of the principles and temper of this work upon its literary pretensions;
but his Lordship will forgive us if we now put off the mere critic for a
moment, and address him in that graver character which we assume to
ourselves in the title of our work. In truth, we are deeply affected by
the spectacle his poem presents to us. As the minor poems at the
conclusion of the work breathe the same spirit, suggest the same doubts,
and employ the same language with the "Childe Harold" we are compelled
to recognise the author in the hero whom he has painted. In fact, the
disclaimer, already noticed in the Preface, seems merely like one of
those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it:
and in the work before us we are forced to recognise a character, which,
since Rousseau gave his Confessions to the public, has scarcely ever, we
think, darkened the horizon of letters. The reader of the "Confessions"
is dismayed to find a man frankly avowing the most disgraceful vices;
abandoning them, not upon principle, but merely because they have ceased
to gratify; prepared to return to them if they promise to reward him
better; without natural affection, neither loving, nor beloved by any;
without peace, without hope, "without God in the world." When we search
into the mysterious cause of this autobiographical phenomenon, we at
once discover that Rousseau's immeasurable vanity betrayed him into a
belief, that even his vices would vanish in the blaze of his
excellencies; and that the world would worship him, as idolaters do
their mishapen gods, in spite of their ugliness. The confessions of
Lord Byron, we regret to say, bear something of an analogy to those of
the philosopher of Geneva. Are they, then, to be traced to the _same
source_? He plainly is far from indifferent to the opinion of
by-standers: can he, then, conceive that this peep into the window of
his breast must not revolt every virtuous eye? Can he boldly proclaim
his violations of decency and of sobriety; his common contempt for all
modifications of religion; his monstrous belief in the universal rest or
annihilation of man in a future state; and forget that he is one of
those who
"Play such tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep;"
as offend against all moral taste; as attempt to shake the very pillars
of domestic happiness and of public security?
It is, however, a matter of congratulation, that his Lordship, in common
with the republican Confessor, has not revealed his creed without very
honestly displaying the influence of this creed upon his own mind. We
should not, indeed, have credited a man of his sentiments, had he
assured us he was happy: happiness takes no root in such soils. But it
is still better to have his own testimony to the unmixed misery of
licentiousness and unbelief. It is almost comforting to be told, if we
dared to draw comfort out of the well of another man's miseries, that
"Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure fires the maddening soul,
The heart--the heart is lonely still."
It is consolatory also to contrast the peace and triumph of the dying
Christian, with the awful uncertainty, or rather the sullen despair,
which breathe in these verses.
"'Aye--but to die and go'--alas,
Where all have gone, and all must go;
To be the nothing that I was,
Ere born to life and living woe.
"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free;
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be."
Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following
avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.
"No, for myself, so dark my fate
Through every turn of life has been,
Man and the world I so much hate,
I care not when I quit the scene."
But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the
antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also
that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so
humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we
would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you
happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You
are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of
affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted
many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly
pronounced themselves cured:--would it be worthy of a philosopher not
merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord,
is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ.
Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him;
thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their
disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue
go out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this.
'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may
designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may
possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with
the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We
assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him."
As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We
regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and
apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest
commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud
which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up
around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken
country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change,
by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his
present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the
bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future
happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it.
Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he
meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau
taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The
philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it
one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all
events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges.
_He_ plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. _We_ find in
religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never
goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change
its aspect and influence according to the eye and faith of the
examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely
darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the
opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the
pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as
they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice
proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more
honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also
the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent
defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.--_The
Christian Observer_.
[Footnote J: Hume.]
[Footnote K: Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.]
[Footnote L: We cannot resist the temptation of saying, that in this
highest department of the poet's art, we know of no living poet who will
bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.]
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
_Alastor_; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.
We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and
we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to
Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste.
We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils
his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he
appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only
such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore
we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other
readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an _ordo_,
a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and
explanatory of his meaning.--_The Monthly Review_.
_The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts_. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELL[E]Y. Italy.
1819. pp. 104.
There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parca quod satis
est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
intellect. A few symptoms of this literary malady appeared as early as
the year 1795, but it then assumed the guise of simplicity and pathos.
It was a poetical Lord Fanny. It wept its pretty self to death by
murmuring brooks, and rippling cascades, it heaved delicious sighs over
sentimental lambs, and love-lorn sheep, apostrophized donkies in the
innocence of primaeval nature; sung tender songs to tender nightingales;
went to bed without a candle, that it might gaze on the chubby faces of
the stars; discoursed sweet nothings to all who would listen to its
nonsense; and displayed (_horrendum dictu_) the acute profundity of its
grief in ponderous folios and spiral duodecimos. The literary world,
little suspecting the dangerous consequences of this distressing malady,
suffered it to germinate in silence; and not until they became
thoroughly convinced that the disorder was of an epidemical nature, did
they start from their long continued lethargy. But it was then too late!
The evil was incurable; it branched out into the most vigorous
ramifications, and following the scriptural admonition, "Increase and
multiply," disseminated its poetry and its prose throughout a great part
of England. As a dog, when once completely mad, is never satisfied until
he has bitten half a dozen more, so the Cockney professors, in laudable
zeal for the propagation of their creed, were never at rest until they
had spread their own doctrines around them. They stood on the house tops
and preached, 'till of a verity they were black in the face with the
heating quality of their arguments; they stationed themselves by the bye
roads and hedges, to discuss the beauties of the country; they looked
out from their garrett [_sic_] windows in Grub-street, and exclaimed,
"_O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_;" and gave such afflicting tokens of
insanity, that the different reviewers and satirists of the day kindly
laced them in the strait jackets of their criticism. "But all this
availeth _us_ nothing," exclaimed the critics, "so long as _we_ see
Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the Temple; that is to say, as
long as there is one Cockney pericranium left unscalped by the tomahawks
of our satire." But notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of all those
whose brains have not been cast in the mould of this new species of
intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive ratio of its march,
that the _worthy_ Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
beaten track of manhood, _ergo_, it is praiseworthy.
Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity--we admire while we
execrate--and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!
what a fall is _here_, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
setting sun, when he retires to rest, amid the blessings of exulting
nature. It is the balmy breath of the summer breeze, the twilight's last
and holiest sigh. In the dramatic poem before us, the interest is of a
different nature; it is dark--wild, and unearthly. The characters that
appear in it are of no mortal stamp; they are daemons in human guise,
inscrutable in their actions, subtle in their revenge. Each has his
smile of awful meaning--his purport of hellish tendency. The tempest
that rages in his bosom is irrepressible but by death. The phrenzied
groan that diseased imagination extorts from his perverted soul, is as
the thunder-clap that reverberates amid the cloud-capt summits of the
Alps. It is the storm that convulses all nature--that lays bare the face
of heaven, and gives transient glimpses of destruction yet to be. Then
in the midst of all these accumulated horrors comes the gentle Beatrice,
"Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth
Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
With needless tears." Page 50.
She walks in the light of innocence; in the unclouded sunshine of
loveliness and modesty; but her felicity is transient as the calm that
precedes the tempest; and in the very whispers of her virtue, you hear
the indistinct muttering of the distant thunder. She is conceived in
the true master spirit of genius; and in the very instant of her
parricide, comes home to our imagination fresh in the spring time of
innocence--hallowed in the deepest recesses of melancholy. But
notwithstanding all these transcendant qualities, there are numerous
passages that warrant our introductory observations respecting the
Cockney school, and plunge "full fathom five," into the profoundest
depths of the Bathos. While, therefore, we do justice to the abilities
of the author, we shall bestow a passing smile or two on his unfortunate
Cockney propensities.
The following are the principal incidents of the play. Count Cenci, the
_daemon_ of the piece, delighted with the intelligence of the death of
two of his sons, recounts at a large assembly, specially invited for the
purpose, the circumstances of the dreadful transaction. Lucretia, his
wife, Beatrice, his daughter, and the other guests, are of course
startled at his transports; but when they hear his awful imprecations,
"Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendor leaps
And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
Under the lamp light, as my spirits do,
To hear the death of my accursed sons!
Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art
Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy
And I will taste no other wine tonight--"
their horror induces them to leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime,
who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every
species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the
hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as
he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces
us to a tete-a-tete between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and
Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt
entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She
recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the most
atrocious of which appear to be, that he has given them all "ditch
water" to drink, and "buffalos" to eat. But before we proceed further,
we have a word or two respecting this same ditch water, and buffalo's
flesh, which we shall mention, as a piece of advice to the author. It is
well known, we believe, in a case of lunacy, that the first thing
considered is, whether the patient has done any thing sufficiently
foolish, to induce his relatives to apply for a statute against him: now
any malicious, evil-minded person, were he so disposed, might make
successful application to the court against the luckless author of the
_Cenci, a tragedy in five acts_. Upon which the judge with all the
solemnity suitable to so melancholy a circumstance as the decay of the
mental faculties, would ask for proofs of the defendant's lunacy; upon
which the plaintiff would produce the affecting episode of the ditch
water and buffalo flesh; upon which the judge would shake his head, and
acknowledge the insanity; upon which the defendant would be incarcerated
in Bedlam.
To return from this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo,
another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful
tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored
lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the
most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his
father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot,
after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its
accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, who is despatched to the
lonely castle of Petrella (one of the Count's family residences), with a
summons of attendance from the Pope. We need hardly say that the
criminals are condemned; and not even the lovely Beatrice is able to
escape the punishment of the law. The agitation she experiences after
the commission of the incest, is powerfully descriptive.
"How comes this hair undone?
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
And yet I tied it fast.--O, horrible!
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
Slide giddily as the world reels--My God!
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
In charnel pits! Pah! I am choaked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me--'tis substantial, heavy, thick,
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another,
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!"
At first she concludes that she is mad; but then pathetically checks
herself by saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires
into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the
broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation.
Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with
Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice proposes to way-lay him (a plot,
however, which fails) in a _deep and dark ravine_, as he journeys to
Petrella.
"But I remember
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulph, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns--below,
You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade
By the dark ivy's twine. At noon day here
'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night."
Giacomo, meanwhile, who was privy to the transaction, awaits the arrival
of Orsino, with intelligence of the murder, in a state of the most
fearful torture and suspence.
"Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
(_Thunder, and the sound of a storm._)
What! can the everlasting elements
Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft
Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall
On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:
They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
Be just which was most necessary. O,
Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
Did I not feed thee, thou wouldst fail and be
As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
But that no power can fill with vital oil
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood
Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
In God's immortal likeness which now stands
Naked before Heaven's judgment seat!
(_a bell strikes_)
One! Two!
The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white
My son will then perhaps be waiting thus.
Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
Chiding the tardy messenger of news
Like those which I expect. I almost wish
He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
Yet--'tis Orsino's step."
We envy not the feelings of any one who can read the curses that Cenci
invokes on his daughter, when she refuses to repeat her guilt, without
the strongest disgust, notwithstanding the intense vigor of the
imprecations