prove that the machine must be regulated _by mind_, and it may be
thought a work of supererogation to advance farther arguments in
support of what has been already fully decided. But our object is to
convince, in especial, certain of our friends upon whom a train of
suggestive reasoning will have more influence than the most positive
_a priori_ demonstration.]
1. The moves of the Turk are not made at regular intervals of time,
but accommodate themselves to the moves of the antagonist--although
this point (of regularity) so important in all kinds of mechanical
contrivance, might have been readily brought about by limiting the
time allowed for the moves of the antagonist. For example, if this
limit were three minutes, the moves of the Automaton might be made
at any given intervals longer than three minutes. The fact then of
irregularity, when regularity might have been so easily attained,
goes to prove that regularity is unimportant to the action of the
Automaton--in other words, that the Automaton is not _a pure
machine_.
2. When the Automaton is about to move a piece, a distinct motion is
observable just beneath the left shoulder, and which motion agitates
in a slight degree, the drapery covering the front of the left
shoulder. This motion invariably precedes, by about two seconds, the
movement of the arm itself--and the arm never, in any instance,
moves without this preparatory motion in the shoulder. Now let the
antagonist move a piece, and let the corresponding move be made by
Maelzel, as usual, upon the board of the Automaton. Then let the
antagonist narrowly watch the Automaton, until he detect the
preparatory motion in the shoulder. Immediately upon detecting this
motion, and before the arm itself begins to move, let him withdraw
his piece, as if perceiving an error in his manœuvre. It will then
be seen that the movement of the arm, which, in all other cases,
immediately succeeds the motion in the shoulder, is withheld--is not
made--although Maelzel has not yet performed, on the board of the
Automaton, any move corresponding to the withdrawal of the
antagonist. In this case, that the Automaton was about to move is
evident--and that he did not move, was an effect plainly produced by
the withdrawal of the antagonist, and without any intervention of
Maelzel.
This fact fully proves, 1--that the intervention of Maelzel, in
performing the moves of the antagonist on the board of the
Automaton, is not essential to the movements of the Automaton,
2--that its movements are regulated by _mind_--by some person who
sees the board of the antagonist, 3--that its movements are not
regulated by the mind of Maelzel, whose back was turned towards the
antagonist at the withdrawal of his move.
3. The Automaton does not invariably win the game. Were the machine
a pure machine this would not be the case--it would always win. The
_principle_ being discovered by which a machine can be made to
_play_ a game of chess, an extension of the same principle would
enable it to _win_ a game--a farther extension would enable it to
_win all_ games--that is, to beat any possible game of an
antagonist. A little consideration will convince any one that the
difficulty of making a machine beat all games, is not in the least
degree greater, as regards the principle of the operations
necessary, than that of making it beat a single game. If then we
regard the Chess-Player as a machine, we must suppose, (what is
highly improbable,) that its inventor preferred leaving it
incomplete to perfecting it--a supposition rendered still more
absurd, when we reflect that the leaving it incomplete would afford
an argument against the possibility of its being a pure machine--the
very argument we now adduce.
4. When the situation of the game is difficult or complex, we never
perceive the Turk either shake his head or roll his eyes. It is only
when his next move is obvious, or when the game is so circumstanced
that to a man in the Automaton's place there would be no necessity
for reflection. Now these peculiar movements of the head and eyes
are movements customary with persons engaged in meditation, and the
ingenious Baron Kempelen would have adapted these movements (were
the machine a pure machine) to occasions proper for their
display--that is, to occasions of complexity. But the reverse is
seen to be the case, and this reverse applies precisely to our
supposition of a man in the interior. When engaged in meditation
about the game he has no time to think of setting in motion the
mechanism of the Automaton by which are moved the head and the eyes.
When the game, however, is obvious, he has time to look about him,
and, accordingly, we see the head shake and the eyes roll.
5. When the machine is rolled round to allow the spectators an
examination of the back of the Turk, and when his drapery is lifted
up and the doors in the trunk and thigh thrown open, the interior of
the trunk is seen to be crowded with machinery. In scrutinizing this
machinery while the Automaton was in motion, that is to say while
the whole machine was moving on the castors, it appeared to us that
certain portions of the mechanism changed their shape and position
in a degree too great to be accounted for by the simple laws of
perspective; and subsequent examinations convinced us that these
undue alterations were attributable to mirrors in the interior of
the trunk. The introduction of mirrors among the machinery could not
have been {324} intended to influence, in any degree, the machinery
itself. Their operation, whatever that operation should prove to be,
must necessarily have reference to the eye of the spectator. We at
once concluded that these mirrors were so placed to multiply to the
vision some few pieces of machinery within the trunk so as to give
it the appearance of being crowded with mechanism. Now the direct
inference from this is that the machine is not a pure machine. For
if it were, the inventor, so far from wishing its mechanism to
appear complex, and using deception for the purpose of giving it
this appearance, would have been especially desirous of convincing
those who witnessed his exhibition, of the _simplicity_ of the means
by which results so wonderful were brought about.
6. The external appearance, and, especially, the deportment of the
Turk, are, when we consider them as imitations of _life_, but very
indifferent imitations. The countenance evinces no ingenuity, and is
surpassed, in its resemblance to the human face, by the very
commonest of wax-works. The eyes roll unnaturally in the head,
without any corresponding motions of the lids or brows. The arm,
particularly, performs its operations in an exceedingly stiff,
awkward, jerking, and rectangular manner. Now, all this is the
result either of inability in Maelzel to do better, or of
intentional neglect--accidental neglect being out of the question,
when we consider that the whole time of the ingenious proprietor is
occupied in the improvement of his machines. Most assuredly we must
not refer the unlife-like appearances to inability--for all the rest
of Maelzel's automata are evidence of his full ability to copy the
motions and peculiarities of life with the most wonderful
exactitude. The rope-dancers, for example, are inimitable. When the
clown laughs, his lips, his eyes, his eye-brows, and
eye-lids--indeed, all the features of his countenance--are imbued
with their appropriate expressions. In both him and his companion,
every gesture is so entirely easy, and free from the semblance of
artificiality, that, were it not for the diminutiveness of their
size, and the fact of their being passed from one spectator to
another previous to their exhibition on the rope, it would be
difficult to convince any assemblage of persons that these wooden
automata were not living creatures. We cannot, therefore, doubt Mr.
Maelzel's ability, and we must necessarily suppose that he
intentionally suffered his Chess-Player to remain the same
artificial and unnatural figure which Baron Kempelen (no doubt also
through design) originally made it. What this design was it is not
difficult to conceive. Were the Automaton life-like in its motions,
the spectator would be more apt to attribute its operations to their
true cause, (that is, to human agency within) than he is now, when
the awkward and rectangular manœuvres convey the idea of pure and
unaided mechanism.
7. When, a short time previous to the commencement of the game, the
Automaton is wound up by the exhibiter as usual, an ear in any
degree accustomed to the sounds produced in winding up a system of
machinery, will not fail to discover, instantaneously, that the axis
turned by the key in the box of the Chess-Player, cannot possibly be
connected with either a weight, a spring, or any system of machinery
whatever. The inference here is the same as in our last observation.
The winding up is inessential to the operations of the Automaton,
and is performed with the design of exciting in the spectators the
false idea of mechanism.
8. When the question is demanded explicitly of Maelzel--"Is the
Automaton a pure machine or not?" his reply is invariably the
same--"I will say nothing about it." Now the notoriety of the
Automaton, and the great curiosity it has every where excited, are
owing more especially to the prevalent opinion that it _is_ a pure
machine, than to any other circumstance. Of course, then, it is the
interest of the proprietor to represent it as a pure machine. And
what more obvious, and more effectual method could there be of
impressing the spectators with this desired idea, than a positive
and explicit declaration to that effect? On the other hand, what
more obvious and effectual method could there be of exciting a
disbelief in the Automaton's being a pure machine, than by
withholding such explicit declaration? For, people will naturally
reason thus,--It is Maelzel's interest to represent this thing a
pure machine--he refuses to do so, directly, in words, although he
does not scruple, and is evidently anxious to do so, indirectly by
actions--were it actually what he wishes to represent it by actions,
he would gladly avail himself of the more direct testimony of
words--the inference is, that a consciousness of its _not_ being a
pure machine, is the reason of his silence--his actions cannot
implicate him in a falsehood--his words may.
9. When, in exhibiting the interior of the box, Maelzel has thrown
open the door No. 1, and also the door immediately behind it, he
holds a lighted candle at the back door (as mentioned above) and
moves the entire machine to and fro with a view of convincing the
company that the cupboard No. 1 is entirely filled with machinery.
