^^^■y- ^V:^' v'^''- ^* •■ ^:.*{''^ ^/ • . v-- ,-w />^;"^:^. -^^<^^r«/. 9%?^, 'W -33 -'1^ v-^f. U^6 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE WORDSWORTH COLLECTION FOUNDED BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL OF THE CLASS Of I9I9 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924104090901 SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE ON POETIC GENIUS AS A MORAL POWER DELIVERED 2nd OCTOBER, 1837, AT THE MILTON INSTITUTION, (cripplecate:) TO WHICH IS ADDED, AN ODE; JOHN A. HERAUD, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "the ORATION ON COLERIDGE, ETC. ETC. ' In the Words of the LORD are bis Works." Eccleslasticus xli. 15. »7 LONDON: JAMES ERASER, REGENT STREET. M.DCCCXXXVII. Price Two Shillings. ■^^^ u». -A4o? *,* I am indebted to some Gentlemen who were present at this Lecture for having been at the trouble and expense of taking it down during its delivery, and of printing it afterwards. I trust that my readers will excuse the inevitable defects of an extempore production. Being intended to bind up with my Oration on Coleridge, the pages are numbered on from that brochure. W. J. Seahs, Printer, 4, Ivy Lane, Newgate Street. o RMC % LECTURE. That "Genius is essentially honest," is a truth so trite as to have found its way into the last new Novel ; — it has yet to become a proverb, that of all the forms of Genius, the Poetical is the most honest. Plato, indeed, pro- nounces, that only the good and just man is the true Musician : in the same spirit it may be asserted, that the good and just man is the only true Poet. Be it accepted as a note-worthy aphorism, that in the same proportion a man is deficient of goodness and justice, he fails in iden- tifying the relation he pretends to that power, which we call Genius. This great argument, and the mode in which the in- quiry will be conducted, originated in other than my own impulses ; in fact, in a previous Lecture, delivered by a gentleman now one of my auditors, wherein the subject was presented under aspects of which I have been desired to render the present developement. The Platonic refer- ence to the auxiliary Verbs in which I mean to indulge this evening, was suggested by that prelection. A definition is expedient of the terms. Poetic Genius, and is best effected by means of their etymology ; ac- cording whereto, they signify Creative Nature. Now Coleridge, in his admirable Lectures on Shakspeare, frag- ments of which have been lately recovered, states, that " the language of nature is a subordinate Logos." Lan- guage of Nature ? Yes ! for she speaks to us ; — all her beauties and sublimities — river and ocean — mountain and 36 vale — forest and sky — are Words by which her Author communicates with us those ideas of wisdom, power, and goodness, which we esteem as the appropriate attributes of his mysterious Being. But there is also a Nature in the universal heart of humanity, which is peculiarly intended by the term Genius, whose language is the good and great in man — and this again is a Logos of a higher kind, or rather another manifestation of one and the same divine Word. Hence an obsolete theologian daringly calls GENIUS the Son of God, and actually identifies the ex- cellence thus revealed in human endeavour with the filial Deity. Be it then that Genius is the Word, — Poetic Genius would be nothing less than the Creative Word, — that word which is eternally creating and everlastingly generating. Might I venture on a Germanism, I should say, that Poetic Genius thus interpreted is, in the abstract, Infinite Becoming; whereof Goethe speaks in his mar- vellous Faust, celebrating there " The Becoming that ever works and lives," to whose embraces in the bonds of love he commends the very angels of heaven ; — a phrase sig- nifying the spirit at once of permanence and progress, that operates and animates all the growths of time, whether noumenal or phenomenal, and perpetually manifests itself, as an appetence to be, in sensuous objectivities. An appetence to be! For all objects in nature only serve to manifest in us unceasing desire for that which may not be found in the field of her presentments. Before you can declare the being of a thing in nature as a sensation in you, it is gone! — and the declaration, relative to the object spoken of, is funded into a never-failing bank of falsehood. Ever present with you, however, is a desire after being in very deed and very truth. Perpetually the sensuous man seeks for it in the range of sensation, and is as constantly disappointed. Hence it is, that that man who seeks for 37 happiness in a temporal world is condemned to self-de- ception, ruin, and despair! We should not