the round-faced family-portraits of the age of George I

and II, and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that

overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could

----hear the loud stag speak.

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our

imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and

waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes,

and there is always something to come better than what we see. As in

our dreams the fullness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the

coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and

pampered with our good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless

happiness, the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of

the heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As

we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no

longer wrapped in _lamb's-wool_, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the

pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and

nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what _has

been_!

That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the

park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that

stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and

musical voice, the ballad of _Betty Foy_. I was not critically or

sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the

rest for granted. But in the _Thorn_, the _Mad Mother_, and the

_Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman_, I felt that deeper power and

pathos which have been since acknowledged,

In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style

and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of

the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of

the first welcome breath of Spring,

While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice

sounded high

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall,

gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not

prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place,

and that there was a something corporeal, a _matter-of-fact-ness_, a

clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in

consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through

the air; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself

from a green spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however (if

I remember right), that this objection must be confined to his

descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and

comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the

universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather

than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at

Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree

to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don

Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the _costume_ of

that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped

pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not

unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn pressure of

thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something

in objects more than the outward appearance), an intense high narrow

forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling,

and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal

at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his

face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits; but he was teased into

making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head of him, introduced into the

_Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem_, is the most like his drooping

weight of thought and expression. He sat down and talked very

naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his

voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the

northern _burr_, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make

havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said

triumphantly that 'his marriage with experience had not been so

productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good

things of this life.' He had been to see the _Castle Spectre_ by Monk

Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said 'it

fitted the taste of the audience like a glove.' This _ad captandum_

merit was, however, by no means a recommendation of it, according to

the severe principles of the new school, which reject rather than

court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed

window, said, 'How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank!' I

thought within myself, 'With what eyes these poets see nature!' and

ever after, when I saw the sunset stream upon the objects facing it,

conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for

having made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again the day

following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the open

air; and the comment made upon it by his face and voice was very

different from that of some later critics! Whatever might be thought

of the poem, 'his face was as a book where men might read strange

matters,' and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones.

There is a _chaunt_ in the recitation both of Coleridge and

Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the

judgement. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual

use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full,

animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and

internal. The one might be termed more _dramatic_, the other more

_lyrical_. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in

walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling

branches of a copse wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he

could) walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot

where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption.

Returning that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with

Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the

nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in

making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three

weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting

the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the

poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and

listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our _flip_.

It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down

the Bristol Channel, as far as Lynton. We set off together on foot,

Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether

Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as

flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass

pan. He 'followed in the chace, like a dog who hunts, not like one

that made up the cry.' He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and

corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his

walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a

sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a

state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell

from Coleridge's lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge

was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an

opinion the whole way: yet of the three, had I to choose during that

journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed Coleridge

into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were puzzled how to bring

him under any of their categories. When he sat down at table with his

idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr.

Blackwood's, when they sat down at the same table with the King, was

not more so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the

brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay

below us: contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as clear,

as pure, as _embrowned_ and ideal as any landscape I have seen since,

of Gaspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's march--(our

feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue)--through Minehead

and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Lynton, which we did not reach till

near midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgement.

We, however, knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were

repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of

fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We

walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the

channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into

little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face

scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path

winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven

crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare

masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon, and within the

red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the

_Ancient Mariner_. At Lynton the character of the sea-coast becomes

more marked and rugged. There is a place called the 'Valley of Rocks'

(I suspect this was only the poetical name for it) bedded among

precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which

the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its screaming

flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, as if

an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of

perpendicular rocks, something like the 'Giant's Causeway'. A

thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was

running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the

'Valley of Rocks', but as if in spite, the clouds only muttered a few

angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops. Coleridge told me

that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place the scene of a

prose-tale, which was to have been in the manner of, but far superior

to, the _Death of Abel_, but they had relinquished the design. In the

morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an

old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very

sight of the bee-hives from which it had been taken, and a garden full

of thyme and wild flowers that had produced it. On this occasion

Coleridge spoke of Virgil's _Georgics_, but not well. I do not think

he had much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this room

that we found a little worn-out copy of the _Seasons_, lying in a

window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, '_That_ is true fame!' He

said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one; his style was

as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as

the best modern poet. He said the _Lyrical Ballads_ were an experiment

about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public

taste would endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style

than had hitherto been attempted; totally discarding the artifices of

poetical diction, and making use only of such words as had probably

been common in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II.