When the machine is thus moved about, it will be apparent to any
careful observer, that whereas that portion of the machinery near
the front door No. 1, is perfectly steady and unwavering, the
portion farther within fluctuates, in a very slight degree, with the
movements of the machine. This circumstance first aroused in us the
suspicion that the more remote portion of the machinery was so
arranged as to be easily slipped, _en masse_, from its position when
occasion should require it. This occasion we have already stated to
occur when the man concealed within brings his body into an erect
position upon the closing of the back door.
10. Sir David Brewster states the figure of the Turk to be of the
size of life--but in fact it is far above the ordinary size. Nothing
is more easy than to err in our notions of magnitude. The body of
the Automaton is generally insulated, and, having no means of
immediately comparing it with any human form, we suffer ourselves to
consider it as of ordinary dimensions. This mistake may, however, be
corrected by observing the Chess-Player when, as is sometimes the
case, the exhibiter approaches it. Mr. Maelzel, to be sure, is not
very tall, but upon drawing near the machine, his head will be found
at least eighteen inches below the head of the Turk, although the
latter, it will be remembered, is in a sitting position.
11. The box behind which the Automaton is placed, is precisely three
feet six inches long, two feet four inches deep, and two feet six
inches high. These dimensions are fully sufficient for the
accommodation of a man very much above the common size--and the main
{325} compartment alone is capable of holding any ordinary man in
the position we have mentioned as assumed by the person concealed.
As these are facts, which any one who doubts them may prove by
actual calculation, we deem it unnecessary to dwell upon them. We
will only suggest that, although the top of the box is apparently a
board of about three inches in thickness, the spectator may satisfy
himself by stooping and looking up at it when the main compartment
is open, that it is in reality very thin. The height of the drawer
also will be misconceived by those who examine it in a cursory
manner. There is a space of about three inches between the top of
the drawer as seen from the exterior, and the bottom of the
cupboard--a space which must be included in the height of the
drawer. These contrivances to make the room within the box appear
less than it actually is, are referrible to a design on the part of
the inventor, to impress the company again with a false idea, viz.
that no human being can be accommodated within the box.
12. The interior of the main compartment is lined throughout with
_cloth_. This cloth we suppose to have a twofold object. A portion
of it may form, when tightly stretched, the only partitions which
there is any necessity for removing during the changes of the man's
position, viz: the partition between the rear of the main
compartment and the rear of the cupboard No. 1, and the partition
between the main compartment, and the space behind the drawer when
open. If we imagine this to be the case, the difficulty of shifting
the partitions vanishes at once, if indeed any such difficulty could
be supposed under any circumstances to exist. The second object of
the cloth is to deaden and render indistinct all sounds occasioned
by the movements of the person within.
13. The antagonist (as we have before observed) is not suffered to
play at the board of the Automaton, but is seated at some distance
from the machine. The reason which, most probably, would be assigned
for this circumstance, if the question were demanded, is, that were
the antagonist otherwise situated, his person would intervene
between the machine and the spectators, and preclude the latter from
a distinct view. But this difficulty might be easily obviated,
either by elevating the seats of the company, or by turning the end
of the box towards them during the game. The true cause of the
restriction is, perhaps, very different. Were the antagonist seated
in contact with the box, the secret would be liable to discovery, by
his detecting, with the aid of a quick ear, the breathings of the
man concealed.
14. Although M. Maelzel, in disclosing the interior of the machine,
sometimes slightly deviates from the _routine_ which we have pointed
out, yet _never_ in any instance does he _so_ deviate from it as to
interfere with our solution. For example, he has been known to open,
first of all, the drawer--but he never opens the main compartment
without first closing the back door of cupboard No. 1--he never
opens the main compartment without first pulling out the drawer--he
never shuts the drawer without first shutting the main
compartment--he never opens the back door of cupboard No. 1 while
the main compartment is open--and the game of chess is never
commenced until the whole machine is closed. Now, if it were
observed that _never, in any single instance_, did M. Maelzel differ
from the routine we have pointed out as necessary to our solution,
it would be one of the strongest possible arguments in corroboration
of it--but the argument becomes infinitely strengthened if we duly
consider the circumstance that he _does occasionally_ deviate from
the routine, but never does _so_ deviate as to falsify the solution.
15. There are six candles on the board of the Automaton during
exhibition. The question naturally arises--"Why are so many
employed, when a single candle, or, at farthest, two, would have
been amply sufficient to afford the spectators a clear view of the
board, in a room otherwise so well lit up as the exhibition room
always is--when, moreover, if we suppose the machine a _pure
machine_, there can be no necessity for so much light, or indeed any
light at all, to enable _it_ to perform its operations--and when,
especially, only a single candle is placed upon the table of the
antagonist?" The first and most obvious inference is, that so strong
a light is requisite to enable the man within to see through the
transparent material (probably fine gauze) of which the breast of
the Turk is composed. But when we consider the _arrangement_ of the
candles, another reason immediately presents itself. There are six
lights (as we have said before) in all. Three of these are on each
side of the figure. Those most remote from the spectators are the
longest--those in the middle are about two inches shorter--and those
nearest the company about two inches shorter still--and the candles
on one side differ in height from the candles respectively opposite
on the other, by a ratio different from two inches--that is to say,
the longest candle on one side is about three inches shorter than
the longest candle on the other, and so on. Thus it will be seen
that no two of the candles are of the same height, and thus also the
difficulty of ascertaining the _material_ of the breast of the
figure (against which the light is especially directed) is greatly
augmented by the dazzling effect of the complicated crossings of the
rays--crossings which are brought about by placing the centres of
radiation all upon different levels.
16. While the Chess-Player was in possession of Baron Kempelen, it
was more than once observed, first, that an Italian in the suite of
the Baron was never visible during the playing of a game at chess by
the Turk, and, secondly, that the Italian being taken seriously ill,
the exhibition was suspended until his recovery. This Italian
professed a _total_ ignorance of the game of chess, although all
others of the suite played well. Similar observations have been made
since the Automaton has been purchased by Maelzel. There is a man,
_Schlumberger_, who attends him wherever he goes, but who has no
ostensible occupation other than that of assisting in the packing
and unpacking of the automata. This man is about the medium size,
and has a remarkable stoop in the shoulders. Whether he professes to
play chess or not, we are not informed. It is quite certain,
however, that he is never to be seen during the exhibition of the
Chess-Player, although frequently visible just before and just after
the exhibition. Moreover, some years ago Maelzel visited Richmond
with his automata, and exhibited them, we believe, in the house now
occupied by M. Bossieux as a Dancing Academy. _Schlumberger_ was
suddenly taken ill, and during his illness there was no exhibition
of the {326} Chess-Player. These facts are well known to many of our
citizens. The reason assigned for the suspension of the
Chess-Player's performances, was _not_ the illness of
_Schlumberger_. The inferences from all this we leave, without
farther comment, to the reader.
17. The Turk plays with his _left_ arm. A circumstance so remarkable
cannot be accidental. Brewster takes no notice of it whatever,
beyond a mere statement, we believe, that such is the fact. The
early writers of treatises on the Automaton, seem not to have
observed the matter at all, and have no reference to it. The author
of the pamphlet alluded to by Brewster, mentions it, but
acknowledges his inability to account for it. Yet it is obviously
from such prominent discrepancies or incongruities as this that
deductions are to be made (if made at all) which shall lead us to
the truth.
The circumstance of the Automaton's playing with his left hand
cannot have connexion with the operations of the machine, considered
merely as such. Any mechanical arrangement which would cause the
figure to move, in any given manner, the left arm--could, if
reversed, cause it to move, in the same manner, the right. But these
principles cannot be extended to the human organization, wherein
there is a marked and radical difference in the construction, and,
at all events, in the powers, of the right and left arms. Reflecting
upon this latter fact, we naturally refer the incongruity noticeable
in the Chess-Player to this peculiarity in the human organization.
If so, we must imagine some _reversion_--for the Chess-Player plays
precisely as a man _would not_. These ideas, once entertained, are
sufficient of themselves, to suggest the notion of a man in the
interior. A few more imperceptible steps lead us, finally, to the
result. The Automaton plays with his left arm, because under no
other circumstances could the man within play with his right--a
_desideratum_ of course. Let us, for example, imagine the Automaton
to play with his right arm. To reach the machinery which moves the
arm, and which we have before explained to lie just beneath the
shoulder, it would be necessary for the man within either to use his
right arm in an exceedingly painful and awkward position, (viz.
brought up close to his body and tightly compressed between his body
and the side of the Automaton,) or else to use his left arm brought
across his breast. In neither case could he act with the requisite
ease or precision. On the contrary, the Automaton playing, as it
actually does, with the left arm, all difficulties vanish. The right
arm of the man within is brought across his breast, and his right
fingers act, without any constraint, upon the machinery in the
shoulder of the figure.
