Though scarcely yet less wild and frantic,
Appears, before men's eyes below,
In guises more intensely antic.
No single kind of garb she wears,
As o'er the earth she goes crusading;
But shifts her habit and her airs
Like Joe Grimaldi masquerading.
VII.
Through Paris you may see her tread,
The cynosure of all beholders;
A _bonnet rouge_ upon her head,
A ragged blouse upon her shoulders.
More decent now than once she was,
Though equally opposed to riches,
She still upholds the good old cause,
Yet condescends to wear the breeches.
VIII.
The Huns behold her as of yore,
With grisly beard and monstrous swagger;
The swart Italian bows before
The Goddess with the mask and dagger.
The German, as his patriot thirst
With beer Bavarian he assuages,
Surveys her image, as at first
'Twas pictured in the Middle Ages.
IX.
Her glorious form appears to him
In all its pristine pomp and glitter,
Equipped complete from head to heel,
In semblance of a stalwart Ritter.
With doublet slash, and fierce moustache,
And wrinkled boots of russet leather,
And hose and belt, with hat of felt
Surmounted by a capon's feather.
X.
Mysterious as Egyptian Sphinx,
A perfect riddle--who can solve her?
One while she comes with blazing links,
The next, she's armed with a revolver.
Across the main, whene'er the shoe
Upon her radiant instep pinches,
To-day, she'll tar and feather you;
To-morrow, and she merely Lynches.
XI.
While thus abroad, in varied guise,
We see the fair enchantress flitting,
She deigns to greet in other wise
Her latest satellites in Britain.
Sometimes, in black dissenting cloth,
She figures like an undertaker;
And sometimes plunges, nothing loath,
Into the garments of a Quaker.
XII.
You'll find her recommending pikes
At many a crowded Chartist meeting,
Where gentlemen, like William Sykes,
To exiled patriots vote their greeting.
You'll find her also with her friends,
Engaged upon a bloody errand,
When, stead of arguments, she sends
Her bludgeoneers to silence Ferrand.
XIII.
You'll find her too, at different dates,
With men of peace on platforms many,
Denouncing loans to foreign states
Whereof they could not raise a penny.
In short, to end the catalogue,
There's hardly any son of Edom
Who, in his character of rogue,
Won't tell you that he worships Freedom.
XIV.
Yet hold--one sample more--the last,
Ere of this theme we make a clearance;
One little month is barely past
Since London saw her grand appearance,
In one of those enormous hats,
Short leggings and peculiar jerkins,
Which men assume who tend the vats
Of Barclay and his partner Perkins.
XV.
To that great factory of beer,
Unconscious wholly of his danger,
Nor dreaming that a foe was near,
There came, one day, an aged stranger.
He was a soldier, and had fought
In other lands 'gainst revolution;
And done his utmost--so he thought--
To save his country's constitution.
XVI.
But saving states, like other things
Is not in highest vogue at present;
And those who stand by laws and kings
Must look for recompense unpleasant.
Fair Freedom, brooding o'er the drink
That makes the Briton strong and hearty,
Began to sneeze upon the brink
As though she scented Bonaparte.
XVII.
"Ah, ha!" she cried, and cried again--
At every word her voice grew louder--
"I smell an Austrian or a Dane,
I smell a minion of gunpowder!
Some servant of a kingly race
My independent nostril vexes!
Say--shall he dare to show his face,
Within this hall of triple X's?
XVIII.
"'Tis true--he is unarmed, alone,
A stranger, weak, and old, and hoary--
Yet--on, my children! heave the stone!
The less the risk, the more the glory!"
She ceased: and round the startled man,
As round the Indian crowds the cayman,
From vat, and vault, and desk, and van,
Thronged brewer, maltster, clerk, and drayman.
XIX.
"A precious lark!" the foremost cried;
"Come--twig him, Tom! come--pin him, Roger!"
"Who is it?" Then a sage replied--
"He's some infernal foreign sodger!
He looks as how he'd scored ere now
Some shoulders black and blue with lashes
So pitch him here into the beer--
And, lads--we'll pull off his moustaches!"
XX.
They did--what brutal natures scorn.
What savages would shrink to do--
What none but basest cowards born,
And the most abject and most few,
Would offer to an old man's head!
O shame--O shame to Englishmen!
If the old spirit be not dead,
'Tis time it showed itself again!
XXI.
What! in this land which shelter gave
To all, whatever their degree,
Or were they faint, or were they brave,
Or were they slaves, or were they free--
In this Asylum of the Earth--
The noblest name it ever won--
Shall deeds like these pollute our hearth,
Shall open shame like this be done?
XXII.
O most ignoble end of all
Our boasted order and renown!
The robber in the tribune's hall--
The maltster in the Judge's gown!
The hospitable roof profaned;
Old age by ruffian force opprest,
And English hands most vilely stained
With blood of an unconscious guest!
XXIII.
O Freedom! if thou wouldst maintain
Thy empire on the British shore,
Wash from thy robes that coward stain,
Resume thy ancient garb once more.
In virgin whiteness walk abroad,
Maintain thy might from sea to sea,
And, as the dearest gift of God,
So men shall live and die for thee!
Dies Boreales.
No. VIII.
CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.
_Camp at Cladich._
SCENE--_The Wren's Nest._
TIME--_Evening._
NORTH--TALBOYS--SEWARD--BULLER.
NORTH.
Have you dined?
TALBOYS.
That we have, sir.
NORTH.
With me this has been Fast-day.
TALBOYS.
We saw it was, at our breakfast. Your abstinence at that meal, and
at luncheon, we knew from the composure of your features, and your
benignant silence, was not from any disorder of material organisation,
but from steady moral resolve; so his absence from the Dinner-Table
gave us no uneasiness about Numa.
NORTH.
No Nymph has been with him in the Grot.
TALBOYS.
His Good Genius is always with him in Solitude. The form we observed
stealing--no, not stealing--gliding away--was, I verily believe, but
the Lady of the Wood.
NORTH.
The Glen, you know, is haunted; and sometimes when the green umbrage is
beginning to look grey in the still evening, I have more than a glimpse
of the Faery Queen.
SEWARD.
Perhaps we intrude on your dreams. Let us retire.
NORTH.
Take your seats. What Book is that, beneath your arm, Talboys?
TALBOYS.
The Volume you bid me bring with me this Evening to the Wren's Nest.
NORTH.
Yes, yes--now I remember. You are here by appointment.
TALBOYS.
Else had we not been here. We had not merely your permission, sir--but
your invitation.
NORTH.
I was expecting you--and by hands unseen this our Round Table has
been spread for my guests. Pretty coffee-cups, are they not? Ask no
questions--there they are--but handle them gently--for the porcelain is
delicate--and at rude touch will disappear from your fingers. A Book.
Ay, ay--a Quarto--and by a writer of deserved Fame.
SEWARD.
We are dissatisfied with it, sir. Dugald Stewart is hard on the POET,
and we desire to hear a vindication from our Master's lips.
NORTH.
Master! We are all pupils Of THE POET. He is the Master of us all.
Talboys, read out--and begin at the beginning.
TALBOYS.
"In entering on this subject, it is proper to observe, that the
word POET is not here used in that restricted sense in which it is
commonly employed; but in its original acceptation of Maker, or
Creator. In plainer language, it is used to comprehend all those who
devote themselves to the culture of the Arts which are addressed to
the Imagination; and in whose minds it may be presumed Imagination
has acquired a more than ordinary sway over the other powers of the
Understanding. By using the word in such a latitude, we shall be
enabled to generalise the observations which might otherwise seem
applicable merely to the different classes of versifiers."
NORTH.
That Mr. Stewart should, as a Philosopher, mark the liberal and
magnanimous, and metaphysical large acceptation of the Name is right
and good. But look at his Note.
TALBOYS.
"For this latitude in the use of the word POET, I may plead the example
of Bacon and d'Alembert, the former of whom (_De Aug. Scient._,
lib. xi. cap. 1) comprehends under Poetry all fables or fictitious
histories, whether in prose or verse; while the latter includes in
it painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and their different
divisions."
NORTH.
"I may plead the example" appears to me a somewhat pompous expression
to signify that you have (very properly) adopted one doctrine of one
of the wisest, and another of one of the ablest of men. But he does
not seem to know that d'Alembert might have "pleaded the example"
of Aristotle in "including painting, sculpture," &c. "Poetry," says
the Stagyrite, "consists in imitation, and the imitation may be by
pictures, sculpture, and the like." It is ®mimêsis®--and it is Man's
nature to rejoice in imitation--®chairein tois mimêmasin®. But a
singular and illustrative trait in Mr Stewart's treatment of the
subject is, that though he thus, at the outset, enlarges the Poet into
the Painter, the Sculptor, &c., yet throughout the whole composition,
(I know not if an incidental word may anywhere occur as an exception,)
every point of the argument regards the Poet in words and verse! In
what frame of understanding could--did he put this Head to these
fragments of limbs?