Some comparison was introduced between Shakespeare and Milton. He said

'he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespeare appeared to him a mere

stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely

more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man's

estate; or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He

spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not

like the versification of the latter. He observed that 'the ears of

these couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories,

that could not retain the harmony of whole passages.' He thought

little of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a

much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox

or Pitt. He however thought him very inferior in richness of style and

imagery to some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy

Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to

enter into the merits of _Caleb Williams_.[16] In short, he was

profound and discriminating with respect to those authors whom he

liked, and where he gave his judgement fair play; capricious,

perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered

on the 'ribbed sea-sands', in such talk as this, a whole morning, and

I recollect met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us

the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that

had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him

at the risk of their own lives. He said 'he did not know how it was

that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a _nature_ towards one another.'

This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of

that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had

adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that

_likeness_ was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in

the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a

former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new) but because

it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of

this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the

benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any

interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should

be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already know.

We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent

cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we

had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.

[16] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at

this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a

striking account at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by

Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is

seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and

mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the

beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He

would, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral as

this at any time.

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return

home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to

preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had

prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of

the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear

him,--this was a fault,--but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The

next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I

recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy

our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines of

his tragedy of _Remorse_; which I must say became his mouth and that

occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's and

the Drury Lane boards,--

Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,

And give those scenes thine everlasting life.

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had

been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was

cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time

after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always

appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace book under his

arm, and the first with a _bon-mot_ in his mouth. It was at Godwin's

that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing

fiercely which was the best--_Man as he was, or man as he is to be_.

'Give me', says Lamb, 'man as he is _not_ to be.' This saying was the

beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still

continues.--Enough of this for the present.

But there is matter for another rhyme,

And I to this may add a second tale.

JOHN KEBLE

1792-1866

SACRED POETRY (1825)

_The Star in the East; with other Poems._ By Josiah Conder. London.

1824.

There are many circumstances about this little volume, which tend

powerfully to disarm criticism. In the first place, it is, for the

most part, of a _sacred_ character: taken up with those subjects which

least of all admit, with propriety, either in the author or critic,

the exercise of intellectual subtlety. For the _practical_ tendency,

indeed, of such compositions, both are most deeply responsible; the

author who publishes, and the critic who undertakes to recommend or to

censure them. But if they appear to be written with any degree of

sincerity and earnestness, we naturally shrink from treating them

merely as literary efforts. To interrupt the current of a reader's

sympathy in such a case, by critical objections, is not merely to

deprive him of a little harmless pleasure, it is to disturb him almost

in a devotional exercise. The most considerate reviewer, therefore, of

a volume of sacred poetry, will think it a subject on which it is

easier to say too much than too little.

In the present instance, this consideration is enforced by the

unpretending tone of the volume, which bears internal evidence, for

the most part, of not having been written to meet the eye of the

world. It is in vain to say that this claim on the critic's favour is

nullified by publication. The author may give it up, and yet the work

may retain it. We may still feel that we have no right to judge

severely of what was not, at first, intended to come before our

judgement at all. This of course applies only to those compositions,

which indicate, by something within themselves, this freedom from the

pretension of authorship. And such are most of those to which we are

now bespeaking our readers' attention.

_Most_ of them, we say, because the first poem in the volume, _The

Star in the East_, is of a more ambitious and less pleasing character.

Although in blank verse, it is, in fact, a lyrical effusion; an ode on

the rapid progress and final triumph of the Gospel. It looks like the

composition of a young man: harsh and turgid in parts, but

interspersed with some rather beautiful touches. The opening lines are

a fair specimen.

