Mr. Tyrrel and his nephew called on us this evening, and interrupted a
pleasant and useful conversation on which we were just entering. "Do
you know, Stanley," said Mr. Tyrrel, "that you absolutely corrupted my
nephew, by what passed at your house the other day in favor of reading?
He has ever since been ransacking the shelves for idle books."
"I should be seriously concerned," replied Mr. Stanley, "if any thing I
had said should have drawn Mr. Edward off from more valuable studies, or
diverted him from the important pursuit of religious knowledge."
"Why, to do him justice, and you too," resumed Mr. Tyrrel, "he has since
that conversation begun assiduously to devote his mornings to serious
reading, and it is only an hour's leisure in the evening, which he used
to trifle away, that he gives to books of taste; but I had rather he
would let them all alone; the best of them will only fill his heart with
cold morality, and stuff his head with romance and fiction. I would not
have a religious man ever look into a book of your belles-lettres
nonsense; and if he be really religious, he will make a general bonfire
of the poets."
"That is rather too sweeping a sentence," said Mr. Stanley. "It would, I
grant you, have been a benefit to mankind, if the entire works of some
celebrated poets, and a considerable portion of the works of many not
quite so exceptionable, were to assist the conflagration of your pile."
"And if fuel failed," said Sir John Belfield, "we might not only rob
Belinda's altar of her
Twelve tomes of French romances neatly gilt,
but feed the flame with countless marble-covered octavos from the modern
school. But having made this concession, allow me to observe, that
because there has been a voluptuous Petronius, a scoffing Lucian, and a
licentious Ovid, to say nothing of the numberless modern poets, or
rather individual poems, that are immoral and corrupt--shall we
therefore exclude all works of imagination from the library of a young
man? Surely? we should not indiscriminately banish the Muses, as
infallible corrupters of the youthful mind; I would rather consider a
blameless poet as the auxiliar of virtue. Whatever talent enables a
writer to possess an empire over the heart, and to lead the passions at
his command, puts it in his power to be of no small service to mankind.
It is no new remark that the abuse of any good thing is no argument
against its legitimate use. Intoxication affords no just reason against
the use of wine, nor prodigality against the possession of wealth. In
the instance in dispute, I should rather infer that a talent capable of
diffusing so much mischief was susceptible of no small benefit. That it
has been so often abused by its misapplication, is one of the highest
instances of the ingratitude of man for one of the highest gifts of
God."
"I can not think," said I, "that the Almighty conferred such a faculty
with a wish to have it extinguished. Works of imagination have in many
countries been a chief instrument in civilization. Poetry has not only
preceded science in the history of human progress, but it has in many
countries preceded the knowledge of the mechanical arts; and I have
somewhere read, that in Scotland they could write elegant Latin verse
before they could make a wheel-barrow. For my own part, in my late visit
to London, I thought the decline of poetry no favorable symptom."
"I rejoice to hear it _is_ declining," said Mr. Tyrrel. "I hope that
what is decaying, may in time be extinguished."
"Mr. Tyrrel would have been delighted with that with which I was
displeased," replied I. "I met with philosophers, who were like Plato in
nothing but his abhorrence of the Muses; with politicians, who resembled
Burleigh only in his enmity to Spenser; and with warriors, who, however
they might emulate Alexander in his conquests, would never have imitated
him in sparing the house of Pindarus."
"The _art_ of poetry," said Mr. Stanley, "is to touch the passions, and
its _duty_ to lead them on the side of virtue. To raise and to purify
the amusements of mankind; to multiply and to exalt pleasures, which
being purely intellectual, may help to exclude such as are gross, in
beings so addicted to sensuality, is surely not only to give pleasure,
but to render service. It is allowable to seize every avenue to the
heart of a being so prone to evil; to rescue him by every fair means,
not only from the degradation of vice, but from the dominion of
idleness. I do not now speak of gentlemen of the sacred function, to
which Mr. Edward Tyrrel aspires, but of those who, having no profession,
have no stated employment; and who, having more leisure, will be in
danger of exceeding the due bounds in the article of amusement. Let us
then endeavor to snatch our youth of fashion from the low pleasures of
the dissolute; to snatch them, not only from the destruction of the
gaming-table, but from the excesses of the dining-table, by inviting
them to an elegant delight that is safe, and especially by enlarging the
range of pure mental pleasure.
"In order to this, let us do all we can to cultivate their taste, and
innocently indulge their fancy. Let us contend with impure writers,
those deadliest enemies to the youthful mind, by opposing to them in the
chaster author, images more attractive, wit more acute, learning more
various; in all which excellences our first-rate poets certainly excel
their vicious competitors."
"Would you, Mr. Tyrrel," said Sir John, "throw into the enemy's camp all
the light arms which often successfully annoy where the heavy artillery
can not reach?"
"Let us," replied Mr. Stanley, "rescue from the hands of the profane and
the impure, the monopoly of wit which, they affect to possess, and which
they would possess, if no good men had written works of elegant
literature, and if all good men totally despised them."
"For my own part," said Mr. Tyrrel, "I believe that a good man, in my
sense of the word, will neither write works of imagination, nor read
them."