BULLER.
In the name of the Prophet--FIGS!
NORTH.
I am more than half disposed to hint an objection to the use of the
words "sway over the other powers." We should have said--and we do
say, "predominance amongst the other powers." I see in "sway" two
meanings: first, a right meaning, or truth, not well expressed; to
wit, in thinking poetically--for his art, whatever it may be--or out
of his art--the Poet's other faculties minister to his Imagination.
She reigns. They _conform_ their operations to hers. This manner of
intellectual action happens in all men, more or less, oftener or
seldomer; in the Poet--of what Art soever--upon each occasion, with
much more decision and eminence, and more habitually. But secondly,
a wrong meaning, or error, is better expressed by the word "sway,"
to wit, that Imagination in the Poet _illegitimately overbears_ the
other intellectual powers, as judgment, attention, reflection, memory,
prudence. Now, you may say that every power that is given in great
strength, _tends_ to overbear unduly the other powers. The syllogistic
faculty does--the faculty of observation does--memory does--and so a
power _unbalanced_ may appear as a weakness--as wealth ruins a fool.
But in the just dispensation of nature every power is a power, and
to the mind which she constitutes for greatness she gives _balanced_
powers. Giving one in large measure--say Imagination--she gives as
large the directly antagonistic power--say the Intellective, the
Logical; or she balances by a mass of powers. I suspect that the undue
over-swaying was in Stewart's mind, and has probably distorted his
language. I know that Genius is the combination of ten faculties.
SEWARD.
Our expectations were raised to a high pitch by such grandiloquent
announcement: and we have found in the Essay--which is unscientific
in form--has no method--makes no progress--and is throughout a
jumble,--not one bold or original thought.
BULLER.
Too much occupied with exposure of vulgar errors--and instances beneath
the matter in hand. Great part too--_extra thesin_.
SEWARD.
You expect great things from the title--the Idea of the POET. You then
see that Mr Stewart after all does not intend this, but only certain
influences, moral and intellectual, of characteristic pursuits. This,
if rightly and fully done, would have _involved_ the Idea--and so a
portraiture indirect and incidental--still the features and their
proportion. Instead of the Idea, you find--
BULLER.
I don't know what.
TALBOYS.
The reader is made unhappy, first, by defect, or the absence of
principal features--then by degradation, or the low contemplation--and
by the general tenor.
NORTH.
Why, perhaps, you had better return the Quarto to its shelf in the
Van. Yet 'twould be a pity, too, to do so. I am for always keeping
our engagements; and as we agreed to have a talk about the Section
this evening, let us have a talk. Read away, Talboys--at the very next
Paragraph.
TALBOYS.
"The culture of Imagination does not diminish our interest in human
life, but is extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions
of it. As this faculty derives its chief gratification from picturing
to itself things more perfect than what exist, it has a tendency to
exalt our expectations above the level of our present condition,
and frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hopes, while it
stores up disappointment and disgust for maturer years. In general,
it is the characteristic of a poetical mind to be sanguine in its
prospects of futurity--a disposition extremely useful when seconded by
great activity and industry, but which, when accompanied, as it too
frequently is, with indolence, and with an overweening self-conceit, is
the source of numberless misfortunes."
BULLER.
Why, all this is--
NORTH.
Stop. Read on, Talboys.
TALBOYS.
"A thoughtlessness and imprudence with respect to the future, and a
general imprudence in the conduct of life, has been often laid to the
charge of Poets. Horace represents them as too much engrossed and
intoxicated with their favourite pursuits to think of anything else--
BULLER.
Leave out the quotation from old Flaccus--and go on.
TALBOYS.
"This carelessness about the goods of fortune is an infirmity very
naturally resulting from their studies, and is only to be cured by
years and experience; or by a combination--very rare, indeed--of
poetical genius with a more than ordinary share of that homely
endowment COMMON SENSE."
BULLER.
Speak louder--yet that might not be easy. I feel the want of an
ear-trumpet, for you do drop your voice so at the end of sentences.
TALBOYS.
"A few exceptions"--
BULLER.
Stentor's alive again--oh! that I were head over ears in a bale of
cotton.
TALBOYS.
"A few exceptions to these observations may undoubtedly be found, but
they are so very few, as, by their singularity, to confirm rather than
weaken the general fact. In proof of this, we need only appeal to the
sad details recorded by Dr Johnson in his Lives of the Poets."
BULLER.
Skip--skip--skip--
SEWARD.
Skip--skip--skip--
TALBOYS.
May I, sir?
NORTH.
You may.
TALBOYS.
"Considered in its moral effects on the mind, one of the most
unfortunate consequences to be apprehended from the cultivation of a
poetical talent, is its tendency, by cherishing a puerile and irritable
vanity, to weaken the force, and to impair the independence of
character. Whoever limits his exertions to the gratification of others,
whether by personal exhibition, as in the case of the actor and mimic,
or by those kinds of literary composition which are calculated for no
end but to please or to entertain, renders himself, in some measure,
dependent on their caprices and humours."
BULLER.
Skip--skip--skip--
TALBOYS.
"In all the other departments of literature besides, to please is
only a secondary object. It is the primary one of poetry. Hence that
timidity of temper, and restless and unmanly desire of praise, and that
dependence on the capricious applause of the multitude, which so often
detract from the personal dignity of those whose productions do honour
to human nature."
NORTH.
I don't quite understand what Mr Stewart means here by "the _culture_
of Imagination." I see three senses of the word. First, the cultivation
by the study of written Poetry and the poetical arts, and of the poetry
poured through the Universe--to those minds which receive without
producing--a legitimate process. Secondly, the cultivation as in Edwin,
Beattie's young Minstrel, the destined and self-destining Poet--a
legitimate process. And thirdly, the self-indulgence of a mind which,
more sensitive than volitive, more imaginative than intellectual, more
wilful than lawful, more self-loving than others-loving--turns life
into a long reverie--an illegitimate process. Which of these three
classes of minds does Stewart speak of? Strong native imagination in
a young powerful enthusiastic mind, tutored by poetical studies, but
whom the Muse has _not_ selected to the services of her shrine? Or the
faculty as in the Poet-born self-tutored, and now rushing into his own
predestined work? Or the soft-souled and indolent _fainéant_ Dreamer
of life? Three totally distinct subjects for the contemplation of the
Philosopher, but that here seem to hover confusedly and at once before
our Philosopher.
BULLER.
By his chosen title of the Section, THE POET, he was bound to speak of
him according to Bacon, d'Alembert, and Aristotle.
NORTH.
The word _culture_ must, I think, here specifically touch the First
Case. Shall we then be afraid of giving a share, and a large share
too, to the reading of the Poets, and the regard of the Fine Arts, in
a liberal Education? Poetry, History, Science, are the three strands
of the cable by which the vessel shall ride--Religion being the
sheet-anchor.
SEWARD.
Perhaps it is meant to touch the Second Case too?
NORTH.
It may be meant to do so, but it does not. The word "culture"
is dictated by or is proper to the First Case--for culture is
deliberate and elective. But in him--the young Poet--the Edwin--in
whom imagination is given in the measure assigned by the Muse to her
children, the culture proceeds undeliberate and unwilled. Edwin,
when he roves "beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine," or sitting
to watch the "wide-weltering waves," or is seized from the hint of
ballad or tale, or any chance word, with dreams and visions of the
more illustrious Past--follows a delight and desire that have the
nature and may have the name of a passion. All this is involuntary to
the unforeseen result--but afterwards, when he has accepted his art
for a vocation, he more than any man deliberately cultivates. Has the
Philosopher, then, in mind only the third class, and do the dangers
of "the culture of imagination" apply to them only--"the indolent
_fainéant_ dreamers of life?" If so, he not only forgets and loses his
subject, as announced by himself, but wastes words on one altogether
below it. "False conceptions of human life!" Here is an equivocation
which must be set right. "Conceptions of human life" are here meant to
apply to expectations of the honesty, gratitude, virtue of the persons
_in general_ with whom you or I shall come in contact in life. Good.
The contemplation of human beings--men and women--_ideally_ drawn by
the Poet lifts me too high--tinges hope in me with enthusiasm, and
prepares disappointment. So it has been often said, and said truly.
This is conception prospective and personal; and more philosophically
termed Expectation. But then "conception of human life"--from the lip
of a philosopher should mean rather "intelligence of man's life." Now
I repeat that only through the Poet have you true intelligence of
man's life--either external or internal. In the Actual the Poet sees
the Idea--just as a Painter does in respect of the visible man. In the
man set before him He sees two men--the man that is and the man of
whom at his nativity was given the possibility to be. He reads cause
and effect; and sees what has hindered the possible from being. Who,
excepting the Poet, does this? And excepting this, what intelligence of
man is an intelligence?
