MODERN LITERATURE
AND
LIT ERARY X    EN
BEING A
arurrn)  uallrm  nf'iterqr [nrtmiri.
BY
GEORGE GILFILLAN.
FOURTH AMERICOAN EDITION.
NEW-YORIK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
443 & 445 BROADWAY.
M.DCCOLX.








AD VERTISE MENT.
THE Author in again appearing before the public, cannot do so without acknowledging the kindness with which his former work was received,
both in this and in other lands. It has made him a vast multitude of
friends among those whose faces he never hopes to see " in the flesh."
He thanks also the Press for the very general indulgence with which it
treated the first production of one then unknown. In the succeeding
sketches he has aimed at a tone somewhat more subdued, and a style of
criticism more discriminating than in the former. This is not so much
a gallery of "heroes" as of notable individuals whom he is sometimes
obliged rather sternly to analyze.  There is " a time to embrace, and a
time to refrain firom embracing"-a " time to pull down, as well as a time
to build up." Notwithstanding what the cold, the stupid, or the fastidious may say of the acknowledgment, he confesses to a much deeper satisfaction in the practice of praise than of blame, although in both he is
sincere. He may add, that he has given " second sittings" in this series,
more lengthy than formerly, to several individuals who were somewhat
cursorily treated in his first " Gallery."
He might well have husbanded his enthusiasm, having committed
himself to one of the greatest of critical tasks, a review of the " Bards of
the Bible,"-a subject, to use the- language of Dr. Croly, "where you
cannot think too profoundly, or eulogize too warmly."  This task, he may
announce, is more than two-thirds achieved, and, if God spare him, he
hopes to issue the entire work in spring.
In answer to many inquiries, the author may also intimate his intention of issuing soon a revised edition of his first " Gallery," the other
having been long out of print.
Dundee, 1st December, 1849.








CONTENTS.
PAGE
JOHN MILTON,.....                             9
LORD BYON,.                 42
GEORGE CRABBE,.......61
JOHN FOSTER,......                                   78
THOMAS HooD,. 96
THOMAS MACAULAY,..                   110
DR. GEORGE CROLY,......133
SiR EDWVARD BJLWER  LYTTON,.....  146
RALPH WALDO EMERSON,......    158
GFORGE DAWSON,...                        177
ALTRED TENNYSON,. 192
PROFESSOR NICHOL,......            207
MRS. HEMANS,......... 229
IRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,.                   239
MRS. SHELLEY,........ 251
WILLIIAM COBBETT,.....              263
JAMES MONTGOMERY,.. 277
SIDNEY SMITH,......                     287
WILLIAM  ANDERSON,. 292
LEIGH HUNT,.                                        303
THOMAS MOORE,.. 311
ISAAC TAYLOR,...                                  318
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,....            327
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY,.                               340
JOHN STERLING,......346








SECOND GALLERY
LIT ERARY P ORTRAIT S.
JOHN MILTON.
PErPHAPS some may be astonished at the subject selectedJohn Milton. Can any thing new, that is true-or true that
is new, be said on such a theme?  Have not the ages been
gazing upon this " mighty orb of song" as at the sun? and
have not almost all its gifted admirers uttered each his glowing panegyric, till now they seem to be ranged like planetary
bodies round his central blaze? What more can be said or
sung?  Is it not impossible to add to, however easy to diminish, our sense of his greatness? Is not the ambition rash
and presumptuous which seeks to approach the subject anew?
Surely the language of apology, at least, is the fit preface to
such a deed of daring.
No apology, however, do we intend to make. We hold
that every one who has been delighted, benefited, or elevated
by a great author, may claim the privilege of gratitude, to
tell the world that, and how, he has.  We hold, too, that
the proof of the true greatness of a man lies in this, that
every new encomiast, if in any measure qualified for the task,
is sure to find in him some new proof that the praises of all
time have not been wasted or exaggerated. Who that reads
or thinks at all, has not frequent occasions to pass by the
cairn which a thankful word has reared to Milton's memory?
and who can, at one time or other, resist the impulse to cast
1*