We do not believe that any reasonable objections can be urged
against this solution of the Automaton Chess-Player.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
DRAKE--HALLECK.
_The Culprit Fay, and other Poems, by Joseph Rodman Drake. New York:
George Dearborn._
_Alnwick Castle, with other Poems, by Fitz Greene Halleck. New York:
George Dearborn._
Before entering upon the detailed notice which we propose of the
volumes before us, we wish to speak a few words in regard to the
present state of American criticism.
It must be visible to all who meddle with literary matters, that of
late years a thorough revolution has been effected in the censorship
of our press. That this revolution is infinitely for the worse we
believe. There was a time, it is true, when we cringed to foreign
opinion--let us even say when we paid a most servile deference to
British critical dicta. That an American book could, by any
possibility, be worthy perusal, was an idea by no means extensively
prevalent in the land; and if we were induced to read at all the
productions of our native writers, it was only after repeated
assurances from England that such productions were not altogether
contemptible. But there was, at all events, a shadow of excuse, and
a slight basis of reason for a subserviency so grotesque. Even now,
perhaps, it would not be far wrong to assert that such basis of
reason may still exist. Let us grant that in many of the abstract
sciences--that even in Theology, in Medicine, in Law, in Oratory, in
the Mechanical Arts, we have no competitors whatever, still nothing
but the most egregious national vanity would assign us a place, in
the matter of Polite Literature, upon a level with the elder and
riper climes of Europe, the earliest steps of whose children are
among the groves of magnificently endowed Academies, and whose
innumerable men of leisure, and of consequent learning, drink daily
from those august fountains of inspiration which burst around them
every where from out the tombs of their immortal dead, and from out
their hoary and trophied monuments of chivalry and song. In paying
then, as a nation, a respectful and not undue deference to a
supremacy rarely questioned but by prejudice or ignorance, we
should, of course, be doing nothing more than acting in a rational
manner. The _excess_ of our subserviency was blameable--but, as we
have before said, this very excess might have found a shadow of
excuse in the strict justice, if properly regulated, of the
principle from which it issued. Not so, however, with our present
follies. We are becoming boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a
too speedily assumed literary freedom. We throw off, with the most
presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, _all_ deference whatever to
foreign opinion--we forget, in the puerile inflation of vanity, that
_the world_ is the true theatre of the biblical histrio--we get up a
hue and cry about the necessity of encouraging native writers of
merit--we blindly fancy that we can accomplish this by
indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking
the trouble to consider that what we choose to denominate
encouragement is thus, by its general application, rendered
precisely the reverse. In a word, so far from being ashamed of the
many disgraceful literary failures to which our own inordinate
vanities and misapplied patriotism have lately given birth, and so
far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities are of home
manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously to our original blindly
conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved in the gross
paradox of liking a stupid book the better, because, sure enough,
its stupidity is American.[1]
[Footnote 1: This charge of indiscriminate puffing will, of course,
only apply to the _general_ character of our criticism--there are
some noble exceptions. We wish also especially to discriminate
between those _notices_ of new works which are intended merely to
call public attention to them, and deliberate criticism on the works
themselves.]
Deeply lamenting this unjustifiable state of public {327} feeling,
it has been our constant endeavor, since assuming the Editorial
duties of this Journal, to stem, with what little abilities we
possess, a current so disastrously undermining the health and
prosperity of our literature. We have seen our efforts applauded by
men whose applauses we value. From all quarters we have received
abundant private as well as public testimonials in favor of our
_Critical Notices_, and, until very lately, have heard from no
respectable source one word impugning their integrity or candor. In
looking over, however, a number of the New York Commercial
Advertiser, we meet with the following paragraph.
The last number of the Southern Literary Messenger is very readable
and respectable. The contributions to the Messenger are much better
than the original matter. The critical department of this work--much
as it would seem to boast itself of impartiality and
discernment,--is in our opinion decidedly _quacky_. There is in it a
great assumption of acumen, which is completely unsustained. Many a
work has been slashingly condemned therein, of which the critic
himself could not write a page, were he to die for it. This
affectation of eccentric sternness in criticism, without the power
to back one's suit withal, so far from deserving praise, as some
suppose, merits the strongest reprehension.--[_Philadelphia
Gazette_.
We are entirely of opinion with the Philadelphia Gazette in relation
to the Southern Literary Messenger, and take this occasion to
express our total dissent from the numerous and lavish encomiums we
have seen bestowed upon its critical notices. Some few of them have
been judicious, fair and candid; bestowing praise and censure with
judgment and impartiality; but by far the greater number of those we
have read, have been flippant, unjust, untenable and uncritical. The
duty of the critic is to act as judge, not as enemy, of the writer
whom he reviews; a distinction of which the Zoilus of the Messenger
seems not to be aware. It is possible to review a book severely,
without bestowing opprobrious epithets upon the writer; to condemn
with courtesy, if not with kindness. The critic of the Messenger has
been eulogized for his scorching and scarifying abilities, and he
thinks it incumbent upon him to keep up his reputation in that line,
by sneers, sarcasm, and downright abuse; by straining his vision
with microscopic intensity in search of faults, and shutting his
eyes, with all his might, to beauties. Moreover, we have detected
him, more than once, in blunders quite as gross as those on which it
was his pleasure to descant.[2]
[Footnote 2: In addition to these things we observe, in the New York
Mirror, what follows: "Those who have read the Notices of American
books in a certain Southern Monthly, which is striving to gain
notoriety by the loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the
sketch on another page, entitled 'The Successful Novel.' The
Southern Literary Messenger knows -->_by experience_<-- what it is
to write a successless novel." We have, in this case, only to deny,
flatly, the assertion of the Mirror. The Editor of the Messenger
never in his life wrote or published, or attempted to publish, a
novel either successful or _successless_.]
In the paragraph from the Philadelphia Gazette, (which is edited by
Mr. Willis Gaylord Clark, one of the Editors of the Knickerbocker)
we find nothing at which we have any desire to take exception. Mr.
C. has a right to think us _quacky_ if he pleases, and we do not
remember having assumed for a moment that we could write a single
line of the works we have reviewed. But there is something
equivocal, to say the least, in the remarks of Col. Stone. He
acknowledges that "_some_ of our notices have been judicious, fair,
and candid, bestowing praise and censure with judgment and
impartiality." This being the case, how can he reconcile his _total_
dissent from the public verdict in our favor, with the dictates of
justice? We are accused too of bestowing "opprobrious epithets" upon
writers whom we review, and in the paragraph so accusing us we are
called nothing less than "flippant, unjust, and uncritical."
But there is another point of which we disapprove. While in our
reviews we have at all times been particularly careful _not_ to deal
in generalities, and have never, if we remember aright, advanced in
any single instance an unsupported assertion, our accuser has
forgotten to give us any better evidence of our flippancy,
injustice, personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary
_dictum_ of Col. Stone. We call upon the Colonel for assistance in
this dilemma. We wish to be shown our blunders that we may correct
them--to be made aware of our flippancy, that we may avoid it
hereafter--and above all to have our personalities pointed out that
we may proceed forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make the
_amende honorable_. In default of this aid from the Editor of the
Commercial we shall take it for granted that we are neither
blunderers, flippant, personal, nor unjust.
* * * * *
Who will deny that in regard to individual poems no definitive
opinions can exist, so long as to Poetry in the abstract we attach
no definitive idea? Yet it is a common thing to hear our critics,
day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or
condemnatory sentences, _en masse_, upon metrical works of whose
merits and demerits they have, in the first place, virtually
confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing ignorance of all
determinate principles by which to regulate a decision. Poetry has
never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps, in
the present condition of language it never will be. Words cannot hem
it in. Its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be
bound down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. But it is not,
therefore, misunderstood--at least, not by all men is it
misunderstood. Very far from it. If, indeed, there be any one circle
of thought distinctly and palpably marked out from amid the jarring
and tumultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that evergreen and
radiant Paradise which the true poet knows, and knows alone, as the
limited realm of his authority--as the circumscribed Eden of his
dreams. But a definition is a thing of words--a conception of ideas.
And thus while we readily believe that Poesy, the term, it will be
troublesome, if not impossible to define--still, with its image
vividly existing in the world, we apprehend no difficulty in so
describing Poesy, the Sentiment, as to imbue even the most obtuse
intellect with a comprehension of it sufficiently distinct for all
the purposes of practical analysis.