say of nature so much that it is a creation, as a thing a-creating. Once, and yet always the divine act of the Creator, an eternal act never intermitted, and therefore present in every infinite- simal portion of time, in which it will be recognized as providence — an ever-during, over-ruling wisdom, pre-siip- porting and pre-regulating all the processes of birth and death — of generation and corruption — two names for one power — rather the two poles of its manifestation, whereof the result is — Nature ! This form of argument no doubt appears abstruse. If I have anything to teach — (and you have come here to be taught) — it must not only appear so, but be so. The elevated and the profound are equally the obscure ; hence the word Sublime. Receive now what is uttered in the best manner you can — meditate when you get home upon it ; — and " the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world " will ultimately enlighten you, and, if you really desire it, make those truths as clear to you as they are to me. Because of the ancient high application of the term Genius, it has always been held of high value ; and for the same reason Poets have been constantly esteemed as seers and prophets — nay, as begettors or creators, for nothing less is implied in the name by which they are known. The word Genius, has often been employed to designate the presiding spirit of a nation, a place, a person, an animal, or a thing. Trees and plants, and rivers, for instance, have been said to be inhabited by Genii or Spirits. Collins very pleasingly introduces Genii, in his Ode on the Poetical Character — as an allusion to Milton occurs also in the passage, it may be fitly repeated within the walls of this Institution. 38 " Where is the Bard whose soul can now Its high presuming hopes avow t Where he who thinks, with rapture blind, This hallow'd work for him design'd? High on some cliff, to heaven up-piled. Of rude access, of prospect wild. Where tangled round the jealous steep, Strange shades o'erbrow the valleys deep, And holy Genii guard the rock. Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock, While on its rich ambitious head An Eden like his own lies spread. I view that oak the fancied glades among, By which a Milton lay, his evening ear, From many a cloud that dropp'd etherial dew, Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear, On which that ancient trump he reached was hung ; Thither oft his glory greeting. From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue; In vain. — Such bliss to one alone Of all the Sons of Soul was known. And Heaven and fancy, kindred powers. Have now o'ertnrned the inspiring bowers, Or curtain'd close such scene from every future view." Well might Collins, in his times, write of " the inspiring bowers having been overturned," — and "of the scene having been curtained close" — perhaps himself the only poet then, privileged to claim " the Vision and the Faculty divine!" The French school of Poetry in this country repudiated indeed the honours of inspiration. Pope and Gray, and their imitators, derived all from academies and books, not from themselves and heaven speaking in them. But since that epoch, some poets have dared to reassume the inspired character — Wordsworth and Coleridge, Goethe, and Schiller. The Holy Place of the Muses has again been exhibited — the veil has been rent in twain ! Titular angels and saints now embody the same idea 39 which the genii of old expressed. Let us consider the subject under three aspects — and treat of Genius as significant of the Word in Nature — in Man — and in Deity. In this high point of view, it is none other than the Creating Spirit, first uttering man as his language, then natural objects in and by which men may mirror them- selves, and, in symbols, the relation of the human with the divine. " The language of Nature is a subordinate Logos:" — That law of the physical world, in concurrence with which we are enabled to compose united objects from phenomenal parts, and to give names to the composite unities ! The objects have no reahty ybr us in themselves; as I have already stated, they bafile us ever, tempting us with an appetence for perceived being. The merely sensuous or carnal man, in contemplating them, knows nothing of the universal law which they all obey : neither would a man gifted with nothing but his five senses, apprehend either multitudes or wholes. He would resemble the sleeper, who being waked by the striking of the hour, swore ''that the clock was out of its wits, for it had struck one twelve times !" Understanding is required to connect the dif- ferent ones into twelve. To the sense only, there would be only an apprehension