O to have heard th' unearthly symphonies,

Which o'er the starlight peace of Syrian skies

Came floating like a dream, that blessed night

When angel songs were heard by sinful men,

Hymning Messiah's advent! O to have watch'd

The night with those poor shepherds, whom, when first

The glory of the Lord shed sudden day--

Day without dawn, starting from midnight, day

Brighter than morning--on those lonely hills

Strange fear surpris'd--fear lost in wondering joy,

When from th' angelic multitude swell'd forth

The many-voicèd consonance of praise:--

Glory in th' highest to God, and upon earth

Peace, towards men good will. But once before,

In such glad strains of joyous fellowship,

The silent earth was greeted by the heavens,

When at its first foundation they looked down

From their bright orbs, those heavenly ministries,

Hailing the new-born world with bursts of joy.

Notwithstanding beauties scattered here and there, there is an effort

and constrained stateliness in the poem, very different from the

rapidity and simplicity of many of the shorter lyrics, which follow

under the titles of Sacred and Domestic Poems. Such, for instance, as

the Poor Man's Hymn

As much have I of worldly good

As e'er my master had:

I diet on as dainty food,

And am as richly clad,

Tho' plain my garb, though scant my board,

As Mary's Son and Nature's Lord.

The manger was his infant bed,

His home, the mountain-cave,

He had not where to lay his head,

He borrow'd even his grave.

Earth yielded him no resting spot,--

Her Maker, but she knew him not.

As much the world's good will I bear,

Its favours and applause,

As He, whose blessed name I bear,--

Hated without a cause,

Despis'd, rejected, mock'd by pride,

Betray'd, forsaken, crucified.

Why should I court my Master's foe?

Why should I fear its frown?

Why should I seek for rest below,

Or sigh for brief renown?--

A pilgrim to a better land,

An heir of joys at GOD's right hand?

Or the following sweet lines on Home, which occur among the Domestic

poems:

That is not home, where day by day

I wear the busy hours away.

That is not home, where lonely night

Prepares me for the toils of light--

'Tis hope, and joy, and memory, give

A home in which the heart can live--

These walls no lingering hopes endear,

No fond remembrance chains me here,

Cheerless I heave the lonely sigh--

Eliza, canst thou tell me why?

'Tis where thou art is home to me,

And home without thee cannot be.

There are who strangely love to roam,

And find in wildest haunts their home;

And some in halls of lordly state,

Who yet are homeless, desolate.

The sailor's home is on the main,

The warrior's, on the tented plain,

The maiden's, in her bower of rest,

The infant's, on his mother's breast--

But where thou art is home to me,

And home without thee cannot be.

There is no home in halls of pride,

They are too high, and cold, and wide.

No home is by the wanderer found:

'Tis not in place: it hath no bound.

It is a circling atmosphere

Investing all the heart holds dear;--

A law of strange attractive force,

That holds the feelings in their course;

It is a presence undefin'd,

O'er-shadowing the conscious mind,

Where love and duty sweetly blend

To consecrate the name of friend;--

Where'er thou art is home to me,

And home without thee cannot be.

My love, forgive the anxious sigh--

I hear the moments rushing by,

And think that life is fleeting fast,

That youth with us will soon be past.

Oh! when will time, consenting, give

The home in which my heart can live?

There shall the past and future meet,

And o'er our couch, in union sweet,

Extend their cherub wings, and shower

Bright influence on the present hour,

Oh! when shall Israel's mystic guide,

The pillar'd cloud, our steps decide,

Then, resting, spread its guardian shade,

To bless the home which love hath made?

Daily, my love, shall thence arise

Our hearts' united sacrifice;

And home indeed a home will be,

Thus consecrate and shar'd with thee.

We will add one more specimen of the same kind, which forms a natural

and pleasing appendix to the preceding lines.

Louise! you wept, that morn of gladness

Which made your Brother blest;

And tears of half-reproachful sadness

Fell on the Bridegroom's vest:

Yet, pearly tears were those, to gem

A Sister's bridal diadem.

No words could half so well have spoken,

What thus was deeply shown

By Nature's simplest, dearest token,

How much was then my own;

Endearing her for whom they fell,

And Thee, for having loved so well.

But now no more--nor let a Brother,

Louise, regretful see,

That still 'tis sorrow to another,

That he should happy be.

Those were, I trust, the only tears

That day shall cost through coming years.

Smile with us. Happy and light-hearted,

We three the time will while.

And, when sometimes a season parted,

Still think of us, and smile.

But come to us in gloomy weather;

We'll weep, when we must weep, together.