To look upwards from any existence, material or immaterial, to its
_design_, is, perhaps, the most direct, and the most unerring method
of attaining a just notion of the nature of the existence itself.
Nor is the principle at fault when we turn our eyes from Nature even
to Nature's God. We find certain faculties implanted within us, and
arrive at a more plausible conception of the character and
attributes of those faculties, by considering, with what finite
judgment we possess, the _intention_ of the Deity in so implanting
them within us, than by any actual investigation of their powers, or
any speculative deductions from their visible and material effects.
Thus, for example, we discover in all men a disposition to look with
reverence upon {328} superiority, whether real or supposititious. In
some, this disposition is to be recognized with difficulty, and, in
very peculiar cases, we are occasionally even led to doubt its
existence altogether, until circumstances beyond the common routine
bring it accidentally into development. In others again it forms a
prominent and distinctive feature of character, and is rendered
palpably evident in its excesses. But in all human beings it is, in
a greater or less degree, finally perceptible. It has been,
therefore, justly considered a primitive sentiment. Phrenologists
call it Veneration. It is, indeed, the instinct given to man by God
as security for his own worship. And although, preserving its
nature, it becomes perverted from its principal purpose, and
although, swerving from that purpose, it serves to modify the
relations of human society--the relations of father and child, of
master and slave, of the ruler and the ruled--its primitive essence
is nevertheless the same, and by a reference to primal causes, may
at any moment be determined.
Very nearly akin to this feeling, and liable to the same analysis,
is the Faculty of Ideality--which is the sentiment of Poesy. This
sentiment is the sense of the beautiful, of the sublime, and of the
mystical.[3] Thence spring immediately admiration of the fair
flowers, the fairer forests, the bright valleys and rivers and
mountains of the Earth--and love of the gleaming stars and other
burning glories of Heaven--and, mingled up inextricably with this
love and this admiration of Heaven and of Earth, the unconquerable
desire--_to know_. Poesy is the sentiment of Intellectual Happiness
here, and the Hope of a higher Intellectual Happiness hereafter.[4]
Imagination is its Soul.[5] With the _passions_ of mankind--although
it may modify them greatly--although it may exalt, or inflame, or
purify, or control them--it would require little ingenuity to prove
that it has no inevitable, and indeed no necessary co-existence. We
have hitherto spoken of Poetry in the abstract: we come now to speak
of it in its every-day acceptation--that is to say, of the practical
result arising from the sentiment we have considered.
[Footnote 3: We separate the sublime and the mystical--for, despite
of high authorities, we are firmly convinced that the latter _may_
exist, in the most vivid degree, without giving rise to the sense of
the former.]
[Footnote 4: The consciousness of this truth was possessed by no
mortal more fully than by Shelley, although he has only once
especially alluded to it. In his _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_ we
find these lines.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead:
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:
I was not heard: I saw them not.
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life at that sweet time when birds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of buds and blossoming
Sudden thy shadow fell on me--
I shrieked and clasp'd my hands in ecstacy!
I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow,
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free,
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful _Loveliness_,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.]
[Footnote 5: Imagination is, possibly, in man, a lesser degree of
the creative power in God. What the Deity imagines, _is_, but _was
not_ before. What man imagines, _is_, but _was_ also. The mind of
man cannot imagine what _is not_. This latter point may be
demonstrated.--_See Les Premiers Traits de L'Erudition Universelle,
par M. Le Baron de Bielfield, 1767_.]
And now it appears evident, that since Poetry, in this new sense,
_is_ the practical result, expressed in language, of this Poetic
Sentiment in certain individuals, the only proper method of testing
the merits of a poem is by measuring its capabilities of exciting
the Poetic Sentiment in others. And to this end we have many
aids--in observation, in experience, in ethical analysis, and in the
dictates of common sense. Hence the _Poeta nascitur_, which is
indisputably true if we consider the Poetic Sentiment, becomes the
merest of absurdities when we regard it in reference to the
practical result. We do not hesitate to say that a man highly
endowed with the powers of Causality--that is to say, a man of
metaphysical acumen--will, even with a very deficient share of
Ideality, compose a finer poem (if we test it, as we should, by its
measure of exciting the Poetic Sentiment) than one who, without such
metaphysical acumen, shall be gifted, in the most extraordinary
degree, with the faculty of Ideality. For a poem is not the Poetic
faculty, but _the means_ of exciting it in mankind. Now these means
the metaphysician may discover by analysis of their effects in other
cases than his own, without even conceiving the nature of these
effects--thus arriving at a result which the unaided Ideality of his
competitor would be utterly unable, except by accident, to attain.
It is more than possible that the man who, of all writers, living or
dead, has been most successful in writing the purest of all
poems--that is to say, poems which excite most purely, most
exclusively, and most powerfully the imaginative faculties in
men--owed his extraordinary and almost magical pre-eminence rather
to metaphysical than poetical powers. We allude to the author of
Christabel, of the Rime of the Auncient Mariner, and of Love--to
Coleridge--whose head, if we mistake not its character, gave no
great phrenological tokens of Ideality, while the organs of
Causality and Comparison were most singularly developed.
Perhaps at this particular moment there are no American poems held
in so high estimation by our countrymen, as the poems of Drake, and
of Halleck. The exertions of Mr. George Dearborn have no doubt a far
greater share in creating this feeling than the lovers of literature
for its own sake and spiritual uses would be willing to admit. We
have indeed seldom seen more beautiful volumes than the volumes now
before us. But an adventitious interest of a loftier nature--the
interest of the living in the memory of the beloved dead--attaches
itself to the few literary remains of Drake. The poems which are now
given to us with his name are nineteen in number; and whether all,
or whether even the best of his writings, it is our present purpose
to speak of these alone, since upon this edition his poetical
reputation to all time will most probably depend.
It is only lately that we have read _The Culprit Fay_. This is a
poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and
divided into thirty six stanzas, of {329} unequal length. The scene
of the narrative, as we ascertain from the single line,
The moon looks down on old _Cronest_,
is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the Hudson. The plot
is as follows. An Ouphe, one of the race of Fairies, has "broken his
vestal vow,"
He has loved an earthly maid
And left for her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew,
And sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air,
Play'd with the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy breast,
Forgot the lily-king's behest--
in short, he has broken Fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal.
The result of this misdemeanor we could not express so well as the
poet, and will therefore make use of the language put into the mouth
of the Fairy-King who reprimands the criminal.
Fairy! Fairy! list and mark,
Thou hast broke thine elfin chain,
Thy flame-wood lamp is quench'd and dark
And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain.
The Ouphe being in this predicament, it has become necessary that
his case and crime should be investigated by a jury of his fellows,
and to this end the "shadowy tribes of air" are summoned by the
"sentry elve" who has been awakened by the "wood-tick"--are summoned
we say to the "elfin-court" at midnight to hear the doom of the
_Culprit Fay_.
"Had a stain been found on the earthly fair" whose blandishments so
bewildered the litle Ouphe, his punishment had been severe indeed.
In such case he would have been (as we learn from the Fairy judge's
exposition of the criminal code,)
Tied to the hornet's shardy wings;
Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings;
Or seven long ages doomed to dwell
With the lazy worm in the walnut shell;
Or every night to writhe and bleed
Beneath the tread of the centipede;
Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim,
His jailer a spider huge and grim,
Amid the carrion bodies to lie
Of the worm and the bug and the murdered fly--
Fortunately, however, for the Culprit, his mistress is proved to be
of "sinless mind" and under such redeeming circumstances the
sentence is, mildly, as follows--
Thou shalt seek the beach of sand
Where the water bounds the elfin land,
Thou shalt watch the oozy brine
Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine,
Then dart the glistening arch below,
And catch a drop from his silver bow.
* * * * *
If the spray-bead gem be won
The stain of thy wing is washed away,
But another errand must be done
Ere thy crime be lost for aye;
Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,
Thou must re-illume its spark.
Mount thy steed and spur him high
To the heaven's blue canopy;
And when thou seest a shooting star
Follow it fast and follow it far--
The last faint spark of its burning train
Shall light the elfin lamp again.
Upon this sin, and upon this sentence, depends the web of the
narrative, which is now occupied with the elfin difficulties
overcome by the Ouphe in washing away the stain of his wing, and
re-illuming his flame-wood lamp. His soiled pinion having lost its
power, he is under the necessity of wending his way on foot from the
Elfin court upon Cronest to the river beach at its base. His path is
encumbered at every step with "bog and briar," with "brook and
mire," with "beds of tangled fern," with "groves of nightshade," and
with the minor evils of ant and snake. Happily, however, a spotted
toad coming in sight, our adventurer jumps upon her back, and
"bridling her mouth with a silkweed twist" bounds merrily along
Till the mountain's magic verge is past
And the beach of sand is reached at last.
