And hold high converse with the mighty dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,
As gods beneficent, who bless’d mankind
With arts, with arms, and humanized a world.
Roused at th’ inspiring thought, I throw aside
The long-lived volume; and, deep-musing, hail
The sacred shades, that slowly-rising pass
Before my wondering eyes. First Socrates,
Who, firmly good in a corrupted state,
Against the rage of tyrants single stood,
Invincible! calm Reason’s holy law,
That voice of God within th’ attentive mind,
Obeying, fearless, or in life or death:
Great moral teacher! Wisest of mankind!
Solon the next, who built his commonweal
On equity’s wide base; by tender laws
A lively people curbing, yet undamped
Preserving still that quick peculiar fire,
Whence in the laurel’d field of finer arts,
And of bold freedom, they unequall’d shone,
The pride of smiling Greece and human kind.
Lycurgus then, who bow’d beneath the force
Of strictest discipline, severely wise,
All human passions. Following him, I see,
As at Thermopylæ he glorious fell,
The firm devoted chief,[C] who proved by deeds
The hardest lesson which the other taught.
Then Aristides lifts his honest front;
Spotless of heart, to whom th’ unflattering voice
Of freedom gave the noblest name of Just;
In pure majestic poverty revered;
Who, e’en his glory to his country’s weal
Submitting, swell’d a haughty rival’s[D] fame.
Rear’d by his care, of softer ray appears
Cimon sweet-soul’d; whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad
The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend
Of every worth and every splendid art;
Modest and simple, in the pomp of wealth.
Then the last worthies of declining Greece,
Late call’d to glory, in unequal times
Pensive appear. The fair Corinthian boast,
Timoleon, happy temper! mild and firm,
Who wept the brother while the tyrant bled.
And, equal to the best, the Theban Pair,[E]
Whose virtues, in heroic concord join’d,
Their country raised to freedom, empire, fame.
He too, with whom Athenian honor sunk,
And left a mass of sordid lees behind,
Phocion the Good; in public life severe,
To virtue still inexorably firm;
But when, beneath his low illustrious roof,
Sweet peace and happy wisdom smooth’d his brow,
Not friendship softer was, nor love more kind.
And he, the last of old Lycurgus’ sons,
The generous victim to that vain attempt,
To save a rotten state, Agis, who saw
E’en Sparta’s self to servile avarice sunk.
The two Achaian heroes close the train:
Aratus, who a while relumed the soul
Of fondly lingering liberty in Greece;
And he, her darling as her latest hope,
The gallant Philopœmen; who to arms
Turn’d the luxurious pomp he could not cure;
Or toiling on his farm, a simple swain;
Or, bold and skilful, thundering in the field.
‘Of rougher front, a mighty people comes!
A race of heroes! in those virtuous times
Which knew no stain, save that with partial flame
Their dearest country they too fondly loved:
Her better Founder first, the light of Rome,
Numa, who soften’d her rapacious sons;
Servius the king, who laid the solid base
On which o’er earth the vast republic spread.
Then the great consuls venerable rise.
The public Father[F] who the private quell’d,
As on the dread tribunal sternly sat.
He whom his thankless country could not lose,
Camillus, only vengeful to her foes.
Fabricius, scorner of all-conquering gold;
And Cincinnatus, awful from the plough.
Thy willing victim,[G] Carthage, bursting loose
From all that pleading Nature could oppose,
From a whole city’s tears, by rigid faith
Imperious call’d, and honor’s dire command.
Scipio, the gentle chief, humanely brave,
Who soon the race of spotless glory ran,
And, warm in youth, to the poetic shade
With Friendship and Philosophy retired.
Tully, whose powerful eloquence a while
Restrain’d the rapid fate of rushing Rome.
Unconquer’d Cato, virtuous in extreme;
And thou, unhappy Brutus, kind of heart,
Whose steady arm, by awful virtue urged,
Lifted the Roman steel against thy friend.
Thousands besides the tribute of a verse
Demand; but who can count the stars of heaven?
Who sing their influence on this lower world?
‘Behold, who yonder comes! in sober state,
Fair, mild, and strong, as is a vernal sun;
’Tis Phœbus’ self, or else the Mantuan swain!