Now, what is the reason of the great difference between these extracts

and that from the _Star in the East_?--a difference which the earlier

date of the latter, so far from accounting for, only makes the more

extraordinary. In some instances, the interval of time is very short,

but at all events more effort and turgidness might have been expected

in the earlier poems, more simplicity and care and a more subdued tone

in the later. We suspect a reason, which both poets and poetical

readers are too apt to leave out of sight. There is a want of _truth_

in the _Star in the East_--not that the author is otherwise than quite

in earnest--but his earnestness seems rather an artificial glow, to

which he has been worked up by reading and conversation of a

particular cast, than the overflowing warmth of his own natural

feelings, kindled by circumstances in which he was himself placed. In

a word, when he writes of the success of the Bible Society, and the

supposed amelioration of the world in consequence, he writes from

report and fancy only; but when he speaks of a happy home, of kindly

affections, of the comforts which piety can administer in

disappointment and sorrow; either we are greatly mistaken, or he

speaks from real and present experience. The poetical result is what

the reader has seen:

----mens onus reponit, et peregrino

Labore fessi venimus Larem ad nostrum--

We turn gladly from our fairy voyage round the world to refresh

ourselves with a picture, which we feel to be drawn from the life, of

a happy and innocent fireside. Nor is it, in the slightest degree,

derogatory to an author's talent to say that he has failed,

comparatively, on that subject of which he must have known

comparatively little.

Let us here pause a moment to explain what is meant when we speak of

such prospects as are above alluded to, being shadowy and unreal in

respect of what is matter of experience. It is not that we doubt the

tenor of the Scripture, regarding the final conversion of the whole

world, or that we close our eyes to the wonderful arrangements, if the

expression may be used, which Divine Providence seems everywhere

making, with a view to that great consummation. One circumstance, in

particular, arrests our attention, as pervading the whole of modern

history, but gradually standing out in a stronger light as the view

draws nearer our own times: we mean the rapid increase of colonization

_from Christian nations only_. So that the larger half of the globe,

and what in the nature of things will soon become the more populous,

is already, in profession, Christian. The event, therefore, is

unquestionable: but experience, we fear, will hardly warrant the

exulting anticipations, which our author, in common with many of whose

sincerity there is no reason to doubt, has raised upon it. It is but

too conceivable that the whole world may become nominally Christian,

yet the face of things may be very little changed for the better. And

any view of the progress of the gospel, whether in verse or in prose,

which leaves out this possibility, is so far wanting in truth, and in

that depth of thought which is as necessary to the higher kinds of

poetical beauty as to philosophy or theology itself.

This, however, is too solemn and comprehensive a subject to be lightly

or hastily spoken of. It is enough to have glanced at it, as

accounting, in some measure, for the general failure of modern poets

in their attempts to describe the predicted triumph of the gospel in

the latter days.

To return to the sacred and domestic poems, thus advantageously

distinguished from that which gives name to the volume. Affection,

whether heavenly or earthly, is the simplest idea that can be; and in

the graceful and harmonious expression of it lies the principal beauty

of these poems. In the descriptive parts, and in the development of

abstract sentiment, there is more of effort, and occasionally

something very like affectation: approaching, in one instance (the

_Nightingale_,) far nearer than we could wish, to the most vicious of

all styles, the style of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his miserable followers.

Now, these are just the sort of merit and the sort of defect, which

one might naturally expect to find united; the very simplicity of

attachment, which qualifies the mind for sacred or domestic poetry,

making its movements awkward and constrained, when scenes are to be

described, or thoughts unravelled of more complication and less

immediate interest. This is the rather to be observed, as many other

sacred poets have become less generally pleasing and useful, than they

otherwise would have been, from this very circumstance. The simple and

touching devoutness of many of Bishop Ken's lyrical effusions has been

unregarded, because of the ungraceful contrivances, and heavy movement

of his narrative. The same may be said, in our own times, of some

parts of Montgomery's writings. His bursts of sacred poetry, compared

with his _Greenland_, remind us of a person singing enchantingly by

ear, but becoming languid and powerless the moment he sits down to a

note-book.