of unconnected ones. One, one, one, — and so with every separate sensation without series or sequence. And such separate one could be as little named as counted. For it is the intellectual man who gives language to all ; — the understanding is the wording — the naming power ; hence the scientific man assumes that there is a law to regulate Nature, and believes in its existence, though never visible. The sen- suous man may see the apple fall — but the law of gravita- tion is no object of sight. The conception of such law is generated in the understanding by the incubation of a 40 faculty higher still, the two-fold reason, synthesised by the CONSCIOUSNESS. It is out of this Logos thus uttered that language springs — the language which in us utters our sensations, and which becomes itself sensation, and holds of succession and time. Of such language the Verb in every sentence represents the Logos, or Word. The verb is the chief Word — that which is emphatically called the Word in every period. It affirms the Act of a Being; — it is declarative of the Act of an Intelligent Being. Now, a Verb is either Neuter, Passive, or Active. In giving examples, I confine myself to the auxiliary verbs ; — for this lecture shall be strictly elementary. Aux- iliary Verbs, indeed ! So the graoimarians call them, as if accidental to other verbs, instead of being the sub- stantial elements of which all other verbs are modifications more or less remote. They express the action of the Being in its most primitive modes. Language, however, has been ultimately suited to the sensuous man : carnal grammarians have looked at their subject on its outside, not from its in. Not so we ! Take then for example of the Neuter Verb, / am — of the Passive Verb, / am had — and of the Active Verb, I do or T have. The last will be found to express faculty from facto, to make or do — and ability, which was anciently written Hability, from habeo, to have, or hold. The verb, we have said, is the Affirmation of the Act of a Being. Man is such an affirmation ; — such an act, a Neuter Logos, a self-affirmative verb. Let every man say for himself, whether he can truly utter the affirmation, I am ! It is an appeal purely to your conscience. If you deny it, I shall not attempt to prove the reverse. The ut- most that 1 shall venture to say, is that you appear to me to be, and that your denial, in my logic, is contradictory in itself. Being an act, it is testificatory of Being. I have 41 met with Sophists, who have required me to prove that THEY were; who would not permit the assumption to be taken for granted. Every one, however, can declare for himself whether he be, but he cannot prove it to another. Let him who will, deny that he is, for myself I must an- swer the demand in the affirmative. It is the conscience which is the oracle of this self-knowledge ; and to utter it, is to pronounce the Neuter Verb, as an essential and living entity. I have called the Logos in nature, the Universal Law, by which physical phenomena are animated and governed. I call the Logos now detected in man, the Law of the moral world — the moral Law ! A Being not known to be by itself or any other being, is a conception tantamount to non- being. Intelligence, to complete the idea of being, must accompany being. Now this intelligence, whether know- ledge or self-knowledge, is an Act. To know is to act — to act is to affirm. In every thing a man does, a self- affirmation is made. Nor can he cease to act — never can he suspend this affirmation. The verb Neuter is uncon- querable in him. It is a Law of his Being; that is, the form or method in which his being is exhibited, and unac- companied with which it never has been, is not, and never will be. Therefore I call it the moral Law. The word moral is derived from the Latin, mo$, moris, &c., which in English is translated, manner, of mariner, &c. Manners and morals have then the same meaning. But custom has appropriated the term manners to physical modes, and morals to metaphysical modes. Now a Law is only a form or mode. The phrase Moral Law, therefore, is a pleonasm ; as if we should say, a Legal Law. This is well ; for the highest truths, which are self-evident principles, are iden- tical propositions. " I am that I am ;" for instance. We are in a region where the Duad and the Triad are at one 42 with the Monad. The Moral Law we speak of is emphati- cally, the Law of Law ! ! — A Truth of the Conscience. And this is the Truth, which it testifies, that the in- separable Law of Being is to Act. To be is to act — to act is to be. An act of Will, a faculty, whereof Conscience is the Spirit, capable of decadence and of renewal, is the initia- tive of