Great Homer too appears, of daring wing,
Parent of song! and, equal by his side,
The British Muse; join’d hand in hand they walk,
Darkling, full up the middle steep to fame,
Nor absent are those shades, whose skilful touch
Pathetic drew th’ impassion’d heart, and charm’d
Transported Athens with the moral scene;
Nor those who, tuneful, waked th’ enchanted lyre.
‘First of your kind! society divine!
Still visit thus my nights, for you reserved,
And mount my soaring soul to thoughts like yours.
Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine;
See on the hallow’d hour that none intrude,
Save a few chosen friends, who sometimes deign
To bless my humble roof, with sense refined,
Learning digested well, exalted faith,
Unstudied wit, and humor ever gay.
Or from the Muses’ hill will Pope descend,
To raise the sacred hour, to bid it smile,
And with the social spirit warm the heart?
For though not sweeter his own Homer sings,
Yet is his life the more endearing song.’
Note 46, page 142.
Whoever has attempted to concentrate his thoughts in fixed
contemplation upon the origin of the human race, the object of our
present existence, and our prospects beyond it, upon the character
and plan of the divinity, and the mode of his being, must have
felt a painful vagueness, a dizzying sense of the weakness of our
powers, very naturally preparing us for superstitious and terrific
views of the first cause. But when, in the clear light of reason,
I look upon his creation, on his star-spangled firmament, and the
glory of his works, I should as soon doubt my own existence, as
the perfect wisdom and goodness of the author of my being. All
religion, which does not strengthen our confidence in this, must
be a dreary illusion. Horrible dreams, dating their origin from
the associations of childhood, and the rant of wild and visionary
ministers, may sometimes interpose, in the uncertain moments
between sleeping and waking, as among the gloomy presentiments
and partial delirium of ill health. But every rational mind must
finally settle to repose in that glorious persuasion, which
instantly irradiates the moral universe with perennial sunshine.
‘The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.’ In this or any other
world, in our present or any other forms of conscious being, we may
advance upon the unexplored scenes with a full confidence that we
can never travel beyond the beneficence and equity of the infinite
mind.
One of the standing themes of Christian pulpits is the puerile
and absurd views, which the common creed of the Greeks and Romans
presented of the rabble divinities of their Pantheon; deities, who
fought, intrigued, made love, and intoxicated themselves; deities,
who had great power in a valley, and none on the adjoining hills;
deities, who were conquered, and transferred with their territory,
and became in consequence subservient to their conquerors. I have
heard discussions of this kind in the discourse of the sabbath
morning: and, in that of the evening, views of Christian theology,
scarcely less narrow and unworthy of the Supreme Being. I am
compelled to believe, from reading and observation, that the mass
of the people, in all churches, have had no other conception of
the divinity, than that of a being molded much like themselves.
We cannot avoid discovering, that their ideas of a God are gross,
material, local, partial; that they behold him, as the God of their
place, party and passions. Converse with the fiercer sects, and
you perceive, that their views immediately become vague, as soon
as they contemplate the Almighty occupied with concerns beyond
their sect. It seems beyond their thoughts, to realize, that their
denomination bears to the species little more than the proportion
of a drop to the ocean: and that the Supreme Being cannot be
rationally supposed more concerned about them, than any other equal
number of his children.
Nothing can be more philosophical, or consoling, than the Scripture
views of what has been called a _particular providence_. But,
as we hear it generally expounded from the press, the pulpit,
and in common conversation, it offers views of the divine Being
and government, scarcely less weak, monstrous and unworthy, than
those entertained by the ancient pagans. What a conception, to
suppose that a perfect law, as wise and equitable in its general
operation, as infinite wisdom and goodness could ordain, could
be continually infringed, to meet countless millions of opposing
prayers and interests! What a view of God, to imagine, that
earnest and concurrent prayers can at any time divert him from his
purpose, and change his plans! What palpable misinterpretation of
the Scriptures, to suppose, that they give any countenance to such
debasing conceptions of God! Hear rigid sectarians converse, and
you discover, that they think little of the divine providence,
which has no reference to their individual interests and concerns.
From the tone of their conversations, it is but too manifest, that
they have an interior confidence, that they can obtain of the
divine power, almost what they will.