Alighting now from his "courser-toad" the Ouphe folds his wings
around his bosom, springs on a rock, breathes a prayer, throws his
arms above his head,
Then tosses a tiny curve in air
And plunges in the waters blue.
Here, however, a host of difficulties await him by far too
multitudinous to enumerate. We will content ourselves with simply
stating the names of his most respectable assailants. These are the
"spirits of the waves" dressed in "snail-plate armor" and aided by
the "mailed shrimp," the "prickly prong," the "blood-red leech," the
"stony star-fish," the "jellied quarl," the "soldier crab," and the
"lancing squab." But the hopes of our hero are high, and his limbs
are strong, so
He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing
And throws his feet with a frog-like fling.
All, however is to no purpose.
On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold,
The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd,
The prickly prong has pierced his skin,
And the squab has thrown his javelin,
The gritty star has rubb'd him raw,
And the crab has struck with his giant claw;
He bawls with rage, and he shrieks with pain
He strikes around but his blows are vain--
So then,
He turns him round and flies amain
With hurry and dash to the beach again.
Arrived safely on land our Fairy friend now gathers the dew from the
"sorrel-leaf and henbane-bud" and bathing therewith his wounds,
finally ties them up with cobweb. Thus recruited, he
----treads the fatal shore
As fresh and vigorous as before.
At length espying a "purple-muscle shell" upon the beach, he
determines to use it as a boat, and thus evade the animosity of the
water-spirits whose powers extend not above the wave. Making a
"sculler's notch" in the stern, and providing himself with an oar of
the bootle-blade, the Ouphe a second time ventures upon the deep.
His perils are now diminished, but still great. The imps of the
river heave the billows up before the prow of the boat, dash the
surges against her side, and strike against her keel. The quarl
uprears "his island-back" in her path, and the scallop, floating in
the rear of the vessel, spatters it all over with water. Our
adventurer however, bails it out with the colen bell (which he has
luckily provided for the purpose of catching the drop from the
silver bow of the sturgeon,) and keeping his little bark warily
trimmed, holds on his course undiscomfited.
{330} The object of his first adventure is at length discovered in a
"brown-backed sturgeon," who
Like the heaven-shot javelin
Springs above the waters blue,
And, instant as the star-fall light
Plunges him in the deep again,
But leaves an arch of silver bright,
The rainbow of the moony main.
From this rainbow our Ouphe succeeds in catching, by means of his
colen-bell cup, a "droplet of the sparkling dew." One half of his
task is accordingly done--
His wings are pure, for the gem is won.
On his return to land, the ripples divide before him, while the
water-spirits, so rancorous before, are obsequiously attentive to
his comfort. Having tarried a moment on the beach to breathe a
prayer, he "spreads his wings of gilded blue" and takes his way to
the elfin court--there resting until the cricket, at two in the
morning, rouses him up for the second portion of his penance.
His equipments are now an "acorn helmet," a "thistle-down plume," a
corslet of the "wild-bee's" skin, a cloak of the "wings of
butterflies," a shield of the "shell of the lady-bug," for lance
"the sting of a wasp," for sword a "blade of grass," for horse "a
fire-fly," and for spurs a couple of "cockle seed." Thus accoutred,
Away like a glance of thought he flies
To skim the heavens and follow far
The fiery trail of the rocket-star.
In the Heavens he has new dangers to encounter. The "shapes of air"
have begun their work--a "drizzly mist" is cast around him--"storm,
darkness, sleet and shade" assail him--"shadowy hands" twitch at his
bridle-rein--"flame-shot tongues" play around him--"fiendish eyes"
glare upon him--and
Yells of rage and shrieks of fear
Come screaming on his startled ear.
Still our adventurer is nothing daunted.
He thrusts before, and he strikes behind,
Till he pierces the cloudy bodies through
And gashes the shadowy limbs of wind,
and the Elfin makes no stop, until he reaches the "bank of the milky
way." He there checks his courser, and watches "for the glimpse of
the planet shoot." While thus engaged, however, an unexpected
adventure befalls him. He is approached by a company of the "sylphs
of Heaven attired in sunset's crimson pall." They dance around him,
and "skip before him on the plain." One receiving his "wasp-sting
lance," and another taking his bridle-rein,
With warblings wild they lead him on,
To where, through clouds of amber seen,
Studded with stars resplendent shone
The palace of the sylphid queen.
A glowing description of the queen's beauty follows; and as the form
of an earthly Fay had never been seen before in the bowers of light,
she is represented as falling desperately in love at first sight
with our adventurous Ouphe. He returns the compliment in some
measure, of course; but, although "his heart bent fitfully," the
"earthly form imprinted there" was a security against a too vivid
impression. He declines, consequently, the invitation of the queen
to remain with her and amuse himself by "lying within the fleecy
drift," "hanging upon the rainbow's rim," having his "brow adorned
with all the jewels of the sky," "sitting within the Pleiad ring,"
"resting upon Orion's belt," "riding upon the lightning's gleam,"
"dancing upon the orbed moon," and "swimming within the milky way."
Lady, he cries, I have sworn to-night
On the word of a fairy knight
To do my sentence task aright.
The queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the Fay an
affectionate farewell--having first directed him carefully to that
particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. He
reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the
cloud" who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a
"glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to Fairy-land.
The poem closes with an Io Pæan chaunted by the elves in honor of
these glorious adventures.
It is more than probable that from among ten readers of the _Culprit
Fay_, nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most
extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five
or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what
we have already assumed, that Ideality is indeed the soul of the
Poetic Sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a
half-consciousness that they _ought_ to admire the production, and a
wonder that they _do not_. This embarrassment would then arise from
an indistinct conception of the results in which Ideality is
rendered manifest. Of these results some few are seen in the
_Culprit Fay_, but the greater part of it is utterly destitute of
any evidence of imagination whatever. The general character of the
poem will, we think, be sufficiently understood by any one who may
have taken the trouble to read our foregoing compendium of the
narrative. It will be there seen that what is so frequently termed
the imaginative power of this story, lies especially--we should have
rather said is thought to lie--in the passages we have quoted, or in
others of a precisely similar nature. These passages embody,
principally, mere specifications of qualities, of habiliments, of
punishments, of occupations, of circumstances &c., which the poet
has believed in unison with the size, firstly, and secondly with the
nature of his Fairies. To all which may be added specifications of
other animal existences (such as the toad, the beetle, the
lance-fly, the fire-fly and the like) supposed also to be in
accordance. An example will best illustrate our meaning upon this
point--we take it from page 20.
He put his acorn helmet on;
It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down:
The corslet plate that guarded his breast
Was once the wild bee's golden vest;
His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes,
Was formed of the wings of butterflies;
His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen,
Studs of gold on a ground of green;[6]
And the quivering lance which he brandished bright
Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight.
[Footnote 6: Chesnut color, or more slack,
Gold upon a ground of black.
_Ben Jonson_.]
We shall now be understood. Were any of the admirers of the _Culprit
Fay_ asked their opinion of these lines, they would most probably
speak in high terms of the _imagination_ they display. Yet let the
most stolid and {331} the most confessedly unpoetical of these
admirers only try the experiment, and he will find, possibly to his
extreme surprise, that he himself will have no difficulty whatever
in substituting for the equipments of the Fairy, as assigned by the
poet, other equipments equally comfortable, no doubt, and equally in
unison with the preconceived size, character, and other qualities of
the equipped. Why we could accoutre him as well ourselves--let us
see.
His blue-bell helmet, we have heard,
Was plumed with the down of the humming-bird,
The corslet on his bosom bold
Was once the locust's coat of gold,
His cloak, of a thousand mingled hues,
Was the velvet violet, wet with dews,
His target was the crescent shell
Of the small sea Sidrophel,
And a glittering beam from a maiden's eye
Was the lance which he proudly wav'd on high.
The truth is, that the only requisite for writing verses of this
nature, _ad libitum_, is a tolerable acquaintance with the qualities
of the objects to be detailed, and a very moderate endowment of the
faculty of Comparison--which is the chief constituent of _Fancy_ or
the powers of combination. A thousand such lines may be composed
without exercising in the least degree the Poetic Sentiment, which
is Ideality, Imagination, or the creative ability. And, as we have
before said, the greater portion of the _Culprit Fay_ is occupied
with these, or similar things, and upon such, depends very nearly,
if not altogether, its reputation. We select another example from
page 25.