SEWARD.
There are two world-Wisdoms. One, to know men, as for the most part
they will show themselves--commonly called Knowledge of the World: one,
to know them as God made them. I forget what it is called. Possibly it
has no name.
NORTH.
Observe, my dear Seward, the precise error of that expectation.
It is to believe the good more prevalent than it is. It is no
misunderstanding as to the constitution of the good. The good is;
and the important point of all is to know it, when you meet it. To
be cheated, by not apprehending the ill of a man, is a wound to your
purse, and when you at last apprehend, to your heart. To be cheated
by not apprehending the good of man is--_death_, which you bear in
yourself, and know it not.
SEWARD.
What is desired? Is it that we should go into the world with hope not a
whit wider and higher than the dimensions of the reality that we are to
encounter? I trow not.
NORTH.
Your hope will elect your own destiny--will shape it--will be it. There
are possibilities given of the nobler happinesses, as well as of the
nobler services; and your hope, faithful to itself, will reach and
grasp them. And only to such hope are they given. Moreover, in all men
there is under the mask of evil which the world has shaped on them,
the power inextinct which the Creator sowed there; and they may, if
they dare to believe in it, and know to call to it, bring it out with a
burst. But belief is the main ingredient of the spell, and hope is the
mother of belief.
TALBOYS.
The Poet has glorious apprehensions of human existence--visions of
men--visions of men's actions--visions of men's destinies. He pitches
his theory of the human world above reality--and _that_ he shall, in
due season or before it, learn--to his great loss and to his great
gain. In the meanwhile do not speak of the temper in him, as if you
would upbraid him with it. Do not lay to his charge the splendour of
his powers and aspirations. Do not chide and rate him for his virtues.
SEWARD.
"False conceptions!" a term essentially of depreciation and reproach.
They are not false, they are true. For they are faithful to the
vocation that lies upon the human beings; but they, the human beings,
are false, and their lives are false; falling short of those true
conceptions.
NORTH.
Well. He--the Poet--comes to the encounter. It is the trial set for
him by his stars--as it is the trial set for all great spirits. He
finds those who disappoint him, and those who do not. But, grant the
disappointment, rather. What shall he do? That which all great spirits
do--transfer the grandeur of his hopes, over which fate, fortune, and
the winds of heaven ruled, to his own purposes of which he is master.
TALBOYS.
Why did not Mr Stewart say simply that the Poet--and the young
enthusiast of Poetry--thinks better of his fellows than they deserve,
and brings a faith to them which they will take good care to
disappoint? Why harp thus on the jarring string; torturing our ears,
and putting our souls out of tune?
NORTH.
Who doubts--who does not know, and admire, and love Hope--in the
ardent generous spirit--looking out from within the Eden of Youth into
the world into which it shall, alas! fall? What is asked? That the
spring-flowering of youth shall be prematurely blighted and blasted by
winds frosty or fiery, which the set fruit may bear? Of course we hope
beyond the reality, and it is God's gift that we do.
TALBOYS.
And why lay that Imagination which looks into Life with unmeasured
ideas to the charge of the Poet alone? Herein every man is a Poet,
more or less; and, most, every spirit of power--the hero, the saint,
the minister of religion, the very Philosopher. Would we ask, sir,
for a new law of nature? Upon the elements, fewer or more, which an
anticipated experience gathers, a spirit impelled by the yearnings
inseparable from self-conscious power, and mighty to create, works
unchecked and unruled. What shall it do but build glorious illusions?
NORTH.
"The culture of Imagination,"--understanding thereby, first, in the
Great Poets themselves, the intercourse of their own minds with facts
which imagination vivifies, and with ideas which it creates--of
humanity; and secondly, in all others, as poets to be or not to be,
the reading of the Great Poets, Mr Stewart says--"does not diminish
our interest in human life." Does not diminish! Quite the reverse. It
extraordinarily deepens and heightens, increases and ennobles. For who
are the painters, the authentic delineators and revealers of human
life, outer and inner--
BULLER.
Why, the Poets--the Poets to be sure--the Poets beyond all doubt--
NORTH.
"Extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions of it"--and
so on. Why, the Faculty is there with a mission. It is its bounden
office--its embassy from heaven--to exalt us above our earthly
experience--to lift us into the ideal possibility of things. Thereby it
is an "angel of Life," the white-winged good genius. The too sanguine
hope is an adhering consequence, and the quelling of the hope is one
of the penalties which we pay for Adam and Eve's coming through that
Eastern Gate into this Lower World.
TALBOYS.
Of course, my dear sir, _every_ power has its dangers--the greater,
the profounder, the more penetrating and vital the power, the greater
the danger. But is this the way that a Philosopher begins to treat of
a power--with hesitation and distrust--inauspiciously auspicating his
inquiry? The common--the better--the true order of treatment is by Use
and, Abuse--Use first. "Expectations above the level of our present
existence!" Of course--that when the heaven on earth fails, we may have
_learnt_ "to expect above the level of our present existence," and go
on doing so more and more, till Earth shall fade and Heaven open.
SEWARD.
"Frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hope!" Is this proposed as
a perversion and calamity, a "youth" to be deprecated?
NORTH.
I really don't know--it looks almost like it.
SEWARD.
Will you say Wo and Alas! for the City--Wo and Alas! for the Nation--in
which princes, and nobles, and the gentle of blood--and the merchants,
and the husbandmen, and the peasants, and the artisans, suffer
under this endemic and feverous malady--a "youth of enthusiastic
hope?" Methinks, sir, you would expect there to find an overflow of
Pericles's, and Pindars, and Phidias's, and Shakspeares, and Chathams,
and Wolfes--
BULLER.
Stop, Seward--spare us the Catalogue.
SEWARD.
You would say--here is the People that is to lead the world in Arms and
in Arts. Only let us use all our endeavours to see that the community
produces reason enough in balance of the enthusiasm.
BULLER.
Let us procure Aristotles, and Socrates's, and Newtons, and--
TALBOYS.
What should a Philosopher do or say relatively to any particular power?
He expounds an Economy of Nature. Therefore, he says, let us look how
Nature deals with such or such a power. She gives it for such and such
uses: and such is its fostering, and such are its phenomena. But as
every power unbalanced carries the subject in which it inheres _ex
orbita_, let us look how nature provides to balance _this_ power which
we consider.
NORTH.
That, my dear Talboys, is a magnanimous and a capacious way of inquiry.
But how can any man write about a power who has not a full sympathy
with it? I have no doubt that Davy, when he wielded Galvanism to
make wonderful and beautiful revelations of veiled things, deeply
and largely sympathised with Galvanism. You would think it easier to
sympathise with Imagination, and yet to Stewart it seems almost more
difficult. Go on.
TALBOYS.
How has Nature dealt with her mighty and perilous power--Love. Look at
it, where it is raised to its despotism--when a man loves a woman, and
that woman that man. It is a power to unhinge a world. Lo! in proof "an
old song"--the Iliad!
'Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
Eruerint Danai!'
Has Nature feared, therefore, to use it? She builds the world with
it. And look how she proceeds. To these two--the Lovers as they are
called--the Universe is _in_ these two--to each in the other. The
rest of the Universe is shut out from their view, or more wonderfully
comprehended in their view--seen to each through and relatively to the
other--seen transformed in the magical mirror of their love. Can you
expect anything less than that they should go by different doors, or by
the same door, into Bedlam? Lo! they have become a Father and a Mother!
They have returned into the real world--into a world yet dearer than
Dreamland! The world in which their children shall grow up into men
and women. Sedate, vigilant, circumspect, sedulous, industrious, wise,
just--Pater-familias and Mater-familias. So Nature lets down from an
Unreal which she has chosen, and knows how to use.
NORTH.
The ground of the Poet, my dear Talboys, is an extraordinary dotation
of sensibility--of course, ten thousand dangers. Life is exuberant
in him--and if the world lies at all wide about him, the joy of
the great and the beautiful. The dearest of all interests to every
rational soul is her own coming destiny. The Poet, quick and keen
above all men in self-reference, must, among his contemplations and
creations, be full of contemplating and creating his own future, and
must pour over it all his power of joy, rosy and golden hopes. And
that vision, framed with all his power of the Ideal, must needs be
something exceedingly different from that which this bare, and blank,
and hard earth of reality has to bestow. What follows? A severe, and
perhaps an unprepared trial. The self-protection demanded of him is a
morally-guarded heart and life. The protection provided for him is--his
Art. The visions--the Ideal--the Great and the Fair, which he cannot
incorporate in his own straitened existence--the ambitions, at large,
of his imagination he localises--colonises--imparadises--in his works.