every perception that we have — it precedes our consciousness of an object. And here it is that we begin to justify the claims of the Poet; it is in the initiative that we discover the creative ! It is not because external things act on the mind, but that the initiative acts through the mind on them, that we perceive. They only re-act. The initiative is in the mind, not in the objects. The sapient doctors of Philosophical Necessity tell us, that circum- stances make our motives. Why then, is that circum- stance, which is a motive to one man, no motive to another? Is it not probable, that the man throws himself into the scale which preponderates? It is this initiative act which, in all cases, translates a circumstance into a motive. Men are poets in proportion as they cultivate this initiative as a privilege, and operate with it by choice. Why are not all men eminent poets ? Consider the activity of the Poet's mind ! — Perpetually creating — eternally becoming — confined to no object, impelled by no necessity of time or place ; he selects all his materials from when and where he pleases, and acts upon them with his whole being ! He found them not in nature as he shews them — not in such association ; — but he has put them together by volition, — and stamped them with the seal of THE Maker's identity. In all this, he exerts a divine power — God is manifest in the creative man — the will he exercises, is but the outbirth of his conscience, and his con- science, but the link of correlation, by which he is conso- 43 ciated with the Divine Spirit. The Poet then, receives this primary act from the highest source, from God, in his Con- science, affirmed in a Being-act, manifested and measured in a Will-lavi^. It is the enunciation of the Egotistic Faculty — the utterer of the I ! Yet the I is another's, as well as his — the seal by which he identifies his manufac- ture bears a partnership, not an individual, device. But only in this interunion of the Divine and Human, can any personality result into the human consciousness. Rational being has in this region, always an intense feeling of individuality ; but it is lost in a higher and absorbed in that of veneration, conceded to Him who is the giver of every good gift. " Many masters of life and character," it is rightly stated in Ernest Maltraveis, "have begun by being egotists. For there is, in a man that has much in him, a wonderfully acute and sensitive perception of his own existence. An imaginative and susceptible person has, indeed, ten times as much life in him as a dull fellow, an' he be Her- cules. He multiplies himself in a thousand objects, asso- ciates each with his own identity, lives in each, and almost looks upon the world with its infinite objects as a part of his individual being. Afterwards," — the author proceeds — " as he tames down, he withdraws his forces into the citadel, but he still has a knowledge of, and an interest in, the land they once covered. He understands other people, for he has lived in other people — the dead and the living; — fancied himself now Brutus and now Csesar, and thought how he should act in almost every imaginable circumstance of life." No ! it is not that he tames down. — But that he be- comes more modest, us he more realises the mission he feels, and better understands from whom he receives it. He learns, that the fountain of this egotism is in the conscience, and that conscience is none other than the voice of God in 44 the highest and deepest recesses of human being. It be- hoves therefore, the Poet to be a man who can afford to have a conscience, and is not afraid of its vigilance. He must be good ; for a wicked man fears to look his con- science in the face. It has been truly said, that every religious man is a Poet, and every Poet a religious man. Religion is Poetry ; the poetic aptitude is necessary to ge- nerate and support Faith in the marvellous, the miraculous, without which there is no religion. Readily may he be- lieve in the supernatural who finds it first in himself- — recognises it in his oxvn being, as Mind, Soul, Spirit. Wordsworth justifies this character as a Poet. It has always been a maxim with him, that those personal aberrations which are sometimes charged upon genius as its product, are not faults consequent on having too much genius, but defects arising from an individual not having genius enough. A man may be poet enough to write good verses, but not be poet enough to be a good man. The moral poet, the moral artist — is an actor of original crea- tions, not a student of the works of a preceding poet. Such an one rises above necessity and control. He is possessed by the universal Spirit, and possesses his own, having willingly yielded it up to higher intelligence. The inferior demon masters not, but is mastered by, the wise magician. Such is the power exercised in verse by Words- worth and Goethe, by Coleridge and Schiller. Schiller sometimes, it is true, was transported out of self-govern- ment, in his early works, such as The Robbers, but mani- fests it in Wallenstein. To Wordsworth the predicated character eminently belongs ; and accordingly he rejoices in the eternal, and ideal, which he sometimes represents under the Platonic form of pre-existence, thus virtually acknowledging his instrumentality — as in the following enthusiastic burst of noble inspiration. 