The testimony of church history and the experience of time
testify, that the million, under all degrees of light, shrink from
the difficult and philosophical idea of the real Jehovah of the
Bible; and form, instead, the easy and natural image of a limited,
partial, changeable God, whom importunity can easily induce to
swerve from his purpose; and who is, in many respects, such a
being as themselves. It is the embodied conception of their own
narrow views, assigned to a local habitation. To him the countless
millions of other lands, and other forms of worship, are not, like
them, as children. Unable to rise to the Supreme Being, they have
brought Him down to them.
A few minds, from age to age, elevated by endowment and
circumstances far above their cotemporaries, have not only
embraced, in common with others, the easy and simple sentiments
of Him, which the heart entertains, but have raised their
contemplations so high, as to behold Him in the light of
truth--have seen Him, in some sense, _as He is_--have been filled
with awe and confidence, in the view of his immutability, and with
filial and cheerful resignation, in seeing in the universe, its
order, mutations and variety, in the mixed condition of man, in a
word, in every feature of the natural and moral creation, as in a
mirror, a perfect transcript of the divine perfections--a pattern
of an archetype without a shade of defect. Instead of bringing the
Divine Being down to them, they have raised themselves up to Him.
The veil, that screens his glory from the feeble vision of the
multitude, has been removed. Being assured, that He has made of one
blood all nations, that dwell on the earth, they have seen it to be
impossible, that He should look upon one portion of his children
with more favor than on another. They have seen, in the superior
light and advantages of one part of the species over another, not
the indication, of what is technically called _special favor_, but
the natural result of the operation of his universal laws. They
have seen, that if the inhabitants of one region are enabled to
rise higher in the intellectual scale, and pay him a more spiritual
and worthy homage--the simple inhabitants of _distant, barbarous
isles_ have an organization admitting them to be as happy as their
natures will admit, and as full of enjoyment as their measure can
contain. If they are unable to offer an intellectual worship,
the service of their minds, their hearts are formed for fervent
admiration and worship of the thunderer--the being, who raises
fruits and flowers, and hangs out his bow on their clouds. They
see, in all this, _that God, also, hath set one thing over against
another_.
Note 47, page 144.
The wisdom of allowing any place to the imagination, among the
faculties to be nurtured, I have often heard called in question.
The extremes of opinion frequently meet in the same point. The
most earnest declaimers against the indulgence of the imagination
are commonly found among the class of strict religionists. It is,
at the same time, a strong and prominent trait in the system of
Mr Owen ‘the philosopher of circumstances,’ and his followers,
that we ought to eradicate this faculty, if possible, or at least
suppress its exercise; and reduce all mental operations to the
cultivation of the reasoning powers. For me, I hold, that we are
as much indebted to the author of our being for granting us this
faculty, as any other. I see nothing wrong, or unphilosophical
in cultivating it to the utmost extent; provided our imaginings
would be innocent, if we could render them realities; unless it
can be shown, that the indulgence of this faculty enervates the
mind, and unfits it for encountering the stern duties and trials
of life. So far from believing this to be the natural tendency of
its allowed exercise, my experience has led me to suppose, that
persons, strongly endowed with this faculty, are most likely to
show energy for the discharge of common duties; and constancy and
cheerfulness in encountering trials. Are the southern people of
Europe, for example, less firm in conflicting with danger and
sorrow, or more feeble and remiss in the discharge of duties,
than the northern nations, admitted to be far less imaginative?
Within the range of my experience, I find those possessed of the
most vivid imagination, the most prompt to duty, and the most
cheerful in sorrow. The moody advocates of pure and exclusive
reason lay feeling, one of the strongest impulses to duty, out
of the question; and would extinguish one of the surest supports
in sorrow, the power of creating a bright internal world for
ourselves, when the external world is involved in unavoidable gloom.