He has two lives; the life of his daily steps upon the hard and bare,
or the green, and elastic, and sweet-smelling earth, and the life of
his books, papers, and poetical, studious reveries--art-intending,
intellectual ecstasies.
BULLER.
What say you, sir, to the charge of "overweening self-conceit and
indolence?"
NORTH.
What say you, my Buller?
BULLER.
That I do not quite understand the proposition. Is it, that _generally_
the "sanguine" temperament is apt to make these accompaniments for
itself? Or that in the Poet the three elements are often found
together? If the former, I see no truth in it. The sanguine temper
should naturally inspire activity--and I do not quite know what is here
an "overweening conceit." That a sanguine-minded man is apt to have
great _self-reliance_ in any project he has in hand--a confidence in
his own present views that is not a little refractory to good argument
of cooler observers, I understand. But that sort of self-conceit which
makes of a man an intellectual fop--gazing in the pocket looking-glass
of self-conceit at his own perfections--vain self-contemplation and
self-adulation--the sanguine temper is far more likely to carry a man
out of himself, to occupy his time, his pleasure, and his passion in
works, and withdraw them from himself. I suppose, therefore, that we
must look to the Poet alone. I daresay that small poets have a great
conceit of themselves. They have a talent that is flattered and admired
far beyond its worth. They readily fancy themselves members of the
Immortal Family. But a true Poet has a thousand sources of humility.
Does he not reverence all greatness, moral and intellectual? Does he
not reverence, above all, the mighty masters of song? He understands
their greatness--he can measure distances--which your small Poet cannot.
NORTH.
Every soul conscious of power is in danger of estimating the power too
highly; but I do not know why the Poet should be so more than another
man. Then, what is "overweening?" Is it overvaluing himself relatively
to other men? Is it over-measuring his power of achievement--whence
disproportionate undertakings, that fail in their accomplishment? I
can more easily suppose that all the Sons of Genius "overween" in
this direction. They must needs shape enterprises of unattainable
magnificence. But some one has said rightly that in attempting the
Impossible we accomplish the Possible. But this is a higher and truer
and more generous meaning, I fancy, than is intended by the choice of
that slighting and scoffing dispraise of "overweening"--a word pointing
to a social, or moral, defect that makes an exceedingly disagreeable
companion, rather than to any sublime error in the calculations of
genius. And I come back upon the small sinner in rhyme, who has been
cockered by his friends and cuddled by himself into conceit, till he
thinks the world not good enough for him--takes no trouble to satisfy
Its reasonable expectations, and finds that It will take none to
satisfy his unreasonable ones--_there_ is a source of "numberless
misfortunes"--a seedy surtout, a faded vest, and very threadbare
inexpressibles.
TALBOYS.
And why should those who are sanguine in hope be "too frequently
indolent?" A hopeful temper engender indolence! A desponding temper
engenders it; a hopeful one is the very spur of activity. The sanguine
spirit of hope taking possession of an active intellect, engenders the
Projector--of all human beings the most restless and indefatigable--his
undaunted and unconquerable trust in futurity creates for itself
incessantly new shapes of exertion--till the curtain falls.
SEWARD.
There is, I suppose, a species of Castle-builder who hopes and does
nothing; as if he believed that futurity had the special charge of
bringing into existence the children of his wish. But his temper is
not properly called sanguine--it is _dreamy_. Neither is his indolence
a consequence of his dreams; but as much or more, his dreams, of his
indolence. He sits and dreams. Say that Nature has given to some
one, as she will from time to time, an active fancy and an indolent
humour--a disproportion in one faculty. 'Tis a misfortune: and a reason
why his friends should seek out, if possible, the means of stirring him
into activity; but it has nothing to do with describing the Idea of the
Poetical Character.
TALBOYS.
The Great Poets have not been indolent. They have been working men.
The genius of the Poet calls him to his work. Shakspeare was a man of
business. Spenser was a state-secretary.
BULLER.
Read Milton's Life.
TALBOYS.
See Cowper drowned in an invincible melancholy, and deliberately
choosing a long-lasting and severe task of his Art, as a means of
relieving, from hour to hour, the pressure of his intolerable burthen.
If he had drooped under his hopeless disease into motionless stupor,
you could not have wondered, much less could you have blamed. He
fought, pen in hand, year after year, against the still-repelled and
ultimately victorious enemy.
BULLER.
Think of Southey!
NORTH.
Yet the Poet is in danger of indolence. For in his younger years joy
comes to him unpurchased. To do, takes him out of his dream. To do
nothing, is to live in an enchanted world; and with all tenderness be
it said, he hath, too, his specific temptation to overmuch self-esteem.
Because his specific faculty and habit are to refer every thing that
befalls constantly to himself as a contemplative spirit. Herein is
the most luminous intuition alone. The perversion is to be quick and
keen in referring to the ignobler Self--for as I or you said, and all
men may know, the Poet assuredly has two souls. Personal estimation,
personal prospects! A sensibility to injury, to fear, to harm, to
misprision--a quick jealousy--suspicion--soreness! You do see them
in Poets--and in Artists, who after their kind are Poets--for they
are Men. As to excessive reflection upon and admiration of their own
intellectual powers, while we rightly condemn it, we should remember
that the Poet _is_ gifted, and in comparison with most of those with
whom he lives, is in certain directions far abler; and more delicate
apprehensions he probably has than most or all of them--at least of
such apprehensions as come under the Pleasures of Imagination. And
when he begins to call auditors to his Harp--then, well-a-day!--then
he lives and feeds upon the breath of praise--and upon the glow of
sympathy--a flower that opens to the caress of zephyrs and sunbeams,
and without them pines. Then comes envy and spiritual covetousness.
Others obtain the praise and the sympathy--others who merit them less,
or not at all. What a temptation to disparage all others--_alive_! And
to the Poet, essentially plunged in the individualities of his own
being, how easy! For each of his rivals has a different individuality
from his own; and how easy to construe points of difference into
points of inferiority! Easy to him whom pain wrings more than it does
others--to whom disagreeable things are more disagreeable--
TALBOYS.
Have done, sir, I beseech you, have done--talk not so of the
Brotherhood.
NORTH.
I am thinking of some of the most majestic!
SEWARD.
Alas! it is true.
NORTH.
Mr Stewart more than insinuates, with a wavering and equivocating
uncertainty of assertion he signifies, that the POET, or poetic mind,
is not much endowed with "common sense." Talboys, what say you?
TALBOYS.
I rather think it unusually well-endowed that way, and that it is the
opposite class of minds--those that cultivate abstract science--that
have, or seem to have, least of it.
SEWARD.
The poetic mind, from its sensibility, is peculiarly ready to
sympathise with the general mind, and it is that sympathy that produces
common sense. Common sense is instinctive; and in its origin allied to
that which in the higher acts of the poet's mind is called Inspiration.
Therefore it is native to his mind. It is an inspiration of his mind as
much as poetic Imagination.
BULLER.
Has Seward said what you meant to say, Talboys?
TALBOYS.
He has--why did not you? But observe, Buller, common sense is not
solely employed upon a man's own conduct: it has all the world besides
for its object. The common sense of a Poet in his own case may be
disturbed by his sensibilities, which are greater than common; while
yet, in all other cases, it may be truer than the magnet.
BULLER.
Good.
TALBOYS.
I will trouble you, if you please, for an Obs.
BULLER.
I have long desired a definition of Common Sense. It seems to me rather
a commonplace thing. I suppose it is called Common Sense, as being
common to men, so that you may expect it in 9 out of 10, or 99 out of
100.
TALBOYS.
Pretty good.
BULLER.
Common Life seems to be the school of it. It seems a practical faculty,
or to respect practice. Obvious relations are its domain--obvious
connexions of cause and effect--means and end. A man of common sense
effects a plain object, quickly and cheaply, by ready and direct means.
High reach of thought is distinguished from common sense on the same
side, as downright folly is on the other. Yet the interests dealt with
need not be, if they frequently are, low; only the relations obvious.
Perhaps the phrase is oftener brought out by its violation than its
maintenance. He who wants common sense employs means thwarting his end.
I propose that Common Sense is a combination of common understanding
and common experience.
TALBOYS.
I asked you, my dear Buller, for an Obs--one single Obs--you have given
us a dozen--a Series. Let us take them one by one, and dissect the--
BULLER.
Be hanged if we do! I am afraid that my notion of Common Sense is but
a low one. I think that a blacksmith may acquire common sense about
shoeing of horses, and a housewife about her kitchen and laundry.
_Sound sense_ applicable to high matters is another matter--_une toute
autre chose_.