45 O joy ! that in our embers ' Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive ! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions : not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest ; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest. With new fledged hope still fluttering in his breast. Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise ; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings ; Blank misgivings of a creature. Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised ! But for those first affections. Those shadowy recollections. Which, be they what they may. Are yet the fountain light of all our day. Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; Uphold us — cherish— and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake, To perish never ; Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy. Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea, Which brought us hither : Can in a moment travel thither, — And see the Children sport upon the shore. And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore ! The meanest of Wordsworth's poems has similar refer- ences to the Eternal and Ideal, the pre-existent neuter, 46 from communion with which the conscience receives its being and its name, as a sympathy from and with the Divine and Spiritual universe. Needful is this reference ; for not in its own right, but only as such sympathy the conscience makes the awful affir- mation, identifying at once Being andKnowledge. It is God in the conscience who speaks it, wherein it is heard as an echo — it is God in Man contemplating his Image, and beholding it as in a mirror ! Needful, I repeat, is the reference, which is to something as always prior yet always present : — in right of its eternity, perpetually prior to every member in the series of succession, and yet equally present to each and all. You misunderstand the doctrine of Pre- existence, if you understand it of the gross order of Time. This may be the ordinary interpretation of the words, but it is not Wordsworth's — it was not Coleridge's nor Plato's. The ancients had their exoteric and esoteric schools, and it was for the exoteric pupil that the Ideas which lie dor- mant in and with the soul, and with it waken into acti- vity, were described as remembrances of a state that loas past. But as Coleridge observes, the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien to such modes of inmost being, yet can they not be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. The exoteric and esoteric disciplines are not frauds of the teachers, as some low-minded theorists have supposed, but are founded in the constitution of our natures, as at once Beings and Existences. Not of a past state, but of one ever-present Being, prior always to every state whatever, (that Ineffable Unity which precedes all Position,) are these Ideas the Remembrances, or rather the Condescensions. In this Unity, we recognise the Genius, as the filial Deity, which possesses all men ; . . even the Poets, who, like Wordsworth, are chiefly admirable for self-possession of character, and the state of subjection in 47 which they hold the Spirit, whose utterances to other men are oracular and prophetic. Byron is in nothing more distinguished from Words- worth than in this. An unwilling believer in a Supreme Power, and reluctantly yielding to the universal Genius as recognisable in the Divine Logos, he is, neverthless, not the Possessor of, but the Possessed by, his own individual and private Genius. It was his tyrant, he its slave. Never at one with his conscience — never on a level with her — but under her ; — to him she seemed to sleep — but she had mighty dreams — has ever — and at some crisis makes herself known to man in whispers more terrible than peals of the sternest thunder. No man can say, and least of all the poet, I will never have anything more to do with con- science ! I mean not to say, that Byron was the most criminal of men, or his verses the most sinful of