They who decry the indulgence of the imagination, must, of course,
object to the endowment of poets and painters; and equally to
the pleasure derived from reading poetry, and contemplating
paintings. The whole empire of these kindred studies is that of
the imagination. Let us try the alleged puerility of indulging
this faculty. No one will deny, that it is the highest wisdom to
seek to be as happy, as we innocently may. When a mental faculty
is employed in creating within us a celestial world, peopled
with nobler beings, acting from higher motives, and showing a
happier existence; and in substituting the beautiful possible for
the tame real; if we find innocent happiness in this celestial
castle-building, are we not employing reason, only in a different
direction from the common? When any one can prove to me, that
it is puerile, to make ourselves happy, and from sources always
within our own control, then I will admit, that ideal pleasures are
unworthy of a reasonable being. Prove only, that the indulgence
of the faculty enervates the mind, and indisposes it for duty
and constancy in suffering, and I will grant at once, that it
should be stifled, or its action restricted or suppressed. So far
from believing this to be the fact, I would counsel him, whom
I most love, to seek in her whom he would select for his wife,
a cheerful and active imagination. It is an egregious mistake,
that mathematicians and practical men have generally been found
destitute of a good development of this faculty. Contrary to the
vulgar and hackneyed theme of pulpit declamation, I have found
on examination, that some of the most energetically charitable
women, I have ever known, were veteran novel readers; as have also
been some of the most profound lawyers that have ever adorned the
judgment seat in our country.
Note 48, page 145.
It is not exactly true, that this faculty can be subjected to the
complete control of the will. I know of no point in metaphysics,
connected, also, with an important question in rhetoric, upon which
less light has been thrown, than the question, how far, and in
what way the imagination can be cultivated: and by what methods
brought under the control of the will. A system of useful and
practical rules for this result is, as far as my reading extends, a
desideratum. Dr Johnson, it is well known, believed, that a man’s
muse was _sua dextra_, his own will, industry and habits, and that
by a vigorous effort over himself, he could write, for example,
at any time. This may be true in efforts, in which imagination is
not required; but, where the vivid exercise of this faculty is
requisite to excellence, it is not true. Let the most amply endowed
poet suffer under mental depression, dyspepsia, a concurrence of
small misfortunes and petty vexations. Let him write in a smoky
apartment, and look abroad upon a leaden sky, marked with the
dulness of winter, without its storms and congenial horrors. He may
repair to his rules. He may apply the whip and spur, and invoke the
nimble fancies from the vasty deep, and the muses from their hill,
but they will not answer, nor come at his bidding.
The imagination may be cultivated to a certain extent; and brought
by rules and intense concentration of mind, in a certain degree,
under the control of the will. Those, who would nurture it, ought
intensely to study those rules. But, after all, to be able to
exercise it in high measures of vivacity, is an endowment, in the
bestowment of which nature has been more capricious than in almost
any other. Even when possessed in copious measures, its province
lies so intermediate between corporeal and mental influence,
between the prevalent temperament of the period of its action, and
the concurrence of external circumstances beyond our control, that
we can easily see, why the wise ancients, who thought more justly
upon these subjects, and more profoundly than the moderns seem to
be willing to apprehend, attributed the successful efforts of the
muses to a superior and celestial influence. He, who pushes the
theory of our control over this faculty beyond truth, adopts an
error, nearly if not quite as dangerous, as he, who holds, that we
have no control over it at all.
A thousand external circumstances, which it would require
a volume to enumerate, must concur with a certain easy and
strong excitability in the physical and mental frame; and that
excitability called into action by the right sort of stimulants,
to impart happy and vigorous action to the imagination. Milton
affirmed, that his muse was most propitious in the spring. As far
as I can judge, the season of reproduction, and the awakening of
the slumbering powers of nature, in the aroma and brilliancy of
vegetation and flowers, acts too voluptuously on the senses, to
give the highest and best direction to the imagination. The Indian
summer days of autumn, with the associated repose of nature, the
broad and crimson disk of the sun enthroned in the dome of a misty
sky, the clouds sleeping in the firmament, the gorgeous coloring
of the forests, the flashing fall of the first leaves, and the not
unpleasing sadness of the images, called up by the imperceptible
decay of nature, and the stealthy approach of winter, seem to me
most favorable to heavenly musing. A cloudless morning, a beautiful
sun, the glittering brightness of the dew drops, the renovated
freshness of nature, morning sounds, the mists rolling away from
the path of the sun, a bland southwest breeze, good health,
self-satisfaction, the recent reception of good news, and the right
train of circumstances all concur to put this faculty into its
happiest action.