TALBOYS.
Be done, dear Buller.
BULLER.
In a moment. Moreover, I can imagine a strong, clear, sound sense
_confined_ to a special _higher_ employment--a lawyer who would manage
the most difficult and hazardous cause with admirable discretion, and
make a mere fool of himself in marrying.
TALBOYS.
Be done--be done.
BULLER.
In a moment. _I_ am not able to affirm that a Poet of high and sound
faculties _must_ have the talent for conducting himself with prudence
in the common affairs of life; and really _that_ is what seems to me to
be _Common Sense_.
TALBOYS.
Be done now--you cannot better it.
BULLER.
About the Poet what can I say that every body does not know and say in
all the weekly newspapers. Why, gentlemen, the Mission of the Poet is
to fight the fight of the Spirit against the flesh, and to extend the
reign of the Beautiful. Also, he is the Prophet of ®gnôthi seauton®:
and the finest of wordmongers. The words that he touches turn all to
gold. He is the subtlest of thinkers. _Our_ best discipline of thinking
has been from the Poets. Compare Shakspeare and Euclid.
TALBOYS.
From you! Buller, you astonish me.
BULLER.
Astonishment is sometimes proof of a weak mind.
NORTH.
There seem to be two Common Senses. Goldsmith appears to be viewed
as an eminent case of wanting it, in conduct--the practical--for
his own use. But the theoretical--for judging others--imaginary
cases--characterises that immortal work, _The Vicar of Wakefield_: and
the theoretical, for judging other men real, existing, and known, his
_Retaliation_. The criticism of Burke, for instance, is all exalted
Common Sense--
"Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to Party gave up what was meant for Mankind."
That is the larger grasp of common Sense rising into high Sense.
"And thought of convincing while they thought of dining"
is its homelier scope.
SEWARD.
Common Sense is the lower part of complete Good Sense. Shakspeare and
Phidias must use Good Sense in governing their whole composition;
which Common Sense could not reach; and a man might have good sense
in composing a group in marble, yet want it in governing his family.
But Phidias executing a Venus with a blunt notched chisel, would want
Common Sense.
NORTH.
Wordsworth the Great and Good has said that "the privilege and the
duty of Poetry is to describe things not as they are, but as they
seem to the senses and the passions;" and when in so saying he
claimed further for the works of Poetry law and constancy, he spake
heroically and thence well,--up to the mark of the fearless and
clear truth. But when he condescended to speak of "one quality that
is always favourable to good poetry, namely, good sense," he said
that, _without note of reserve_, which should have been guarded. Good
sense, if you please, but such good sense as Homer shows when the
®klangê® of the silver bow sounds--when the Mountain-Isle trembles
with all her Woods to Neptune stepping along--or the many-folded
snowy Olympus to Jupiter giving the one calm, slow, simple, majestic,
earth-and-heaven-obliging Nod--or when at the loosed storm of
terrestrial and celestial battle on the Scamandrian plain, the Infernal
Jove leaps from his throne, and shouts, or yells, or bellows--®meg'
iache®--lest the solidly-vaulted Earth rend above and let in sunlight
on the Shades. The "good sense" of Shakspeare, when the Witches
mingle in the hell-broth "Tartar's lips," and "yew-slips slivered in
the Moon's eclipse." Claim the good sense, but claim it in its own
kind--separated and high--kingly--Delphic--divine. The good sense of
Jupiter--Apollo--the Nine Muses, and the practical Pallas Athene. Or
claim WISDOM--and not "good sense;"--"the meed of Poets SAGE!" Lucid
intelligence--profound intuitions--disclosed essences--hidden relations
laid bare--laws discerned--systems and worlds comprehended--revealed
mysteries--prophecy--the "terrible sagacity"--and to all these add the
circumspection--the caution--the self-rule--the attentive and skilful
prudence of consummate Art, commanding effects which she forecast and
willed. Wisdom in choosing his aim--Wisdom in reaching his aim--Wisdom
to weigh men's minds and men's deeds--their hopes, fears, interests--to
read the leaves of the books which men have written--to read the leaves
of the book which the Creating Finger has written--to read the leaves
of the book which lies for ever open before the Three Sisters--the
leaves which the Storms of the Ages turn over.
TALBOYS.
Coffee, my dear sir? Here's a cup--cool and sweetened to your taste to
a nicety.
NORTH.
Thanks, Talboys. I am ready for another spell.
BULLER.
Reflect, sir, breathe awhile. Do, Seward, interpose something between
the Master and exhaustion. Quick--quick--else he will be off again--and
at his time of Life--
SEWARD.
Oh for the gift denied me by my star--presence of mind!
TALBOYS.
Common sense, in a high philosophical signification, is the sum of
human opinions and feelings; or the "Universal Sense" of mankind.
That is not homely--and cannot therefore be what Stewart calls that
"homely endowment." The apter translation of the place in his Essay is
"ordinary sense or understanding"--which seems to suggest _now_ "so
much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with among men"--and
_now_ "sense and understanding applied to ordinary concerns." Only this
last makes the quality _homely_. But the tooth of Stewart's insult is
in the prior suggestion (in the case of the Gifted, untrue), that they
have not as much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with.
They have ten, twenty, a thousand times as much. Think of Robert Burns!
But they have--or may, I do not say must have--the repugnance to apply
the winged and "delighted spirit" to considerations and cares that are
easily felt as if sordid and servile--imprisoning--odious. They suffer,
however, not for the lack of knowing, but of resolution to conform
their doing to their knowing. They sin against common sense--and much
more against their own. _Hinc illæ lacrymæ._
NORTH.
Gentlemen, the Cardinal Virtue--Prudence--holds her sway, in the
world of man, over Action, and, as much as she may, over Event, by
the union as if of two Sceptres. For She must reign, at once, in the
Understanding and in the Will. Common Sense, as the word is commonly
meant and understood, is Intellectual Prudence applied to the more
obvious requisitions of the more obvious interests which daily and
hourly claim our concern and regard. This Intellectual Prudence,
thus applied--that is to say, the clear Intelligence of these
requisitions--Common Sense, therefore--one man has, and another has
not. The case shall occur that the man, Poet or no Poet, who has it,
shall act like a fool; whilst the Poet or no Poet, who has it not,
shall act like a Sage. For the man, wise to see and to know, shall
have yielded the throne of his Will to some usurping and tyrannising
desire--and the other, who either does not possess, or who possessing,
has not so applied the Intelligence--some dedicated Mathematician, or
Metaphysician, or Mechanician, or Naturalist, or Scholar, or Antiquary,
or Artist, or Poet, shall live wisely, because he has brought his
heart and his blood under the rule of Moral Necessity. Prudence, or,
in her stead, Conscience, has established her reign in his Will. To be
endowed with Common Sense is one thing; to _act_ with common sense, or
agreeably to her demands, is another. Popular speech--loose, negligent,
self-willed, humoursome and humorous--often poetical--easily and gladly
confounds the two neighbouring cases. Philosophic disquisition--which
this of Dugald Stewart does not--should sedulously hold them apart.
You may judge of a man's Common Sense by hearing him criticise the
character and conduct of his neighbour. To learn in what hand the
Sceptre of the Will is, you must enter his own doors. The proneness of
the Poet, easy, kind, frank--except in his Art, artless--compassionate,
generous, and, large-thoughted--heaven-aspiring--to neglect, like the
lover, (and what else is he but the perpetually enthralled lover of
the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?) the earthly and distasteful
_Cura Peculî_, is to be counteracted mainly on the side of the Will.
Simplicity of desire will go far, and this you may expect in him
from Nature--indeed it is the first ground of the fault charged.
Next, of stronger avail--not perhaps of more dignity--comes that
which is indeed the base, if not yet the edified structure of Common
Sense, the plain Intelligence of naked Necessity. No great stretch of
intellectual power required, surely, for discovering and knowing his
own condition in the work-day world! But the goods of fortune--worldly
estate--_money_--shall the "heavenly Essence"--the "celestial
Virtue"--the "divine Emanation"--for so loftily has Man spoken of
Man--that is within us--crouch down and grovel in this dark, chill
den--this grave which Mammon has delved to be to it a pitfall and a
prison?
BULLER.
Ay--why shall the Poet guard and noose the strings of his purse?
NORTH.
One reason, drawn from the sublimity of his being, stands ever
nigh to bow the pliant neck of his Will under the lowly yoke. He
_must_--because, according to the manner in which the All-Disposer saw
good to order and adjust the constituents and conditions of our human
life here below, in him who, of his own will and deed, lays himself
under a bond to live by unearned bread, the Moral Soul dies.
SEWARD.