poetic compositions ; but I declare that from failing to satisfy the demands of his conscience in his personal character, he was mastered by his conscience, which, as a tyrant, is the genius of his productions. Hence in all things, he was as clay in the hands of the potter ; and as a poet represents the passive aspect of the living verb. The best portions of his poetry are due to circumstances. Though he abused Wordsworth, he imitated him ; for Shelley had made him read him or hear him read. He was passive to impres- sions, and then reacted on them. Byron was a man pos- sessed, but not by the Spirit of God — he was a demoniac. He was a conduit pipe, as it were, of inspiration. Woe to him who is possessed by, and possesses not, his genius. There is too much poetry of this quality. The merely in- tellectual or sensual poet is a madman. Milton speaks of the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite with contempt; yet it is with bacchanalian songs and amorous ditties that the public is most taken, and in which it is most politic, in a 48 worldly view, for a young poet to appear. Why is this ? be- cause the public mind, from congeniality of culture, sympa- thizes more with the defects of genius than its excellences. Let a poet come before you protected in complete armour, perfectly arrayed in finished panoply, and on that very account ye shall give him churlish welcome ! Witness the late acceptance that Wordsworth and Shelley have received at your hands. Had Byron's later and better compositions, written under the influences of the poetry of the one, and the conversation of the other, been published first, ye would have rejected them ; indeed, in spite of his name, they were unwillingly received. That the public sympathize with the defects of genius is clear from the character of Byron's imitators. Man- nerism in every artist is a defect — the prison limit within which his genius is confined. This the imitators alluded to adopted — for this they loved him : here, in fact, they thought his merit rested. Absurd error ! which places the material necessity above the moral liberty. Of all poets, the highest moral poets are the least popular. One thing is observable in all the poetry of Byron, that in his classical associations he scarcely ventures out of the schoolboy tracts, and deals with the objects he meets as a traveller stored with the common-places of education. In all this he transacts as an intellectualist with the Past, and as a sensualist with the Present ; with conceptions and sensations : — but when his poetry rises, as it sometimes may, into the Ideal and Eternal, you find that he is overruled and driven on by an impulse which he vainly resists, and at best manifests only a passive agency. " When I am very fine," he said to Captain Medwin, " I don't pretend to understand myself." He was simply the medium of an afflatus which, when once uttered, might have been non- sense for aught he knew. 49 We have now to do with the poets who exercise activity. Being, we have said, must act — in the neuter and passive, we have detected its eternal operation. But it operates in Time also, and is diligent in reference to sensible ultimates. It is here that the third class of poets are active. Pope and Campbell and Rogers are anxious only for the sensuous form — the channel of expression in which their thoughts shall flow. They prefer Act in its lowest spheres to Being in any. Unconscious of the neuter, and despi- sing the passive, they interpose a set form of speech, and, to do them justice, never dream of publishing themselves for men inspired. If they approach the purlieus of the Eternal and the Ideal, they are sure to blunder. Hence Campbell, at the conclusion of his poem, lights the torch of Hope at nature's funeral pyre — an error of which any theologian might have admonished him. False and inju- rious predicator of a state when Faith shall be lost in sight, and in which Hope can have no part ; since Hope requires Time for its condition and has no place in Eter- nity ! Such poets as these, are the votaries of the sen- suous Present only — what they remember and what they anticipate, belong both to this^rese^^ life — scarcely to the classical past, and little indeed to the theological future. The best of them is rather an Essayist on Criticism, than an Essayer in Poetry. Criticism prefers the form to the substance — inattentive to the creative spirit, it will condemn a poet for an imper- fect rhyme or a halting verse. In conclusion — That Genius is, you know and feel — that it does, is manifest in its various creations — in the person of the Poet, how it suffers I need not tell ! The world blames the Poet for his