10                   JOHN MILTON.
on it another stone, however rough and small that stone-may
be?  Such is all we at present propose.
Every man is in some degree thie mirror of his times. A
man's times stand over him, as the sun above the earth, compelling an image fromn the dewdrop, as well as from the great
deep.  The difference is, that while the small man is a small,
the great man is a broad and full, reflection of his day. But
the effect of the times may be seen inl the baby's bauble and
cart, as well as in the style Mf the painter's pencil and the
poet's song. The converse is equally true. A man's times
are reflective of the man, as well as a man of the times.
Every man acts on, as well as is acted on by, every other
man.  The cry of the child who falls in yonder gutter, as
really affects the progress of society as the roar of the French
Revolution.  There is a perpetual process going on of action
and reaction, between each on the one side, and all on the
other. The characteristic of the great man is, that his reaction on his age is more than equal to its action upon him.
No man is wholly a creator, nor wholly a creature of his age.
The Milton or the Shakspeare is more the creator than he
is the creature.
Some men pass through the atmosphere of their time as
meteors through the air, or comets through the heavensleaving as little impression, and having with it a connection
equally slight; while others interpenetrate it so entirely that
the age becomes almost identified with them.  Milton was
intensely the man of his time'; and, although he shot far before it, it was simply because he more fully felt and understood what its tendencies really were; he spread his sails in
its breath, as in a favorable gale, which propelled him far
beyond the point where the impulse was at first given.
A glance at the times of Milton would require to be a profound and comprehensive one;;for the times that bore such
a product must have been extraordinary.  One feature, perhaps the chief, in them was this: Milton's age was an age
attempting, with sincere, strong, though baffled endeavor, to
be earnest, holy, and heroic.  The church had, in the previous age, been partially and nominally reformed; but it had
failed in accomplishing its own full deliverance, or the full
deliverance of the world.  It had shaken off the nightmare
of popery, but had settled itself down into a sleep, more




JOHN MILTON.                    11
composed, less disturbed, but as deadly. Is the Reformation,
thought the high hearts which then gave forth their thunder
throbs in England, to turn out -a mere sham? l Has all that
bloody seed of martyrdom been sown in vain?  Whether is
worse, after all, the incubus of superstition, or the sleep of
death?  We have got rid of the Pope, indeed, but not of
the world, or of the devil, or the flesh; we must, therefore,
repair our repairs-amend our amendments-reform  our
Reformation-and try, in this way, to get religion to come
down, as a practical living power, into the hearts and lives of
Englishmen.  We must squeeze our old folios into new facts
-we must see the dead blood of the martyrs turned into
living trees of righteousness —we must have character as
well as controversies-life, life at all hazards, we must have.
even though it be through the destruction of ceremonies, the
damage of surplices, the dismissal of bishops-aye, or the
death of kings.  Such was the spirit of that age.  We speak
of its real onward tendency-the direction of the main stream.'We stay not to count the numerous little obstinate opposing
eddies that were taking chips and straws-Lauds and Clarendons-backwards; thus and no otherwise, ran the master
current of the brain, the heart, and the hand of that magnificent era.
Are we not standing near the brink of another period,
in some points very similar to that of English Puritanism?
Is not our age getting tired of names, words, pretensions;
and anxious for things, deeds, realities? It cares nothing now for such terms as Christendom-Reformed
Churches-Glorious  Constitution  of 1688.  It wants a
Christendom  where the character of Christ-like that of
Hamlet-is not omitted by spebcial desire; it wants re-reformed churches, and a glorious constitution, that will do
a little more to feed, clothe, and educate those who sit under
its shadow, and have long talked of, without tasting, its
blessed fruits. It wants, in short, those big, beautiful words
-Liberty, Religion, Free Government, Church and State,
taken down from our flags, transparencies, and triumphal
arches, and introduced into our homes, hearths, and hearts.
And, although we have now no Cromwell and no Milton,
yet, thank God, we have thousands of gallant hearts, and
gifted spirits, and eloquent tongues, who have vowed loud