The Poet is not--and he is--improvident. Nothing in his genius binds
him to improvidence. Prudence may accompany sensibility--may accompany
ample and soaring contemplations--may accompany creative thought--may
accompany the diligent observation of human life and manners--may
accompany profound insight into the human heart. These are chief
constituents of the poetical mind, and have nothing in them that
rejects Prudence.
BULLER.
Neither do I believe that the more distinguished Poets generally have
been culpably unforethinking--
"Vatis avarus
Non temere est animus!"
I hope so. I should be exceedingly sorry to think that the Bard were
apt to give into the most odious of all vices. But the interval is
wide from vicious negligence to vicious care: and I hope that somewhere
between, and verging from the Golden Mean a little way towards the
negligent extreme, might be the proper and earned place of the Poets.
TALBOYS.
We must confess to some negligent tendencies in the Poet. The warm
sympathies give advantage to designing beggars of different ranks--and
are themselves betraying advisers. The law of the poetical mind
to accept Impression, and let it have its way, if it overflow its
legitimate channel of poetical study and art, and irregularly lay the
conduct of life under water, may leave behind it something else than
fertility. The dwelling in pleasure may make the narrow and exact cares
of economy irksome. But why shall we _expect_ that a man of high,
clear, and strong mind shall not learn how to--cut his coat according
to his cloth?
NORTH.
I am afraid that the high faculties of a Poet threaten to endanger
his vulgar welfare. The foundation of his poetical being and power,
as you well have hinted, Talboys, is the free spontaneity of motion
in his own mind--the surrendering of his whole spirit to influxes and
self-impulses. The spontaneous movement allies his temperament to
common passion, which founds upon this very characteristic. And you
sometimes see, accordingly, that the Poet is a victim sacrificed for
the benefit of the rest. Not that it need be so--for he has his own
means of protection; but powers delicate, sensitive, profound, must
walk perilously in a lapsed world.
SEWARD.
Let it be allowed, then, to Dugald, that the poetical temperament is
adverse to getting--and to keeping--money--and that a touching picture
might be drawn of the conflicts of spirit between a Poet and his false
position in a counting-house--or with "poverty's unconquerable bar."
NORTH.
"This carelessness about the goods of fortune," says Mr Stewart, "is
an infirmity very naturally resulting from their studies, and is only
to be cured by years and experience, or by combination (_very rare
indeed_) of poetical genius with a more than ordinary share of that
'homely endowment called _common-sense_.'" And wherefore any infirmity?
Why not have portrayed rather--or at least kindly qualified the
word--in winning hues, or in lofty shape--the delicious or magnanimous
UNWORLDLINESS of the poetical character? That most ennobling, and most
unostentatious quality, which dear and great Goddess--in lovingly
tempering a soul that from its first inhalation of terrestrial air to
the breath in which it escapes home, she intends to follow with her
love--commingles in precious and perilous atoms that, in consecrating,
destine to sorrow.
SEWARD.
An infirmity? A charm--a grace--and a virtue! Alas! sir, a virtue too
suitable to the golden age to be safe in ours.
TALBOYS.
Ay, Seward, a virtue demanding the correction or the protection of
some others, which the iron generations countenance or allow--such as
Prudence, Justice, Affection for those whose welfare he unavoidably
commixes with his own.
NORTH.
Protection! It sometimes happily wins its protection from virtues that
love and admiration rouse and arm in other breasts, in its favour--a
reverent love--a pitying admiration.
TALBOYS.
He quotes Horace as on his side of the question.
NORTH.
A Poet whose name is amongst the most cited from antiquity, Virgil's
illustrious lyrical brother, has rehearsed (not indeed to the lyre, but
in the style which he offers for little better than versified prose)
modestly and apologetically, the Praises of the Poet--his personal
worth, and serviceable function amongst his fellow-men. Singular
that in a few words of this passage, and indeed just those which
gently allege the _personal virtue_ of the poor bard, the Professor
should have helped himself to a weapon for dealing upon that head his
unkindest cut of all.
SEWARD.
That flowing Epistle of Horace's to Augustus--which he gives
good reason in excellent verse for keeping short, and turns out,
notwithstanding, rather unreasonably long--if we look for its method,
it rambles--if for the spirit, it is a delicate intercommunion between
the least of the Courtiers, the Poet, and his imperial Patron, the Lord
of Rome and of Rome's World.
TALBOYS.
A facile, roving, and sketchy--partly historical and partly critical
disquisition on Poetry chiefly Roman, presenting, with occasion the
virtues and faults of the species--POET.
BULLER.
Let's hear it. In my day Horace was not much read at Oxford--
NORTH.
By you--and other First Class Physical Men. Seward, spout it.
SEWARD.
I will recite the passage.
"Hic error tamen, et levis hæc insania, quantas
Virtutes habeat, sic collige: vatis avarus
Non temere est animus; versus amat, hoc studet unum;
Detrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet;
Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam
Pupillo; vivit siliquis et pane secundo.
Militiæ quamquam piger et malus, utilis urbi:
Si das hoc, parvis quoque rebus magna juvari.
Os tenerum pueri balbumque poeta figurat;
Torquet ab obscoenis jam nunc sermonibus aurem,
Mox etiam pectus præceptis format amicis,
Asperitatis et invidiae, corrector et iræ;
Recte facta refert; orientia tempora notis
Instruit exemplis, inopem solatur et ægrum.
Castis cum pueris ignara puella mariti
Disceret unde preces, vatem ni Musa dedisset?
Poscit opem chorus, et præsentia numina sentit;
Cælestes implorat aquas, docta prece blandus;
Avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit;
Impetrat et pacem, et locupletem frugibus annum.
Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes."
BULLER.
Oh! that passage. Why, I have had it by heart for half a hundred. We
quote from it at Quarter Sessions.
TALBOYS.
The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold
personality--the free intimacy between the great Protector and the
small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where
you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or
question of Augustus.
NORTH.
True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial
favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable
that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with
inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent
seeming--to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity--should win
the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to
an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses.
SEWARD.
The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly
subdued!
NORTH.
Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic
opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding
with beneficent power the destinies of the Roman world. And now,
confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another
benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned,
and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar--poor Horatius Flaccus!
BULLER.
Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers!
SEWARD.
Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory--
BULLER.
You muttered the passage so that you murdered it.
TALBOYS.
You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground,
he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He
leads to it--he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he
proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly--admire the Rhetorician.
He will avert jealousy--he will propitiate kindness.
BULLER.
Artful Dodger.
TALBOYS.
He has acknowledged--you might have given us the line--a _fault_.
Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague
with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers--young
and old--and grave and gay--wise and foolish--the skilled and the
unskilled--the called and the uncalled.
BULLER.
You write verses well yourself, Talboys.
TALBOYS.
I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must
excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive
delusion--this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and
harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first
on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept
is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of
cupidity--of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has
room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion--his bliss,
his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little
cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run
away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies
of his last work? 'Tis unlucky--but he laughs. It is not _he_ that
speculates upon, or _waylays_, the unguarded trust of his friend or
acquaintances--not _he_ that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of
his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's--pulse
and brown bread.
BULLER.
Very prettily paraphrased indeed!
SEWARD.
And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in
the natural verse of--Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described
himself--and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully
placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to
follow.
NORTH.
My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself--and not himself. It
is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together,
as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious
Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point
which imperiously requires another _fault_. Frankly and humorously
he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier--slow to
find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it.
Nevertheless--now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant
of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology--for the
purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at the _utilis urbi_.
If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic
interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to."
TALBOYS.
And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest
sphere!
NORTH.
How finely! Rome _was_ a republic of ORATORS. Cedant arma togæ--the
Toga the war-weed of the Orator!
"Romanos rerum dominos, _gentemque togatam_."
The gowned Lords of the Nations--and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators!
BULLER.
Are you sure that is the right reading?
NORTH.
Let it be so. Observe now--the occultation.
BULLER.
The what?
TALBOYS.
The occultation.
BULLER.
Mille gratias.
NORTH.
The nascent and adolescent Orator is moulded to the power of the word
by the greatest masters of the word, the Poets! Tell this, O Poet,
in imperial ears! Then speak modestly, withdrawingly, insinuatingly.
Hide the boast. It is hidden--and shown. The Poet fashions the tender
and stammering mouth of the boy. The rudiments of pronunciation--The
Orator nascent. No more. It is pretty and gentle that the Muse herself
condescends to the care of moulding the young soft lip to the pure
musical utterance of Latium's magnificent Mother-tongue.
BULLER.
Now I see it all. The occultation!
NORTH.
But She delays not undertaking a nobler and more momentous function.