aberrations ; wedded to truth, he is abandoned by the world. You love the Poet, as I have said, rather for his defects than his excellences; the better 50 he is, the longer you make him wait for your approba- tion. Has he courage to the end, then indeed he suffers ! suffers the evils of fortune — a living martyrdom, poverty and the prison — or death ! If to escape from these, he becomes mischievous: — take to yourselves the reproach. Nevertheless, however immoral may be bis apparent life, so much does the poetic character partake of Election, that through both good and evil report the Poet seems as if always compelled to perfect his appointed work. He may cease to be a Poet to himself, but not to others. Sometimes also, evils are only external agents, to make him do the bidding of his Sender. Many are the Poets who have been cradled into Poetry by wrong. The Poet may injure his worldly peace, but not his vocation; for God himself has declared that he shall bear his message to the world. Oh ! how all-important is this consideration to every man of Genius. But by him who is verily a true Poet, a Poet both in Word and Deed, this Warning is not wanted. He is constitutionally prevented from the danger against which it is designed to guard. If he suffer, he accepts injury as the world's wages, which all Truth- utterers have received from it, as the appropriate guerdon for their interference with its wrong-doings. Knowing also that Virtue is of such rare excellence, that nothing but herself can adequately reward herself; he solicits only the self-contained reward which accompanies obedience to her precepts. He will bear in mind that Genius is nothing less than the developement of that moral Law which is the Life of the Human Being; and that Ge- nius then most truly is, when in harmony with Truth as True Being — Truth, not as aThing, but a Person, as the Truth, the Way, and the Life. When the poetic is at one with that Brightness of the Father's Glory, which is the 51 Life of men ; it will participate that Light in which there is no Darkness at all. Poetic Genius must live in an atmosphere of Purity and Music — in an element of the Love, and the Beauty of Holiness. Poetic Fancy, in its excellence, can only exist in minds which are perfectly serene, and loftily abstracted from the influences of sense. It is in this elevated point of view, that Collins, in his before-quoted Ode on the poetical character, considers the subject, and magnificently identifies the creation of the Cestus of Fancy, with that of Nature herself. The band, as fairy legends say, Was wove on that creating day, When he who called with thought to birth Yon tented sky, this laughing earth. And drest with springs and forests tall, And poured the main engirting all. Long by the lov'd enthusiast wooed, Himself in some diviner mood. Retiring, sat with her alone. And placed her on his sapphire throne. The whiles the vaulted shrine around. Seraphic wires were heard to sound, Now sublimest triumph swelling, Now on love and mercy dwelling ; And she from out the veiling cloud Breathed her magic notes aloud ; And thou, thou rich-haired youth of Morn ! And all thy subject-life were born. The dangerous Passions kept aloof Far from the sainted growing woof ; But near it sate extatic Wonder, List'ning the deep applauding thunder ! And Truth in sunny vest arrayed. By whose the Tarsel's eyes were made : And all the shadowy tribes of mind, In braided dance their murmurs joined. And all the bright uncounted Powers, Who feed on Heaven's ambrosial flowers ! 52 To thej'oregoing Lecture I venture to add, as in harmony with the subject and the argument, the following original ODE ON THE CREATION. All things are double one against another : and He hath made nothing imperfect. One thing establisheth the good of another; — and who shall be filled with beholding His glory? — Ecclesias'iicus xlii. 25. Ocean ! thou Word of God for ever sounding ! Thou Contrary not Opposite of Earth, And Earth of thee, whether thou her surrounding, Or her far shores thy waves are bounding : Thou Word that art, and ever givest birtli, To mystic Utterances, speaking, like Time, Of Truths sublime — Of Mythi following one another, Fancies pursuing aye their elder brother — While still and steadfast yet so distant. Neither by eitlier seen though coexistent. Those yellow Twins stretched side by side. With thee betwixt them, flooding, ebbing, Take thee by either hand unshaken ; What time thy fleecy robe is webbing, The robe thy Nymphs have undertaken, To weave for thy bridal, O thou Biide ! When as the everlasting Sky, Thy bridegroom, like Eternity, Who hath looked in thy mirror long. At his image great and strong. By