1 2                  JOHN MILTON.
and deep, in all the languages of Europe, that falsehoods
and deceptions, of all sorts and sizes, of all ages, statures,
and complexions, shall come to a close.
To Milton's time we may apply the words of inspiration
— _" The children are brought to the birth, but there is not
strength to bring forth." The great purpose of the age
was formed, begun, but left unfinished —nay, drowned in
slavery and blood. Ilow mortifying to a spirit such as his!
It was as if Moses had been taken up to Pisgah, but had
been struck dead before he saw the land of milk and honey.
So Milton had labored, and climbed to the steep summit,
whence he expected a new world;f liberty and truth to
expand before him, but found instead a wilder chaos and
a fouler hell than before. But dare we pity him, and need
we pity ourselves?  But for Milton's disappointment, and
disgust with the evil days and evil tongues on which he
latterly fell, he would not have retired into the solitude of
his own soul; and had he not so retired, the world would
have wanted its greatest poem-the "Paradise Lost."
That was the real fruit of the Puritanic contest-of all its
tears, and all its blood; and let those who are still enjoying
a result so rich, in gratitude declare "how that red rain
did make the harvest grow."  No life of Milton, worthy of
the name, has hitherto been written. Fenton's sketch is
an elegant trifle. Johnson's is, in parts, a heavy invective
— in parts, a noble panegyric; but in nowise a satisfactory
life. Sir Egerton Brydges has written rather an ardent
apology for his memory than a life. St. John's is a piece
of clever book-making. There is but, perhaps, one man in
Britain, since Coleridge died, fully qualified for supplying
this desideratum-we mean Thomas de Quincey. We have
repeatedly urged it on his attention, and are not without
hopes that he may yet address himself to a work which shall
task even his learning, genius, and eloquence. We propose
to refresh ourselves and others, by simply jotting down a
few particulars of the poet' s career, without professing to
give, on this head, any thing new.
John Milton was born in Bread-street, London-a street
lying in what is called, technically, the City, under the
shadow of St. Paul's —on the 9th of December, 1608. His
father was a scrivener, and was distinguished for his clas



JOHN MILTON.                   13
sical attainments. John received his early education under
a clergyman of the name of Young; was afterwards placed
at St. Paul's School, whence he was removed, in his seventeenth year, to Christ's Church, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself for the facility and beauty of his Latin
versification. We are not aware, although placed at such as
mathematical university, that he ever excelled in geometry;
it is uncertain whether he ever crossed the Pons asitno~r'lt,
although it is certain that he was whipped for a juvenile
contumacy, and that he never expresses any gratitude to his
Alma.l Iater. Universities, in fact, have often proved rather
stepmothers, than mothers, to men of genius, as the cases of
Gibbon, Shelley, Coleridge, Pollok, and many others, demonstrate.  And why?  Because their own souls are to them
universities; and they cannot fully attend to both, any
more than they can be in two places at the same time. He
originally intended to have entered the Church, but early
formed a dislike to subscriptions and oaths, as requiring,
what he terms, an 1" accommodating conscience"-a dislike
which he retained to the last. He could not stoop his giant
stature beneath the low lintel of a test.  He was too religious to be the mere partisan of any sect. From college he
carried nothing with him but a whole conscience and the
ordinary degree of A. M., for he never afterwards received
another: indeed the idea of Dr. Milton is ludicrous. As
well almost speak of Dr. Isaiah, Professor Melchisedec, or
Ezekiel, Esq.
His father, mear-while, had retired from  business, to
Horton, Buckilighamshire, where the young Milton spent
five years in solitary study.  Of these years, little comparatively is known; but, to us, they seem among the most
interesting of his life.  Then the " dark foundations of his
mind were laid;" then, stored up those profound stores of
learning, which were commensurate with his genius, and on
which that genius fed, free and unbounded, as a fire feeds on
a mighty forest. There, probably, much time was spent in
the contemplation of natural scenery, and in the exercises
of devotion; and there he composed those exquisite minor
poems, which, alone, would have made his name immortal"L'Allegro," " I1  Penseroso," "Comus," and " Lycidas."
At the age of thirty, having obtained leave from his father