But oh! how fair the shape that lay
Beneath a rainbow bending bright,
She seem'd to the entranced Fay
The loveliest of the forms of light;
Her mantle was the purple rolled
At twilight in the west afar;
'Twas tied with threads of dawning gold,
And button'd with a sparkling star.
Her face was like the lily roon
That veils the vestal planet's hue;
Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon
Set floating in the welkin blue.
Her hair is like the sunny beam,
And the diamond gems which round it gleam
Are the pure drops of dewy even,
That ne'er have left their native heaven.
Here again the faculty of Comparison is alone exercised, and no mind
possessing the faculty in any ordinary degree would find a
difficulty in substituting for the materials employed by the poet
other materials equally as good. But viewed as mere efforts of the
Fancy and without reference to Ideality, the lines just quoted are
much worse than those which were taken from page 20. A congruity was
observable in the accoutrements of the Ouphe, and we had no trouble
in forming a distinct conception of his appearance when so
accoutred. But the most vivid powers of Comparison can attach no
definitive idea to even "the loveliest form of light," when habited
in a mantle of "rolled purple tied with threads of dawn and buttoned
with a star," and sitting at the same time under a rainbow with
"beamlet" eyes and a visage of "lily roon."
But if these things evince no Ideality in their author, do they not
excite it in others?--if so, we must conclude, that without being
himself imbued with the Poetic Sentiment, he has still succeeded in
writing a fine poem--a supposition as we have before endeavored to
show, not altogether paradoxical. Most assuredly we think not. In
the case of a great majority of readers the only sentiment aroused
by compositions of this order is a species of vague wonder at the
writer's _ingenuity_, and it is this indeterminate sense of wonder
which passes but too frequently current for the proper influence of
the Poetic power. For our own parts we plead guilty to a predominant
sense of the ludicrous while occupied in the perusal of the poem
before us--a sense whose promptings we sincerely and honestly
endeavored to quell, perhaps not altogether successfully, while
penning our compend of the narrative. That a feeling of this nature
is utterly at war with the Poetic Sentiment, will not be disputed by
those who comprehend the character of the sentiment itself. This
character is finely shadowed out in that popular although vague idea
so prevalent throughout all time, that a species of melancholy is
inseparably connected with the higher manifestations of the
beautiful. But with the numerous and seriously-adduced incongruities
of the Culprit Fay, we find it generally impossible to connect other
ideas than those of the ridiculous. We are bidden, in the first
place, and in a tone of sentiment and language adapted to the
loftiest breathings of the Muse, to imagine a race of Fairies in the
vicinity of West Point. We are told, with a grave air, of their
camp, of their king, and especially of their sentry, who is a
wood-tick. We are informed that an Ouphe of about an inch in height
has committed a deadly sin in falling in love with a mortal maiden,
who may, very possibly, be six feet in her stockings. The
consequence to the Ouphe is--what? Why, that he has "dyed his
wings," "broken his elfin chain," and "quenched his flame-wood
lamp." And he is therefore sentenced to what? To catch a spark from
the tail of a falling star, and a drop of water from the belly of a
sturgeon. What are his equipments for the first adventure? An acorn
helmet, a thistle-down plume, a butterfly cloak, a lady-bug shield,
cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. How does he ride to the
second? On the back of a bull-frog. What are his opponents in the
one? "Drizzly mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy hands" and
"flame-shot tongues." What in the other? "Mailed shrimps," "prickly
prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jellied quarls," "stony star fishes,"
"lancing squabs" and "soldier crabs." Is that all? No--Although only
an inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction from a "sylphid
queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled purple," "tied with threads
of dawning gold," "buttoned with a sparkling star," and sitting
under a rainbow with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of "lily
roon." In our account of all this matter we have had reference to
the book--and to the book alone. It will be difficult to prove us
guilty in any degree of distortion or exaggeration. Yet such are the
puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among
the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to assign a
rank with the proud trophies of the matured and vigorous genius of
England, is to prove ourselves at once a fool, a maligner, and no
patriot.[7]
[Footnote 7: A review of Drake's poems, emanating from one of our
proudest Universities, does not scruple to make use of the following
language in relation to the _Culprit Fay_. "_It is, to say the
least, an elegant production, the purest specimen of Ideality {332}
we have ever met with, sustaining in each incident a most bewitching
interest. Its very title is enough_," &c. &c. We quote these
expressions as a fair specimen of the general unphilosophical and
adulatory tenor of our criticism.]
As an instance of what may be termed the sublimely ridiculous we
quote the following lines from page 17.
With sweeping tail and quivering fin,
Through the wave the sturgeon flew,
And like the heaven-shot javelin,
He sprung above the waters blue.
Instant as the star-fall light,
He plunged into the deep again,
But left an arch of silver bright
The rainbow of the moony main.
_It was a strange and lovely sight
To see the puny goblin there;
He seemed an angel form of light
With azure wing and sunny hair,
Throned on a cloud of purple fair
Circled with blue and edged with white
And sitting at the fall of even
Beneath the bow of summer heaven._
The verses here italicized, if considered without their context,
have a certain air of dignity, elegance, and chastity of thought. If
however we apply the context, we are immediately overwhelmed with
the grotesque. It is impossible to read without laughing, such
expressions as "It was a strange and lovely sight"--"He seemed an
angel form of light"--"And sitting at the fall of even, beneath the
bow of summer heaven" to a Fairy--a goblin--an Ouphe--half an inch
high, dressed in an acorn helmet and butterfly-cloak, and sitting on
the water in a muscle-shell, with a "brown-backed sturgeon" turning
somersets over his head.
In a world where evil is a mere consequence of good, and good a mere
consequence of evil--in short where all of which we have any
conception is good or bad only by comparison--we have never yet been
fully able to appreciate the validity of that decision which would
debar the critic from enforcing upon his readers the merits or
demerits of a work by placing it in juxta-position with another. It
seems to us that an adage based in the purest ignorance has had more
to do with this popular feeling than any just reason founded upon
common sense. Thinking thus, we shall have no scruple in
illustrating our opinion in regard to what _is not_ Ideality or the
Poetic Power, by an example of what _is_.[8] We have already given
the description of the Sylphid Queen in the _Culprit Fay_. In the
_Queen Mab_ of Shelley a Fairy is thus introduced--
Those who had looked upon the sight,
Passing all human glory,
Saw not the yellow moon,
Saw not the mortal scene,
Heard not the night wind's rush,
Heard not an earthly sound,
Saw but the fairy pageant,
Heard but the heavenly strains
That filled the lonely dwelling--
and thus described--
The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud
That catches but the palest tinge of even,
And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
_Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
Yet with an undulating motion,
Swayed to her outline gracefully_.
[Footnote 8: As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we
would cite the _Prometheus Vinctus_ of Æschylus, the _Inferno_ of
Dante, Cervantes' _Destruction of Numantia_, the _Comus_ of Milton,
Pope's _Rape of the Lock_, Burns' _Tam O'Shanter_, the _Auncient
Mariner_, the _Christabel_, and the _Kubla Khan_ of Coleridge; and
most especially the _Sensitive Plant_ of Shelley, and the
_Nightingale_ of Keats. We have seen American poems evincing the
faculty in the highest degree.]
In these exquisite lines the Faculty of mere Comparison is but
little exercised--that of Ideality in a wonderful degree. It is
probable that in a similar case the poet we are now reviewing would
have formed the face of the Fairy of the "fibrous cloud," her arms
of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the "fair stars," and her
body of the "twilight shadow." Having so done, his admirers would
have congratulated him upon his _imagination_, not taking the
trouble to think that they themselves could at any moment _imagine_
a Fairy of materials equally as good, and conveying an equally
distinct idea. Their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of
many a schoolboy who admires the imagination displayed in _Jack the
Giant-Killer_, and is finally rejoiced at discovering his own
imagination to surpass that of the author, since the monsters
destroyed by Jack are only about forty feet in height, and he
himself has no trouble in imagining some of one hundred and forty.
It will be seen that the Fairy of Shelley is not a mere compound of
incongruous natural objects, inartificially put together, and
unaccompanied by any _moral_ sentiment--but a being, in the
illustration of whose nature some physical elements are used
collaterally as adjuncts, while the main conception springs
immediately _or thus apparently springs_, from the brain of the
poet, enveloped in the moral sentiments of grace, of color, of
motion--of the beautiful, of the mystical, of the august--in short
of _the ideal_.[9]
[Footnote 9: Among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the
opinion of far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with the mere
prettinesses of the Muse, are the positive similes so abundant in
the writings of antiquity, and so much insisted upon by the critics
of the reign of Queen Anne.]
It is by no means our intention to deny that in the _Culprit Fay_
are passages of a different order from those to which we have
objected--passages evincing a degree of imagination not to be
discovered in the plot, conception, or general execution of the
poem. The opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example.