gazing at his visible charms, Shall draw thee up into his arms, Right through the hymeneal Air, Your interminister, even as thou flowest, Atween the Twins of whom thou trowest. Those generous rivals, O thou beautiful and fair ! One Thesis, ont' Antitiiesis, 53 And tliou ihe essential Synthesis — 'I'iiat ever knows, that ever lives, And what it takes it ever gives, Love that illumines, Light that dwells, Life echoing wondrous Oracles. Vision of Being beatific — O ! Hyaline, Clear and divine. That glasses the Deific ! Enamoured of his own Idea, never mute, never alone. Crowned, sceptred ever, on Eternal Throne, The Lawgiver reveals himself in power. Dotli not the Depth respond ? — Yea, the great Dream on this. Hears a loud Voice come over the abyss, From the far Bank beyond, Where Time consorteth with the Day and Hour, Shouting, " Thou art Truth ! Son of the Everlasting Father, thou ! Soul, lovely ever in immortal youth ! And evermore thy Spirit, Which all who will inherit, Is as a Place of Waters, to unite. Even as the contrary, the opposite. On whose broad marge, with much delight. Faith ponders and adores With elevated brow !" — — And ever from the co- existent shores, The Archetypal voice is heard. Blent with the choral Echoes of the Eternal Word. Air ! thou quick Spirit of God for ever breathing ! Both Earth and Ocean of thy clear Profound Are one united Shoal, And on the farther part, the starry Pole Is its apparent bound ; But upward, upward, past all sight and hearing, The Infinite ensphering, The real shore leads to a country pure Whose ether thin nought mortal will endure. 54 Yet with that unknown land, allied are we By thee, O ! Deep of Air ! by thee ; Fine as the apex of a pyramid Ascending, till within thy fountain hid, That Spirit which proceeds from the communion Of the Eternal Father and the Word Which was in the beginning. Which was with God, and which God was, And still, in that ineffable union, Is ever more adored ; And when Time shall have broken his void glass, Shall be worshipped by the unsinning ! Father Eternal ! whom no angel sees, Nor hears, nor archangelic dignities Know, save in the Eternal Son ! Ever shall thy Will be done ! Unseen, all-seeing ! The Universe of Being, The Being of the Universe ! All represents thee, Prothesis of all ! Thee all the worlds rehearse, One — indivisible — intelligent — Contemplant of thyself, Creator ! And all Creation in thyself beholding. Which travails still for thy unfolding, Thou self-dilator ! And theirs, who shall from thee be sent. The Poets, holy men, while ere Into whose souls inspired Wisdom was wont to enter, and had made Them friends of God, and prophets too — Precessors of thy Son — and since Hath signed them on the forehead for thy sons. Adopted ones, Who only may the world convince Of Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgement true ; — Who only are arrayed In the mantle, and are fired With the spirit of the raptured Seer — 55 Convoyed on high by the banded forces Of Flame and Whirlwind irresistible, The Chariot and the Horses Of Israel. Thus now before me, as I look. The world is spread like a written book, And all the Works I there descry In the Words of the Lord like Letters lie — The Sun, be sure, is a glorious sign. And the Light it bears is indeed divine ! And the Dews and the Showers are pregnant Spells And the Rainbow's hues are Syllables, And the Winds and the Clouds are Cherubim, And the Angels of Fire are Seraphim ; And Cherubim and Seraphim Are the quick Thoughts and Ideas of Him, Who when He speaketh, pronounceth Being, And seeing Himself is the All-seeing ! And thus to Him continually The new-born Ardours awake and cry. Evermore feeling and welcoming, The Infinite Love from which they spring, And still in numbers, numberless, Forth singing Eternal Blessedness ; That self-rejoicing, self-multiplies Myriads on myriads of Harmonies, A choir of endless Jubilee, That were, that are, and aye shall be ! Works by the same Author. I. Crown 8vo, Price 10s. 6J. VOYAGES UP THE MEDITERRANEAN, AND IN THE INDIAN SEAS, WITH MEMOIRS COMPILED FROM THE LOGS AND LETTERS OF A MIDSHIPMAN, Embellished with a Portrait, and Engravings from original Drawings, by the subject of the Memoirs. n. Third Edition, Price 2s. AN ORATION ON- THE DEATH OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ. DELIVERED AT THE RUSSELL INSTITUTION. III. Superbly Printed, in Imperial 8vo. Price One Guinea, THE JUDGEMENT OF T H E F L O O D^: A POEM. ' IV. Second Edition, 18mo. Price 6s. THE DESCENT INTO HELL. A POEIVI. StCOND EDITION, REVISED AND RE-ARRANGED, WITH A.N ANALYSIS AND NOTES, To which are added, Uriel a Fragment, and Tuuee Odes. ^-Wt. ^,' . •\ ^i-