14                   JOHN MILTON.
to travel, he visited Paris, Florence, Rome, and Naples.
His name had gone before him, and his progress was a
triumph. Public dinners and pieces of plate did not abound
in those days; but the nobility of the country entertained
him at their mansions, and the literati wrote poems in his
praise.
We may conceive with what delight he found his dreams
of the continent realized-with what kindling rapture his
eye met the Alps, gazed on the golden plains of Italy, or
perused the masterpieces of Italian art in the halls of
Florence, or the palaces of Rome. Milton in the Coliseum,
or standing at midnight upon Mount Palatine, with the
ruins of Rome dim-discovered around him —it were a subject
for a painting or a poem.  At this time a little incident of
romance occurred. In his youth he was extremely handsome,
so much so, that he was called the lady of his college. When
in Italy, he had lain down to repose during the heat of the
day in the fields. A young lady of high rank was passing
with her servant; she was greatly struck with the appearance
of the slumberer, who seemed to her eye as one of the
angels whom he afterwards described reposing in the vales ol
heaven. She wrote a few extempore lines in his praise with
a pencil, laid them down at his side, and went on her way.
When Milton awoke, he found the lines lying, but the fair
writer gone.  One account says that he spent some time in
searching for her, but in vain. Another (on which Bulwer
has founded a poem) relates that she, still stung by the recollection of his beauty, followed him to England; and was.so
mortified at finding him by this time married that she died
of a broken heart. Milton had intended to extend his tour to
Sicily and Greece, but the state of affairs in England drew
him home. "I deemed it dishonorable," he said, "to be
lingering abroad, even for the improvement of my mind,
while my fellow-citizens were contending for their liberty at
home.'"  There spoke the veritable man and hero, John
Milton, one who measured every thing by its relation not to
delight, but to duty; and felt himself "! ever in his great
Taskmaster's eye."  The civil war had by this time broken
out in flames which were not to be slaked for twenty years,
and into which even a king's blood was to fall like oil.
lilton, though an admirable fencer, and as brave as his own




JOHN MILTON.-                  15
Michael, thought Lhe might serve the popular cause better by
the pen than by the sword. He calmly sat down, therefore,
to write down royalty, prelacy, and every species of arbitrary
power.  At the same time, he opened a school for the
education of the young.  This has actually formed a count
of indictment against him.  Milton has been thought by
some to have demeaned himself by teaching children the
first element of knowledge, although it be, in truth, one of
the noblest avocations-although the fact of the contempt in
which it is held, ought to be a count of indictment against
an age foolish enough to entertain it-although it be an
avocation rendered illustrious by other names besides that
of IMilton, the names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buchanan,
Parr, Johnson, and Arnold-and although tile day is coining
when the titles of captain, or colonel, or knight-at-arms-yea.
and those of a king, kaiser, and emperor, will look mean
and contemptible compared to that of a village-schoolmaster
who is worthy of his trade. Louis Philippe, if we are not
mistaken, once taught a school; and it is, perhaps, a pity that
he ever did any thing else. The ingenious Mr. Punch lately
proposed an asylum for discrowned continental monarchs;
we think a better idea would be, if they would set up a
joint-stock academy in the neighborhood of London-Louis
Philippe teaching French and fortification-the Emperor of
Austria German and Italian-the Kinog of Prussia metaphysics-and the King of Bavaria, assisted by Lola Montes,
the elements of morality and religion; Nicholas might, by
and by, be appointed president of the academy-lMetternich
would make a capital head usher; and the whole might be
called the 1ev Royal Institution.
Schoolmaster as he was, al41 afterwards Latin secretary
to Cromwell, Milton found time to do and to write much in
the course of the eighteen or twenty years which elapsed
between his return to England and the Restoration.  He
found time for writing several treatises on divorce, for publishing his celebrated tractate on education, and his still
more celebrated discourse on the liberty of unlicensed printing, for collecting his minor poems in Latin and English, and
for defending, in various treatises, the execution of Charles
I., and the Government of Cromwell, besides commencing
an English History, an English Grammar, and a Latin Die