Such writers, it is obvious, do not sufficiently trust to the command

which the simple expression of their feelings would obtain over their

readers. They think it must be relieved with something of more variety

and imagery, to which they work themselves up with laborious, and

therefore necessarily unsuccessful, efforts. The model for correcting

their error is to be found in the inspired volume. We can, in general,

be but incompetent judges of this, because we have been used to it

from our boyhood. But let us suppose a person, whose ideas of poetry

were entirely gathered from modern compositions, taking up the Psalms

for the first time. Among many other remarkable differences, he would

surely be impressed with the sacred writer's total carelessness about

originality, and what is technically called _effect_. He would say,

'This is something better than merely attractive poetry; it is

absolute and divine truth.' The same remark ought to be suggested by

all sacred hymns; and it is, indeed, greatly to be lamented, that such

writers as we have just mentioned should have ever lost sight of

it--should have had so little confidence in the power of simplicity,

and have condescended so largely to the laborious refinements of the

profane Muse.

To put the same truth in a light somewhat different; it is required,

we apprehend, in all poets, but particularly in sacred poets, that

they should seem to write with a view of unburthening their minds, and

not for the sake of writing; for love of the subject, not of the

employment. The distinction is very striking in descriptive poetry.

Compare the landscapes of Cowper with those of Burns. There is, if we

mistake not, the same sort of difference between them, as in the

conversation of two persons on scenery, the one originally an

enthusiast in his love of the works of nature, the other driven, by

disappointment or weariness, to solace himself with them as he might.

It is a contrast which every one must have observed, when such topics

come under discussion in society; and those who think it worth while,

may find abundant illustration of it in the writings of this

unfortunate but illustrious pair. The one all overflowing with the

love of nature, and indicating, at every turn, that whatever his lot

in life, he could not have been happy without her. The other visibly

and wisely soothing himself, but not without effort, by attending to

rural objects, in default of some more congenial happiness, of which

he had almost come to despair. The latter, in consequence, laboriously

sketching every object that came in his way: the other, in one or two

rapid lines, which operate, as it were, like a magician's spell,

presenting to the fancy just that picture, which was wanted to put the

reader's mind in unison with the writer's. We would quote, as an

instance, the description of Evening in the Fourth Book of the _Task_:

Come Ev'ning, once again, season of peace;

Return, sweet Ev'ning, and continue long!

Methinks I see thee in the streaking west

With matron-step slow-moving, while the night

Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employ'd

In letting fall the curtain of repose

On bird and beast, the other charg'd for man

With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:

Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid,

Like homely-featur'd night, of clust'ring gems;

A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow,

Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine

No less than her's, not worn indeed on high

With ostentatious pageantry, but set

With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,

Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.

Come then, and thou shalt find thy vot'ry calm,

Or make me so. Composure is thy gift.

And we would set over against it that purely pastoral chant:

Now rosy May comes in wi' flowers

To deck her gay, green spreading bowers;

And now comes in my happy hours,

To wander wi' my Davie.

Meet me on the warlock knowe,

Dainty Davie, dainty Davie,

There I'll spend the day wi' you,

My ain dear dainty Davie.

The crystal waters round us fa',

The merry birds are lovers a',

The scented breezes round us blaw,

A wandering wi' my Davie.

Meet me, &c.

When purple morning starts the hare

To steal upon her early fare,

Then thro' the dews I will repair,

To meet my faithful Davie.

Meet me, &c.

When day, expiring in the west,

The curtain draws o' nature's rest,

I flee to his arms I lo'e best,

And that's my ain dear Davie.

Meet me, &c.

There is surely no need to explain how this instinctive attachment to

his subject is especially requisite in the sacred poet. If even the

description of material objects is found to languish without it, much

more will it be looked for when the best and highest of all affections

is to be expressed and communicated to others. The nobler and worthier

the object, the greater our disappointment to find it approached with

anything like languor or constraint.

We must just mention one more quality, which may seem, upon

consideration, essential to perfection in this kind: viz. that the

feelings the writer expresses should appear to be specimens of his

general tone of thought, not sudden bursts and mere flashes of

goodness. Wordsworth's beautiful description of the Stock-dove might

not unaptly be applied to him. He should sing

'of love with silence blending,

Slow to begin, yet never ending,

Of serious faith and inward glee'.