'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night--
_The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright_
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cronest,
She mellows the shades of his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge grey form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
_Glimmers and dies_ the fire-fly's spark--
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.
There is Ideality in these lines--but except in the case of the
words italicized--it is Ideality _not of a high order_. We have it
is true, a collection of natural {333} objects, each individually of
great beauty, and, if actually seen as in nature, capable of
exciting in any mind, through the means of the Poetic Sentiment more
or less inherent in all, a certain sense of the beautiful. But to
view such natural objects as they exist, and to behold them through
the medium of words, are different things. Let us pursue the idea
that such a collection as we have here will produce, of necessity,
the Poetic Sentiment, and we may as well make up our minds to
believe that a catalogue of such expressions as moon, sky, trees,
rivers, mountains &c., shall be capable of exciting it,--it is
merely an extension of the principle. But in the line "the earth is
dark, _but_ the heavens are bright" besides the simple mention of
the "dark earth" and the "bright heaven," we have, directly, the
moral sentiment of the brightness of the sky compensating for the
darkness of the earth--and thus, indirectly, of the happiness of a
future state compensating for the miseries of a present. All this is
effected by the simple introduction of the word _but_ between the
"dark heaven" and the "bright earth"--this introduction, however,
was prompted by the Poetic Sentiment, and by the Poetic Sentiment
alone. The case is analogous in the expression "glimmers and dies,"
where the imagination is exalted by the moral sentiment of beauty
heightened in dissolution.
In one or two shorter passages of the _Culprit Fay_ the poet will
recognize the purely ideal, and be able at a glance to distinguish
it from that baser alloy upon which we have descanted. We give them
without farther comment.
The winds _are whist_, and the owl is still
The bat in the shelvy rock _is hid_
And naught is heard on the _lonely_ hill
But the cricket's chirp and the answer _shrill_
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;
And the plaint of the _wailing_ whippoorwill
Who mourns _unseen_, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo--
Up to the vaulted firmament
His path the fire-fly courser bent,
And at every gallop on the wind
_He flung a glittering spark behind_.
He blessed the force of the charmed line,
And he banned the water-goblins' spite,
For he saw around _in the sweet moonshine,
Their little wee faces above the brine,
Giggling and laughing with all their might_
At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight.
The poem "_To a Friend_" consists of fourteen Spenserian stanzas.
They are fine spirited verses, and probably were not supposed by
their author to be more. Stanza the fourth, although beginning
nobly, concludes with that very common exemplification of the
bathos, the illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by
reference to the tinsel of artificiality.
Oh! for a seat on Appalachia's brow,
That I might scan the glorious prospects round,
Wild waving woods, and rolling floods below,
Smooth level glades and fields with grain embrowned,
High heaving hills, with tufted forests crowned,
Rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome,
And emerald isles, _like banners green unwound,
Floating along the lake, while round them roam
Bright helms of billowy blue, and plumes of dancing foam_.
In the _Extracts from Leon_, are passages not often surpassed in
vigor of passionate thought and expression--and which induce us to
believe not only that their author would have succeeded better in
prose romance than in poetry, but that his attention would have
naturally fallen into the former direction, had the Destroyer only
spared him a little longer.
This poem contains also lines of far greater poetic power than any
to be found in the _Culprit Fay_. For example--
The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold,
The _viewless_ dew falls lightly on the world;
The gentle air _that softly sweeps the leaves_
A strain of faint unearthly music weaves:
As when the harp of heaven _remotely_ plays,
Or cygnets _wail_--or song of _sorrowing_ fays
That _float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale_,
On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.[10]
[Footnote 10: The expression "woven air," much insisted upon by the
friends of Drake, seems to be accredited to him as original. It is
to be found in many English writers--and can be traced back to
Apuleius who calls fine drapery _ventum textilem_.]
_Niagara_ is objectionable in many respects, and in none more so
than in its frequent inversions of language, and the artificial
character of its versification. The invocation,
Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,
Pour thy white foam on the valley below!
Frown ye dark mountains, &c.
is ludicrous--and nothing more. In general, all such invocations
have an air of the burlesque. In the present instance we may fancy
the majestic Niagara replying, "Most assuredly I will roar, whether,
worm! thou tellest me or not."
_The American Flag_ commences with a collection of those bald
conceits, which we have already shown to have no dependence whatever
upon the Poetic Power--springing altogether from Comparison.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we have--what? Why, a
flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of
glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with
a few pieces of "the milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle
bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this
"symbol of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to
understand his claw. In the second stanza, the "thunder-drum of
Heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree--a
commingling of the most sublime music of Heaven with the most
utterly contemptible and common-place of Earth. The two concluding
verses are in a better spirit, and might almost be supposed to be
from a different hand. The images contained in the lines,
When Death careering on the gale
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies {334} of the
whole poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with
"Scots wha hae," with the "Mariners of England," or with
"Hohenlinden." It is indebted for its high and most undeserved
reputation to our patriotism--not to our judgment.
The remaining poems in Mr. Dearborn's edition of Drake, are three
Songs; Lines in an Album; Lines to a Lady; Lines on leaving New
Rochelle; Hope; A Fragment; To ----; Lines; To Eva; To a Lady; To
Sarah; and Bronx. These are all poems of little compass, and with
the exception of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no
character distinctive from the mass of our current poetical
literature. Bronx, however, is in our opinion, not only the best of
the writings of Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem,
upon which his admirers would do better to found a hope of the
writer's ultimate reputation than upon the _niaiseries_ of the
_Culprit Fay_. In the _Fragment_ is to be found the finest
individual passage in the volume before us, and we quote it as a
proper finale to our Review.
Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever;
How sweet 'twould be _when all the air
In moonlight swims_, along thy river
To couch upon the grass, and hear
Niagara's everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue west away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day,
Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry,
When o'er the brink the tide is driven,
_As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven_.
* * * * *
Halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon
the whole, to those of his friend Drake. He has written nothing at
all comparable to _Bronx_. By the hackneyed phrase, _sportive
elegance_, we might possibly designate at once the general character
of his writings and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly
entitled.
_Alnwick Castle_ is an irregular poem of one hundred and
twenty-eight lines--was written, as we are informed, in October
1822--and is descriptive of a seat of the Duke of Northumberland, in
Northumberlandshire, England. The effect of the first stanza is
materially impaired by a defect in its grammatical arrangement. The
fine lines,
Home of the Percy's high-born race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial place,
Their cradle and their grave!
are of the nature of an invocation, and thus require a continuation
of the address to the "Home, &c." We are consequently disappointed
when the stanza proceeds with--
Still sternly o'er the castle gate
_Their_ house's Lion stands in state
As in _his_ proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above _his_ princely towers.
The objects of allusion here vary, in an awkward manner, from the
castle to the Lion, and from the Lion to the towers. By writing the
verses thus the difficulty would be remedied.
Still sternly o'er the castle gate
_Thy_ house's Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above _thy_ princely towers.
The second stanza, without evincing in any measure the loftier
powers of a poet, has that quiet air of grace, both in thought and
expression, which seems to be the prevailing feature of the Muse of
Halleck.
A gentle hill its side inclines,
Lovely in England's fadeless green,
To meet the quiet stream which winds
Through this romantic scene
As silently and sweetly still,
As when, at evening, on that hill,
While summer's wind blew soft and low,
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side
His Katherine was a happy bride
A thousand years ago.
There are one or two brief passages in the poem evincing a degree of
rich imagination not elsewhere perceptible throughout the book. For
example--
Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile:
Does not the succoring Ivy keeping,
Her watch around it seem to smile
As o'er a lov'd one sleeping?
and,
One solitary turret gray
Still tells in melancholy glory
The legend of the Cheviot day.
The commencement of the fourth stanza is of the highest order of
Poetry, and partakes, in a happy manner, of that quaintness of
expression so effective an adjunct to Ideality, when employed by the
Shelleys, the Coleridges and the Tennysons, but so frequently
debased, and rendered ridiculous, by the herd of brainless
imitators.
Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom:
_They were born of a race of funeral flowers_,
That garlanded in long-gone hours,
A Templar's knightly tomb.
The tone employed in the concluding portions of Alnwick Castle, is,
we sincerely think, reprehensible, and unworthy of Halleck. No true
poet can unite in any manner the low burlesque with the ideal, and
not be conscious of incongruity and of a profanation. Such verses as
Men in the coal and cattle line
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle upon Tyne,
may lay claim to oddity--but no more. These things are the defects
and not the beauties of _Don Juan_. They are totally out of keeping
with the graceful and delicate manner of the initial portions of
_Alnwick Castle_, and serve no better purpose than to deprive the
entire poem of all unity of effect. If a poet must be farcical, let
him be just that, and nothing else. To be drolly sentimental is bad
enough, as we have just seen in certain passages of the _Culprit
Fay_, but to be sentimentally droll is a thing intolerable to men,
and Gods, and columns.