From the bodily organs She passes to the governing mind. And of the
Mind at once to the nobler part, the Will. She is the young Roman's
Moral Tutress. Horace is brief. What these her first lessons to the
soul are, he does not say. He tells you their powerful virtue. They
_wrest_, he says, (_torquet_,) the charmed hearing from dishonest, from
gross and grovelling, from depraving and polluting discourse. You may,
my friends, imagine Phædrus' feeling Fables, or the "Lays of Ancient
Rome;" or at Athens, instead of Rome, the Iliad.
TALBOYS.
It is the hint but of a line, sir. But each of us may know in himself
how early the Muse really did begin to possess our spirits with
thoughts, and scenes, and actions that soared away from the presences
of our lives--that She did
"Lift us in aspiration from the earth."
And as the pupil grows, the discipline of the divine Instructress
ripens. With precepts that are the counsels of a dear and wise friend,
she moulds the susceptible compliant bosom. She softens his rough
self-will--weeds out envy--and curbs anger.
BULLER.
Talboys, you expound Flaccus well.
TALBOYS.
Her storial informations, pictures from human existence, take now a
more direct purpose. She recites deeds justly and virtuously done; She
furnishes and arms--_instruit_--the springing generation with high
transmitted examples.
NORTH.
Ay, my dear Talboys, _He_ is thinking now--
BULLER.
Hitherto you have always said _She_--
NORTH.
I have. "She" is really "He"--the Poet and not the Muse. I was rapt.
He is thinking now, my dear Buller, of old strong-hearted Ennius--the
heroic annalist, in soldierly rough verses, of younger heroic Rome.
We may recollect, for the nonce, whatever is most English, and most
Scottish, and most heroic, in those more musical "histories" of
William, and of Walter.
TALBOYS.
We have done with education. We come to the Charity of the Muse. She
visits the poor man's home and the sick-bed. One almost starts at the
thought, in the midst of the smoke, and the wealth, and the uproar of
Pagan Rome. Yet there the plain words are, "She (pardon me) comforts
the indigent and the sick man." Is it not _sic in orig._?
NORTH.
_Sic._
BULLER.
Of her ministrations to the splendour of Arts and the luxury of
Patrician feasts--of her Theatres, that spread laughter or tears over
the dense myriads of the World's Metropolis--not a syllable. The
innermost heart of the Poet must have held the chord that gave out
the soft low sound--_inopem solatur et ægrum_. No introduction and no
comment. A solitary, unpretending sentence or clause.
NORTH.
God bless you, my dear Buller.
TALBOYS.
Amen. May the Chairman of Quarter Sessions live a thousand years! The
indigent man may, I suppose, be a poor learned or a poor unlearned
man. Relatively to the latter we may think, for Scotland, of Burns'
Poems lying in Scottish cottages; and beginning from Scotland, of
the traditional ballads and songs that sound in every hut throughout
Europe:--for Italy, of what they say of the Venetian Gondoliers singing
a Venetianised Gerusalemme Liberata.
NORTH.
So far, my children, for the "_parvis rebus_." Something on a more
extended scale, and of a loftier reach! We are commenting Horace.
From the earliest times of civilisation, a principal office of verse
was to adorn and solemnise the services of Religion. The cultivation
of Verse was early in the Temples. A moment's recollection recalls
to us the immense influence on the Hellenic Poetry of this ritual
dedication. This theme closes the Praise of the Poet. But faithful to
the strain which he has undertaken, and so far adhered to, the discreet
Eulogist still, in the loftiest matter, diminishes the pomp, rejects
ostentation, confines the sensible dimensions. And still faithful,
he dwells on that which, of less show, is the more touching. He has
to array a religious procession that drawing, as it moves along, all
gaze--thrilling--as it slowly passes door after door, and winds through
street after street, with solemn and sweet chaunt lifted from the
sorrowing Earth to the listening Heavens--the universal heart of the
Eternal Queen-City--Look! Who are they that, as the crowds divide, draw
into sight? Chaste boys, and girls yet afar from the marriage-bond. The
sanctity of natural innocence heightening to the heart, and rendering
more gracious, the sanctity of the altar!--winning favour--alluring the
worshipper to the worship!
SEWARD.
The only expanded movement of the short passage--a third of it--seven
verses out of the twenty-one.
NORTH.
The religious topics are, generally, the propitiating of the
Divinities--then the particular benefits: Rain supplicated in seasons
of Drought--the visitation of Pestilential Sickness averted--National
dangers repelled--Peace, the wished-for, obtained--and the perpetual
desire of earth's dwellers and tillers, the fruitful Year. He has
risen gradually, and has reached the summit. Unexpectedly--you know
not how--the Poet, though it is not so said, is far greater than the
Emperor. Yes, my friends, for the dominion of the Imperial Throne is
over the Kings of the Earth; but the sway of the well-strung Lyre is
over the throned Gods who inhabit above or underneath the Earth. With
Song are the celestial Deities soothed and made favourable--with Song
the dark dominators of Hell.
"Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes!"
A swelling and musical close to an anthem. What shall we admire most,
then? The variety of the Praise? The ethical wisdom? The genuine
love in the selection of the grounds? Or the exquisite skill of the
artificer? The "craft of the delicate spirit," who, veiled in humility,
has gradually, and as if insensibly, scaled to a station from which
he looks upon Monarchs--but from which should they aspire to strike
him down, they offend, in violating his right, the majesty of the
assembled Gods? In inditing the unhappy passage about the Poet's sole
end being to please, I think that Dugald Stewart was beguiled by a
prevalent misconception amongst those who have taught the Philosophy of
the Fine Arts. The degrading influences are his own. No doubt the Poet
draws his poetical being from Pleasure--the great ancestress of his
tribe--_gentis origo_. He worships Pleasure according to the primeval
fashion of ancestor-worship. But what is his impulse to compose, to
_sing_? O hear from all the Great Poets since the world began, their
answer. They sing because a Spirit is in them. They sing because the
muse bids. She pours in thoughts and words; and along with thoughts
and words flows in the musical Will. With them it is like the Sybil
when invaded by Apollo. The real Poet sings, moved from without or
from within. If from without--some fore-shaped or self-shaped subject;
if from within, some passion, or some impassioned thought of his own
has so deeply and strongly affected him, that he is impelled to seek
relief of the burthening emotions and ideas in uttering them. This is
the primary cause, and the natural origin of Song. And you may call
this, if you choose, an intending of pleasure; but beware how you draw
degrading inferences from this first recognition and admission of
pleasure. If you weigh the psychological fact, you must look backwards
to the attitude of mind which produced the work, and not forwards to
the attitude which the work produces. Of the intellective, the moral,
the imaginative, the pathetic powers that gave birth to the Iliad--or
to the Prometheus Vinctus--to the Knight's Tale--to the Legend of
Holiness--to Lear or Othello--or to the Paradise Lost! Who does not
instantly feel that he has been summoned to conceive and to contemplate
all that is mighty, august, affecting, or terrible in our souls? That
he looks into the caverned abyss where the Spirits of Power walk? Even
as when, by the side of Anchises, Æneas beholds in pre-existence the
assemblage of his kingly descendants, whom their day and the upper
air will call to rule the nations with sovereignty, to impose the
conditions of peace, to spare the vanquished, and with war to bring
down the proud. LEAR! The minstrels chanted an ancient rude lay--the
infant stage brought a rude drama--TO SHAKSPEARE. But long before
Minstrel or Theatre--had mother, or grandam, or nurse told to the
weeping or shuddering, to the burning or auguring Child, that relique
of old memory, that domestic tragedy of the antique British throne--the
story attracting and torturing of the Father-king who divided his heart
and his realm to the two serpents, who cast out from heart and realm
the Dove of his blood--till Time unveiled Truth and Love. _Then and
there_ was the seed, the slowly-springing, laid in the deep and kindly
soil. From that hour dates the Lear of Shakspeare. Why repeat things
that we all know, and have a thousand times said? Because they must
be reasserted explicitly, as often as they are implicitly gainsayed;
and is it not gainsaying them to affirm that the Poet sings _to
please_, when indeed he sings because this Infinite of knowledges--this
accumulation of experiences--this world of sensibilities and
sympathies, of affections, passions, emotions, desires of his own and
of other men's, inspires him, and will form itself in words? But he
looks towards his hoped Auditors with a more direct selfish desire or
design. He must have from them the meed of all glorious deeds--the
wreath of all glorious doers--FAME. Let Grateful Mankind applaud the
Benefactors of Mankind. Ay, he loves life. He would fain live beyond
this world, wide as it is, of his own particular bosom--he would
live in the bosoms of his contemporaries, and in the bosoms of the
generations that are to follow for evermore. Proud as privileged, he
asks his due--RECOGNITION. And who that has the ability to render will
choose or dare to withhold the tribute? Fame! the nectarean cup--the
ambrosial fruit--that confers _Immortality_! The last best gift that
mortals affect to bestow on their fellow-mortals. He who, at some great
crisis, achieves a deed which the world shall feel, and whereof the
world shall ring--dilates, in consciousness, to comprehend those whom
his act shall reach, and those to whom it shall resound. Remember Lord
Nelson at Trafalgar--in the moment ere the first gun fires, the word
signalled to the awaiting host throughout the Fleet--"ENGLAND EXPECTS."