"At your age and mine, and better employed as we certainly may be," said
Mr. Stanley, "we want not such resources. I myself, though I retain the
relish, have little leisure for the indulgence, which yet I would allow,
though with great discrimination, to the young and the unoccupied. What
is to whet the genius of the champions of virtue, so as to enable them
successfully to combat the leaders of vice and infidelity, if we refuse
to let them be occasionally sharpened and polished by such studies? That
model of brilliant composition, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, was of this
opinion, when he said, 'by whatever instrument piety is advantaged, use
that, though thou grindest thy spears and arrows at the forges of the
Philistines.'
"I know," continued Mr. Stanley, "that a Christian need not borrow
weapons of attack or defense from the classic armory; but, to drop all
metaphor, if he is called upon to defend truth and virtue against men
whose minds are adorned with all that is elegant, strengthened with all
that is powerful, and enriched with all that is persuasive, from the
writers in question--is he likely to engage with due advantage if his
own mind be destitute of the embellishments with which theirs abound?
While wit and imagination are _their_ favorite instruments, shall we
consider the aid of either as useless, much less as sinful in their
opponents?"
"While young men _will_ be amused," said Sir John, "it is surely of
importance that they should be _safely_ amused. We should not therefore
wish to obliterate in authors such faculties as wit and fancy, nor to
extinguish a taste for them in readers."
"Show me any one instance of good that ever was effected by any one
poet," said Mr. Tyrrel, "and I will give up the point; while, on the
other hand, a thousand instances of mischief might be produced."
"The latter part of your assertion, sir," said I, "I fear is too true:
but to what evil has elevation of fancy led Milton, or Milton his
readers? Into what immoralities did it involve Spenser or Cowley? Has
Thomson added to the crimes or the calamities of mankind? Into what
immoralities did it plunge Gray, or Goldsmith? Has it tainted the purity
of Beattie in his Minstrel, or that of the living minstrel of the LAY?
What reader has Mason corrupted, or what reader has Cowper not
benefitted? Milton was an enthusiast both in religion and politics. Many
enthusiasts with whom he was connected, doubtless condemned the exercise
of his imagination in his immortal poem as a crime; but his genius was
too mighty to be restrained by opposition, and his imagination too vast
and powerful to be kept down by a party. Had he confined himself to his
prose writings, weighty and elaborate as some of them are, how little
service would he have done the world, and how little would he now be
read or quoted! In his life-time politics might blind his enemies, and
fanaticism his friends. But now, who, comparatively, reads the
Iconoclastes? who does not read Comus?"
"What then," said Mr. Tyrrel, "you would have our young men spend their
time in reading idle verses, and our girls, I suppose, in reading loose
romances?"
"It is to preserve both from evils which I deprecate," said Mr. Stanley,
"that I would consign the most engaging subjects to the best hands, and
raise the taste of our youth, by allowing a little of their leisure, and
of their leisure only, to such amusements; and that chiefly with a view
to disengage them from worse pursuits. It is not romance, but indolence;
it is not poetry, but sensuality, which are the prevailing evils of the
day--evils far more fatal in themselves, far more durable in their
effects, than the perusal of works of wit and genius. Imagination will
cool of itself. The effervescence of fancy will soon subside; but
absorbing dissipation, but paralyzing idleness, but degrading self-love,
"Grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength."
"A judicious reformer," said Sir John, "will accommodate his remedy to
an existing and not an imaginary evil. When the old romances, the grand
Cyruses, the Clelias, the Calprenedes, and the Cassandras, had turned
all the young heads in Europe; or when the fury of knight-errantry
demanded the powerful rein of Cervantes to check it--it was a duty to
attempt to lower the public delirium. When, in our own age and country,
Sterne wrote his corrupt, but too popular lesser work, he became the
mischievous founder of the school of sentiment. A hundred writers
communicated, a hundred thousand readers caught, the infection.
Sentimentality was the disease which then required to be expelled. The
reign of Sterne is past. Sensibility is discarded, and with it the
softness which it must be confessed belonged to it. Romance is vanished,
and with it the heroic, though somewhat unnatural, elevation which
accompanied it. We have little to regret in the loss of either; nor have
we much cause to rejoice in what we have gained by the exchange. A
pervading and substantial selfishness, the striking characteristic of
our day, is no great improvement on the wildness of the old romance, or
the vapid puling of the sentimental school."
"Surely," said I (L'Almanac des Gourmands at that instant darting across
my mind), "it is as honorable for a gentleman to excel in critical as in
culinary skill. It is as noble to cultivate the intellectual taste, as
that of the palate. It is at least as creditable to discuss the
comparative merits of Sophocles and Shakspeare, as the rival ingredients
of a soup or a sauce. I will even venture to affirm that it is as
dignified an amusement to run a tilt in favor of Virgil or Tasso against
their assailants, as to run a barouche against a score of rival
barouches; and though I own that, in Gulliver's land of the Houyhnhnms,
the keeping up the breed of horses might have been the nobler
patriotism, yet in Great Britain it is hitherto, at least, no
contemptible exertion of skill and industry 'to keep up the breed of
gentlemen.'"