_Marco Bozzaris_ appears to have much lyrical without any high order
of _ideal_ beauty. _Force_ is its prevailing character--a force,
however, consisting more in a well ordered and sonorous arrangement
of the metre, and a {335} judicious disposal of what may be called
the circumstances of the poem, than in the true _materiel_ of lyric
vigor. We are introduced, first, to the Turk who dreams, at
midnight, in his guarded tent,
of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power--
He is represented as revelling in the visions of ambition.
In dreams through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king;
As wild his thoughts and gay of wing
As Eden's garden bird.
In direct contrast to this we have Bozzaris watchful in the forest,
and ranging his band of Suliotes on the ground, and amid the
memories, of Platœa. An hour elapses, and the Turk awakes from his
visions of false glory--to die. But Bozzaris dies--to awake. He dies
in the flush of victory to awake, in death, to an ultimate certainty
of Freedom. Then follows an invocation to Death. His terrors under
ordinary circumstances are contrasted with the glories of the
dissolution of Bozzaris, in which the approach of the Destroyer is
welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm,
And orange groves and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
The poem closes with the poetical apotheosis of Marco Bozzaris as
One of the few, the immortal names
That are not born to die.
It will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are skilfully
contrived--perhaps they are a little too evident, and we are enabled
too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate the
succeeding. The rhythm is highly artificial. The stanzas are well
adapted for vigorous expression--the fifth will afford a just
specimen of the versification of the whole poem.
Come to the bridal Chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible--the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
Granting, however, to _Marco Bozzaris_, the minor excellences we
have pointed out, we should be doing our conscience great wrong in
calling it, upon the whole, any thing more than a very ordinary
matter. It is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign
and by many American compositions of a similar character. To
Ideality it has few pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem
is probably to be found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere--
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm
And orange groves, and fields of balm
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
The verses entitled _Burns_ consist of thirty eight quatrains--the
three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of
three. This poem has many of the traits of _Alnwick Castle_, and
bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of
Wordsworth. Its chief merit, and indeed the chief merit, so we
think, of all the poems of Halleck is the merit of _expression_. In
the brief extracts from _Burns_ which follow, our readers will
recognize the peculiar character of which we speak.
Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks:
Thou mind'st me of _that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks
And braes o' bonny Doon"_--
* * * * *
Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief--
We've crossed the winter sea, _and thou
Art withered--flower and leaf_.
* * * * *
_There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls and louder lyres
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires._
* * * * *
_And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall_
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.
* * * * *
Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined--
_The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind_.
* * * * *
_They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr_,
And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.
_Wyoming_ is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual
excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines
which follow are of great beauty.
I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life--a vision of the brain no more,
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er;
And now, _where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head_.
The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some
portions of Alnwick Castle--with such things as
he would look _particularly droll_
In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume;
and
a girl of sweet sixteen
Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn
_Without a shoe or stocking--hoeing corn_,
mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.
_The Field of the Grounded Arms_ contains twenty-four quatrains,
without rhyme, and, we think, of a {336} disagreeable versification.
In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of
Halleck. For example--
Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed
Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,
_When the mind's wings o'erspread
The spirit world of dreams_.
And again--
_O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers_.
_Red-Jacket_ has much power of expression with little evidence of
poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in
any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.
_A Sketch_ should have been omitted from the edition as altogether
unworthy of its author.
The remaining pieces in the volume are _Twilight_; _Psalm_ cxxxvii;
_To ****_; _Love_; _Domestic Happiness_; _Magdalen_; _From the
Italian_; _Woman_; _Connecticut_; _Music_; _On the Death of Lieut.
William Howard Allen_; _A Poet's Daughter_; and _On the Death of
Joseph Rodman Drake_. Of the majority of these we deem it
unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less
degree, of the general character observable in the poems of Halleck.
The _Poet's Daughter_ appears to us a particularly happy specimen of
that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite
of its author. We are glad to see the vulgarity of
I'm busy in the cotton trade
And sugar line,
omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not
English as it stands--and besides it is altogether unintelligible.
What is the meaning of this?
But her who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these have brought her.
_The Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake_, we prefer to any of
the writings of Halleck. It has that rare merit in compositions of
this kind--the union of tender sentiment and simplicity. This poem
consists merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts whose truth was proven,
Like thine are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth.
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine--
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply,
That mourns a man like thee.
If we are to judge from the subject of these verses, they are a work
of some care and reflection. Yet they abound in faults. In the line,
Tears fell when thou wert dying;
_wert_ is not English.
Will tears the cold turf steep,
is an exceedingly rough verse. The metonymy involved in
There should a wreath be woven
To _tell_ the world their worth,
is unjust. The quatrain beginning,
And I who woke each morrow,
is ungrammatical in its construction when viewed in connection with
the quatrain which immediately follows. "Weep thee" and "deeply" are
inaccurate rhymes--and the whole of the first quatrain,
Green be the turf, &c.
although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance to the still more
beautiful lines of William Wordsworth,
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.
As a versifier Halleck is by no means equal to his friend, all of
whose poems evince an ear finely attuned to the delicacies of
melody. We seldom meet with more inharmonious lines than those,
generally, of the author of _Alnwick Castle_. At every step such
verses occur as,
And _the_ monk's hymn and minstrel's song--
True _as_ the steel of _their_ tried blades--
For _him_ the joy of _her_ young years--
Where _the_ Bard-peasant first drew breath--
And withered _my_ life's leaf like thine--
in which the proper course of the rhythm would demand an accent upon
syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Not unfrequently, too, we
meet with lines such as this,
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
in which the multiplicity of consonants renders the pronunciation of
the words at all, a matter of no inconsiderable difficulty.
But we must bring our notice to a close. It will be seen that while
we are willing to admire in many respects the poems before us, we
feel obliged to dissent materially from that public opinion (perhaps
not fairly ascertained) which would assign them a very brilliant
rank in the empire of Poesy. That we have among us poets of the
loftiest order we believe--but we do _not_ believe that these poets
are Drake and Halleck.
SLAVERY.
_Slavery in the United States. By J. K. Paulding. New York: Harper
and Brothers._
_The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the
Northern Abolitionists. Philadelphia: Published by H. Manly._
It is impossible to look attentively and understandingly on those
phenomena that indicate public sentiment in regard to the subject of
these works, without deep and anxious interest. "_Nulla vestigia
retrorsum_," is a saying fearfully applicable to what is called the
"march of mind." It is unquestionable truth. The absolute and
palpable impossibility of ever unlearning what we know, and of
returning, even by forgetfulness, to {337} the state of mind in
which the knowledge of it first found us, has always afforded
flattering encouragement to the hopes of him who dreams about the
perfectibility of human nature. Sometimes one scheme, and sometimes
another is devised for accomplishing this great end; and these means
are so various, and often so opposite, that the different
experiments which the world has countenanced would seem to
contradict the maxim we have quoted. At one time human nature is to
be elevated to the height of perfection, by emancipating the mind
from all the restraints imposed by Religion. At another, the same
end is to be accomplished by the universal spread of a faith, under
the benign influence of which every son of Adam is to become holy,
"even as God is holy." One or the other of these schemes has been a
cardinal point in every system of perfectibility which has been
devised since the earliest records of man's history began. At the
same time the progress of knowledge (subject indeed to occasional
interruptions) has given to each successive experiment a seeming
advantage over that which preceded it.
But it is lamentable to observe, that let research discover, let
science teach, let art practice what it may, man, in all his
mutations, never fails to get back to some point at which he has
been before. The human mind seems to perform, by some invariable
laws, a sort of cycle, like those of the heavenly bodies. We may be
unable, (and, for ourselves, we profess to be so) to trace the
_causes_ of these changes; but we are not sure that an accurate
observation of the history of various nations at different times,
may not detect the _laws_ that govern them. However eccentric the
orbit, the comet's place in the heavens enables the enlightened
astronomer to anticipate its future course, to tell when it will
pass its perihelion, in what direction it will shoot away into the
unfathomable abyss of infinite space, and at what period it will
return. But what especially concerns us, is to mark its progress
through our planetary system, to determine whether in coming or
returning it may infringe upon us, and prove the messenger of that
dispensation which, in the end of all things, is to wrap our earth
in flames.