In an instant, the twenty-five millions of compatriot islanders, as if
wafted by the winds from their distant homes, are _there_--spectators
of the Fight that yet sleeps, at the next instant to wake, convulsing
sea and air--spectators to every single combatant, of his individual
heroism. What did that late conqueror of ancient Egypt and what did
his fiery warriors understand, when going into battle he said to
them--"Forty Centuries look down on you from the summit of yonder
Pyramids?" These plains, for four thousand years, have belonged to
History. See to it, that the page which you are about adding shall be,
for your part, luminous with glory and victory, not
"Black with dishonour, and foul with retreat."
Suppose that he had said, "Forty Centuries _to come_ gaze upon you."
The Pyramids seem likely to hold their own in such a reckoning. Perhaps
the stretch of time is too long for the imagination of the Gallic
Soldier. But surely, so speaking, he had spoken more from his heart and
less from his imagination; for _he_ meditated the ages to come, not the
ages gone by. To leave a name that shall sound, for good or for ill,
loud-echoing from century to century--a name to be heard, when Cæsar,
and Alexander, and Hannibal are commemorated--a name insubmergible by
the waves of time--inextinguishable by the mists of oblivion--_that_
he desired, and _that_ has he not won? Horace has hung his name too in
imagination on the structures of the Cheopses. But how different is the
"Exegi monumentum ære perennius,
Regalique situ Pyramidum altius"
of the Poet! Horace indeed was already safe in pronouncing Homer
immortal, with all the heroes upon whom he had conferred the gift.
A thousand years! And the portentous strain, with all its Gods and
Goddesses, and Kings and Queens, and Men and Women--fresh, bright,
vivid, and fragrant, warm and yet reverberating from the Harp--as if
the _plectrum_ of the sublime Bard were but that moment withdrawn
from the strings--as if the breast that first poured the strain were
yet throbbing with quicker emotion--stirred by the pulsating chords
and by the words which itself chanted. Horace might well understand
the immortality of the Poet. That he claimed it, and judiciously, for
himself--he who sung so differently, the sweet, the sprightly, some
loftier notes too--but afar from Homer--suggests a reflection upon the
nature of durability. The works were born of Love; and by Love they
live, for in them the Love lives. _Spirat adhuc amor._ Those Egyptian,
star-contemplating, and star-contemplated Edifices, quarried from the
Rock, stand; integral parts of the Planet, immovable--immutable. That
is one manner of enduring. Sound is awakened. For an instant it flits
through the air and ceases, extinct in silence. Add Love, and you have
informed sound with duration--another manner of enduring. The mountain
of piled rocks and a touch on the air are become rivals in duration,
and we say they will last for ever.
* * * * *
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Modern State Trials_: Revised and Illustrated, with Essays
and Notes. By WILLIAM C. TOWNSEND, Esq., M.A., Q.C., Recorder of
Macclesfield. In 2 vols. 8vo. Longman & Co. 1850.
[2] Lord Campbell has made considerable use of Mr Townsend's
collection, and publicly acknowledged his obligations, in his _Lives
of the Lord Chancellors and Lord Chief-Justices_. It is not impossible
that we may, before long, present our readers with an extended
examination of these two important works of the new Lord Chief-Justice
of the Queen's Bench.
[3] Introduction, vol. i., p. 7, 8.
[4] Introduction, p. ix.
[5] Townsend, vol. i. pp. 1, 2.
[6] 4 Black. Com., pp. 81-2.
[7] Townsend, vol i., p. 54.
[8] Ibid. vol. i., p. 45.
[9] "I thought _he was crying_," said one of the witnesses!--p. 23.
[10] Stat. 7 Anne, c. 21, § 11.
[11] Townsend, vol. i. p. 71.
[12] Hall's Pleas of the Crown, part I., c. 14.
[13] Townsend, p. 95.
[14] 1 Townsend, pp. 99-100; and see the argument reported at length in
Regina _v._ Frost, 9 Carr and Payne, 165-187. Of these fifteen Judges,
only six are still on the Bench--Barons Parke, Alderson, Rolfe; and
Justices Patteson, Coleridge, and Maule--nine having disappeared during
the last ten years. It will be observed that the three chiefs of the
Courts were of one way of thinking, viz. that there _had_ been a good
delivery of the list of witnesses, in point of law.
[15] 9 Carr and Payne, pp. 175-176.
[16] _Souvenirs de la Vie Militaire en Afrique._ Par M. PIERRE DE
CASTELLANE. Paris: 1850.
[17] To ask the _aman_ is to implore mercy; to give it is to grant
pardon.
[18] In Africa, during the great heat, these _cabans_ or short cloaks
are often worn, to keep off the rays of the sun.
[19] The Arabs called General Changarnier the _Changarli_, the
_Changarlo_. _Changar_ is an Arab word, signifying to quell or crush.
_Ma changarch alina_; do not strike me down--do not crush me.
[20] Sons of Turks by Arab women.
[21] This missionary, originally a Jew, had become a Calvinist at
Bâle, then had joined the Church of England, and had finally turned
missionary, in consideration of a handsome recompence. He drove a great
trade in Bibles, which he sold to the Tunis shopkeepers. The leaves of
the sacred volume served to envelope Mussulman butter and soap. The
Caïd's book, published at Carlsruhe, made a noise, was prohibited,
and, thanks to the prohibition, had immense success.--Note by M. de
Castellane.
[22] _Blackwood's Magazine_, Vol. LXV., p. 20.
[23] A band of irregular horsemen.
[24] The Arab term for men of high family.
[25] The description of this peculiar phenomenon of the Indian Ocean,
as given by Captain Collins, surprised us as much as the reality seems
to have done him. However, on consulting a seafaring old gentleman of
much experience in all parts of the world, we are informed that such an
appearance is periodically to be met with for some distance between the
Laccadive and Maldive islands, as he had reason to know. The old Dutch
Captain Stavorinus also furnishes an account substantially similar,
having particularly attended to the cause of it in his voyage to the
East Indies: it reaches also to some of the south-eastern islands at a
great distance from India, near Java--or at all events appears there.
In the Atlantic, Humboldt says there is a part of the sea always milky,
although very deep, in about 57º W. longitude, and the parallel of
the island of Dominica. Of the same nature, probably, are the immense
olive-green spaces and stripes seen in blue water by Captain Scoresby
and others, toward the ice of the north polar regions.
The pale sea alluded to is supposed either to move from the shores
of Arabia Felix, and the gulfs in that coast, or, by some, to arise
from sulphureous marine exhalations--appearing to rot the bottoms of
vessels, and to frighten the fish. Both at the Laccadives and near Java
it is seen twice a-year, often with a heavy rolling of the sea and bad
weather. The first time, at the new moon in June, it is called by the
Dutch the "little white-water;" again, at the new moon in August, the
great "wit-water;" by English seamen, generally, the milk-sea, or the
"blink."
[26] The zodiacal light, seen at sunrise and sunset.
[27] _Histoire des Ducs de Guise._ Par RÉNÉ DE BOUILLÉ, ancien Ministre
Plénipotentiaire. Volume II. Paris: 1849.
[28] So styled by the Huguenots. Historians have adopted the
designation. It consisted of Guise, Montmorency, and the Marshal of St
André, and was a sort of prelude to the League.
[29] _Discours de la Bataille de Dreux_, dieté par FRANÇOIS DE LORRAINE.
[30] Thus stated by M. de Bouillé. Other writers have called the total
force of the Protestants two thousand seven hundred horse and foot.
[31] Other writers have said that he had already _done_ so, or at least
that he was seated under a tree, a recognised prisoner, when he was
shot. M. de Bouillé's account leaves a sort of loop-hole, to infer that
Montesquiou might have been hardly aware that Condé was a prisoner.
Such an inference, however, he probably does not intend to be drawn,
and, in either case, it is contrary to historical fact.
[32] The following couplet, from Oudin's MS. history of the house of
Guise, may serve as a specimen of the partisan ditties composed on this
occasion:--
"L'an mil cinq cens soixante neuf,
Entre Jarnac et Chasteauneuf,
Fut porté mort sur une asnesse,
Ce grand ennemy de la Messe."
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.
Italics markup is denoted by _underscores_.
Greek text has been transliterated and is denoted by
®registered signs®.
PP. 373, 415 & 456 added missing footnote anchors.