Some may, perhaps, object to this, as a dull and languid strain of

sentiment. But before we yield to their censures we would inquire of

them what style they consider, themselves, as most appropriate to

similar subjects in a kindred art. If grave, simple, sustained

melodies--if tones of deep but subdued emotion are what our minds

naturally suggest to us upon the mention of sacred _music_--why should

there not be something analogous, a kind of plain chant, in sacred

_poetry_ also? fervent, yet sober; awful, but engaging; neither wild

and passionate, nor light and airy; but such as we may with submission

presume to be the most acceptable offering in its kind, as being

indeed the truest expression of the best state of the affections. To

many, perhaps to most, men, a tone of more violent emotion may sound

at first more attractive. But before we _indulge_ such a preference,

we should do well to consider, whether it is quite agreeable to that

spirit, which alone can make us worthy readers of sacred poetry.

'[Greek: Entheon hê poiêsis]', it is true; there must be rapture and

inspiration, but these will naturally differ in their character as the

powers do from whom they proceed. The worshippers of Baal may be rude

and frantic in their cries and gestures; but the true Prophet,

speaking to or of the true GOD, is all dignity and calmness.

If then, in addition to the ordinary difficulties of poetry, all these

things are essential to the success of the Christian lyrist--if what

he sets before us must be true in substance, and in manner marked by a

noble simplicity and confidence in that truth, by a sincere attachment

to it, and entire familiarity with it--then we need not wonder that so

few should have become eminent in this branch of their art, nor need

we have recourse to the disheartening and unsatisfactory solutions

which are sometimes given of that circumstance.

'Contemplative piety,' says Dr. Johnson, 'or the intercourse

between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man,

admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the

merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than

poetry can confer.'[17]

[17] _Life of Waller._

The sentiment is not uncommon among serious, but somewhat fearful,

believers; and though we believe it erroneous, we desire to treat it

not only with tenderness, but with reverence. They start at the very

mention of sacred poetry, as though poetry were in its essence a

profane amusement. It is, unquestionably, by far the safer extreme to

be too much afraid of venturing with the imagination upon sacred

ground. Yet, if it be an error, and a practical error, it may be worth

while cautiously to examine the grounds of it. In the generality,

perhaps, it is not so much a deliberate opinion, as a prejudice

against the use of the art, arising out of its abuse. But the great

writer just referred to has endeavoured to establish it by direct

reasoning. He argues the point, first, from the nature of poetry, and

afterwards from that of devotion.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by

producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The

topics of devotion are few.

It is to be hoped that many men's experience will refute the latter

part of this statement. How can the topics of devotion be few, when we

are taught to make every part of life, every scene in nature, an

occasion--in other words, a topic--of devotion? It might as well be

said that connubial love is an unfit subject for poetry, as being

incapable of novelty, because, after all, it is only ringing the

changes upon one simple affection, which every one understands. The

novelty there consists, not in the original topic, but in continually

bringing ordinary things, by happy strokes of natural ingenuity, into

new associations with the ruling passion.

There's not a bonny flower that springs

By fountain, shaw, or green;

There's not a bonnie bird that sings

But minds me of my Jean.

Why need we fear to extend this most beautiful and natural sentiment

to 'the intercourse between the human soul and its Maker', possessing,

as we do, the very highest warrant for the analogy which subsists

between conjugal and divine love?

Novelty, therefore, sufficient for all the purposes of poetry, we may

have on sacred subjects. Let us pass to the next objection.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the

mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds

from the display of those parts of nature which attract,

and the concealment of those which repel, the imagination;

but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and

addition equally corrupt it; and, such as it is, it is known

already.

A fallacy may be apprehended in both parts of this statement. There

are, surely, real landscapes which delight the mind as sincerely and

intensely as the most perfect description could; and there are family

groups which give a more exquisite sensation of domestic happiness

than anything in Milton, or even Shakespeare. It is partly by

association with these, the treasures of the memory, and not

altogether by mere excitement of the imagination, that Poetry does her

work. By the same rule sacred pictures and sacred songs cannot fail to

gratify the mind which is at all exercised in devotion; recalling, as

they will, whatever of highest perfection in that way she can remember

in herself, or has learned of others.