Every one is acquainted with the unsparing ridicule bestowed on
Bayes, in Buckingham’s Rehearsal, for announcing, that he always
took physic, before he wrote. Yet the dull coxcomb had reason and
truth on his side. Mental action is more dependent upon corporeal,
and the ethereal powers upon the right disposition of that
organized clod, the body, than most are willing to acknowledge. Who
has not felt, when first going abroad from severe sickness, the
new aspects of nature, a fullness of heart, and the crowding of
innumerable images upon the thoughts, which have no place in the
mind, after a turtle feast or a full dinner? When the digestive
powers are oppressed with morbid accumulation, the wheels of mental
movement, as every one knows, move heavily. Students, orators,
painters, poets, imaginative men must live as near famine as may
be, and the most useful stimulants are coffee and tea. Every one
has read, that Byron’s inspiration was gin. It may be, that the
detestible combination of terebinthine and alcoholic excitement may
have aroused from the mouldy and terrene dormitories of his brain
the images of Don Juan, and the obscene, irreligious, anti-social,
and fierce thoughts, that abound in his works. But I would hardly
believe, on his own assertion, that he wrote the Prisoners of
Children under such an influence. The muse of alcohol is accursed;
and her influence is too corroding, dreggy, and adverse to life, to
originate ideas worthy of being handed down in immortal verse. If
these baleful aids were resorted to at all, I should consider opium
a thousand times preferable to alcohol.
I know, from my own experience, that this reality of actual
and present existence may be imparted to the creations of the
imagination, by long habits of subjecting it to the control of the
will. The enjoyment, resulting from reality, may be more intense,
but it is, also, more tumultuous and feverish. I know of no
happiness, more pure, prolonged and tranquil, more like what we may
imagine to be the bliss of higher intelligences, than to be able
to create this sunshine of the soul, this fair and celestial world
within ourselves, and make ourselves free denizens of the country.
From these fairy mansions labor, care and want are excluded. The
obstacles and impediments of time, distance, and disease, both of
body and mind, are excluded. The inhabitants, walking in the light
of truth and the radiance of immortal beauty, from sin and death
forever free, unite the wisdom of angels to the simplicity and
affectionate confidence of children.
Note 50, page 146.
No people, in my estimation, are farther from true wisdom, than
they, who denounce these pleasures of the imagination, as the
puerile follies of weak minds. They who are most prompt to bring
the charge, are generally destitute of the faculty, and its
kindred endowments themselves; and seem to desire that other minds
should be reduced to their own scale of sterility. Puerile, to
avail ourselves of the power of rendering ourselves innocently
happy! To me the puerility belongs to those who mostly abstain
from contemplating the few gleams of sunshine, that we can behold
between the cradle and the grave. ‘But these joys are unreal!’
What is there in the _vain show_ of life, that is not so? See the
greedy scramble of ambition, after honor, wealth and distinction,
the painted baubles of insects, who hold all by the frail tenure of
life! Life itself, what is it, but a dream, sometimes illumined by
the rainbows of imagination and hope?
Note 51, page 149.
A being endowed with such intense emotions, as man; and so placed,
as to have them so strongly called forth by the relations he
contracts: so much in the dark in regard to his origin, his end and
everything about him, conscious, that he must shortly leave home,
all that he loves, the view of the earth and the sky, and that
body, which long habit has taught him to consider as himself, to
molder back to the soil, should naturally be expected to have this
tendency to melancholy. Beautifully said the fabulist, ‘that he who
formed us, moistened the clay of our structure not with water but
tears.’ The natural expression of the human countenance in sleep
is shaded with a slight veil of melancholy. It has been observed,
that the national music of all people, and, more especially, of
the uncivilized tribes, is on a key of melancholy. Most of the
voices of the animal tribes are of this cast. The strain of the
nightingale is the deepest expression of this sentiment. Religion
should be the grand re-agent, in bringing light and cheerfulness to
a universe of sadness and death, by presenting new views of that
universe, its author, his beneficence, and the ultimate hope of the
soul.
‘See truth, love and mercy in triumph descending,
And nature all glowing in Eden’s first bloom;
On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending.
And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb.’
Note 52, page 149.