Then again, it is not the religious doctrine itself, so much as the

effect of it upon the human mind and heart, which the sacred poet has

to describe. What is said of suppression and addition may be true

enough with regard to the former, but is evidently incorrect when

applied to the latter: it being an acknowledged difficulty in all

devotional writings, and not in devotional verse only, to keep clear

of the extreme of languor on the one hand, and debasing rapture on the

other. This requires a delicacy in the perception and enunciation of

truth, of which the most earnest believer may be altogether destitute.

And since, probably, no man's condition, in regard to eternal things,

is exactly like that of any other man, and yet it is the business of

the sacred poet to sympathize with all, his store of subjects is

clearly inexhaustible, and his powers of discrimination--in other

words, of suppression and addition--are kept in continual exercise.

Nor is he, by any means, so straitly limited in the other and more

difficult branch of his art, the exhibition of religious doctrine

itself, as is supposed in the following statement:

Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in

the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be

exalted; infinity cannot be amplified; perfection cannot be

improved.

True: all perfection is implied in the name of GOD; and so all the

beauties and luxuries of spring are comprised in that one word. But is

it not the very office of poetry to develop and display the

particulars of such complex ideas? in such a way, for example, as the

idea of GOD'S omnipresence is developed in the 139th Psalm? and thus

detaining the mind for a while, to force or help her to think steadily

on truths which she would hurry unprofitably over, how strictly soever

they may be implied in the language which she uses. It is really

surprising that this great and acute critic did not perceive that the

objection applies as strongly against any kind of composition of which

the Divine Nature is the subject, as against devotional poems.

We forbear to press the consideration that, even if the objection were

allowed in respect of natural religion, it would not hold against the

devotional compositions of a Christian; the object of whose worship

has condescended also to become the object of description, affection,

and sympathy, in the literal sense of these words. But this is,

perhaps, too solemn and awful an argument for this place; and

therefore we pass on to the concluding statement of the passage under

consideration, in which the writer turns his view downwards, and

argues against sacred poetry from the nature of man, as he had before

from the nature of GOD.

The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving,

repentance and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform,

cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving,

the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a

Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is

to be felt rather than expressed.

What we have said of the variation of the devout affections, as they

exist in various persons, is sufficient, we apprehend, to answer this.

But the rest of the paragraph requires some additional reflection:

Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not

at leisure for cadences and epithets.

This is rather invidiously put, and looks as if the author had not

entire confidence in the truth of what he was saying. Indeed, it may

very well be questioned; since many of the more refined passions, it

is certain, naturally express themselves in poetical language. But

repentance is not merely a passion, nor is its only office to tremble

in the presence of the Judge. So far from it, that one great business

of sacred poetry, as of sacred music, is to quiet and sober the

feelings of the penitent--to make his compunction as much of 'a

reasonable service' as possible.

To proceed:

Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many

topics of persuasion: but supplication to God can only cry

for mercy.

Certainly, this would be true, if the abstract nature of the Deity

were alone considered. But if we turn to the sacred volume, which

corrects so many of our erring anticipations, we there find that,

whether in condescension to our infirmities, or for other wise

purposes, we are furnished with inspired precedents for addressing

ourselves to God in all the various tones, and by all the various

topics, which we should use to a good and wise man standing in the

highest and nearest relation to us. This is so palpably the case

throughout the scriptures, that it is quite surprising how a person of

so much serious thought as Dr. Johnson could have failed to recollect

it when arguing on the subject of prayer. In fact, there is a simple

test, by which, perhaps, the whole of his reasoning on Sacred Poetry

might be fairly and decisively tried. Let the reader, as he goes over

it, bear in mind the Psalms of David, and consider whether every one

of his statements and arguments is not there practically refuted.

It is not, then, because sacred subjects are peculiarly unapt for

poetry, that so few sacred poets are popular. We have already glanced

at some of the causes to which we attribute it--we ought to add

another, which strikes us as important. Let us consider how the case

stands with regard to books of devotion in _prose_.

We may own it reluctantly, but must it not be owned? that if two new

publications meet the eye at once, of which no more is known than that

the one is what is familiarly called _a good book_, the other a work

of mere literature, nine readers out of ten will take up the second

rather than the first? If this be allowed, whatever accounts for it

will contribute to account also for the comparative failure of

devotional poetry. For this sort of coldness and languor in the reader

must act upon the author in more ways than one. The large class who

write for money or applause will of course be carried, by the tide of

popularity, towards some other subject. Men of more sincere minds,

either from true or false delicacy, will have little heart to expose

their retired thoughts to the risk of mockery or neglect; and if they

do venture, will be checked every moment, like an eager but bashful

musician before a strange audience, not knowing how far the reader's

feelings will harmonize with their own. This leaves the field open, in

a great measure, to harder or more enthusiastic spirits; who offending

continually, in their several ways, against delicacy, the one by

wildness, the other by coarseness, aggravate the evil which they

wished to cure; till the sacred subject itself comes at last to bear

the blame due to the indifference of the reader and the indiscretion

of the writer.

Such, we apprehend, would be a probable account of the condition of

sacred poetry, in a country where religion was coldly acknowledged,

and literature earnestly pursued. How far the description may apply to

England and English literature, in their various changes since the

Reformation--how far it may hold true of our own times--is an inquiry

which would lead us too far at present; but it is surely worth

considering. It goes deeper than any question of mere literary

curiosity. It is a sort of test of the genuineness of those

pretensions, which many of us are, perhaps, too forward to advance, to

a higher state of morality and piety, as well as knowledge and

refinement, than has been known elsewhere or in other times.

Those who, in spite of such difficulties, desire in earnest to do good

by the poetical talent, which they may happen to possess, have only,

as it should seem, the following alternative. Either they must veil,

as it were, the sacredness of the subject--not necessarily by

allegory, for it may be done in a thousand other ways--and so deceive

the world of taste into devotional reading--

Succhi amari intanto ei beve,

E dall' inganno sua vita riceve--

or else, directly avowing that their subject as well as purpose is

devotion, they must be content with a smaller number of readers; a

disadvantage, however, compensated by the fairer chance of doing good

to each.

It may be worth while to endeavour to trace this distinction, as

exemplified in the most renowned of the sacred poets of England; and

to glean from such a survey the best instruction we can, in the happy

art of turning the most fascinating part of literature to the highest

purposes of religion.

We must premise that we limit the title of 'sacred poet' by excluding

those who only devoted a small portion of their time and talent now

and then, to sacred subjects. In all ages of our literary history it

seems to have been considered almost as an essential part of a poet's

duty to give up some pages to scriptural story, or to the praise of

his Maker, how remote so ever from anything like religion the general

strain of his writings might be. Witness the Lamentation of Mary

Magdalene in the works of Chaucer, and the beautiful legend of Hew of

Lincoln, which he has inserted in his Canterbury Tales; witness also

the hymns of Ben Jonson. But these fragments alone will not entitle

their authors to be enrolled among sacred poets. They indicate the

taste of their age, rather than their own; a fact which may be thought

to stand rather in painful contrast with the literary history of later

days.

There is another class likewise, of whom little need be said in this

place; we mean those who composed, strictly and only, for the sake of

unburthening their own minds, without any thought of publication. But

as Chaucer's sacred effusions indicate chiefly the character of the

times, so poems such as those we now allude to, mark only the turn of

mind of the individual writers; and our present business is rather

with that sort of poetry which combines both sorts of instruction;

that, namely, which bears internal evidence of having been written by

sincere men, with an intention of doing good, and with consideration

of the taste of the age in which they lived.

Recurring then to the distinction above laid down, between the direct

and indirect modes of sacred poetry; at the head of the two classes,

as the reader may perhaps have anticipated, we set the glorious names

of Spenser and of Milton. The claim of Spenser to be considered as a

sacred poet does by no means rest upon his hymns alone: although even

those would be enough alone to embalm and consecrate the whole volume

which contains them; as a splinter of the true cross is supposed by

Catholic sailors to ensure the safety of the vessel. But whoever will

attentively consider the _Faerie Queene_ itself, will find that it is,

almost throughout, such as might have been expected from the author of

those truly sacred hymns. It is a continual, deliberate endeavour to

enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feeling of an inquiring

and romantic age, on the side of goodness and faith, of purity and

justice.