16                   JOHN MILTON.
tionary.  Mieanwhile, his first wife, who had borne him three
daughters, died in child-bed.  Meanwhile, too, a disease of
the eyes, contracted by intense study, began gradually to
eclipse the most intellectual orbs then glowing upon earth.
Milton has uttered more than one noble complaint over his
completed blindness. We could conceive him to have penned
an expostulation to the advancing shadow, equally sublime
and equally vain, for it was God's pleasure that this great
spirit should, like himself, dwell for a season in the thick
darkness. And scarcely had the last glimmer of light been
extinguished, than, as if the coming calamities had been
stayed and spell-bound hitherto by the calm look of the
magician, in one torrent they came upon his head; but although it was a Niagara that fell, it fell like Niagara upon
a rock. In an evil hour, as it seemed at the time at least, for
Britain, for Milton, for the progress of the human race, the
restored Charles arrived.  The consequences were disastrous
to Mlilton. His name was proscribed, his books burned,
himself obliged to abscond, and it was what some would call
a miracle that this blinded Samson was not led forth to give
his enemies sport, at the place of common execution, and
that the most godlike head in the world did not roll off from
the bloody block. But " man is immortal till his work be
done."  We speak of accidents and possibilities; but, in
reality, and looking at the matter upon the God-side of it,
Milton could no more have perished then than he could a
century before.  His future works were as certain, and inevitable, and due at their day, as "' summer and winter, as seedtime and harvest."
Even after the heat of persecution had abated, and his
life was, by sufferance, secure-it was never more-the prospects of Milton were aught but cheering. He was poor,
he was blind, he was solitary-his second wife dead; his
daughters, it would appear, were not the most congenial of
companions; his country was enslaved; the hopes of the
Church and of the world seemed blasted; —one might have
expected that disappointment, regret, and vexation would
have completed their work. Probably his enemies expected
so too. Probably they said, " We'll neglect him. and see if
that does not break his heart-we'll bring down on his head
the silence of a world, which was wont to ring with his name."




JOHIN MILTON.                  17
-They did not know their man. They knew not that here was
one of the immortal coursers, who fed on no vulgar or earthly
food. He " had meat to eat that the world knew not of."
It was the greatest crisis in the history of the individual
man. Napoleon survived the loss of his empire; and men
call him great, because he survived it. Sir Walter Scott
not only survived the loss of his fortune, but he struggled
manfully amid the sympathy of the civilized species to repair it. But Milton, amidst the loss of friends, fortune,
fame, sight, safety, domestic comfort, long cherished hopes,
not only survived, but stood firm as a god above the ruins of
a world; and not only stood firm, but built, alone and unaided, to himself an everlasting monument. Whole centuries
of every-day life seem condensed in those few years in which
he was constructing his work; and it is too daring a conception-that of the Great Spirit watching from  on high its
progress, and saying of it, as he did of his own creation,
when finished, " It is very good?"
But, indeed, his ownz work it was. For, strong as this
hero felt himself in his matured learning-in his genius, so
highly cultured, yet still so fresh and young, in his old experience, he did not venture to put his hand to the task till,
with strong crying and tears, he had asked the inspiration
and guidance of a higher power. Nor were these denied
him. As Noah into the ark of old, the Lord " shut" Milton
in within the darkened tabernacle of his own spirit, and that
tabernacle being filled with light from heaven, "Paradise
Lost" arose, the joint work of human genius and of divine
illumination.
We have seen the first edition of this marvellous poem
-a small, humble duodecimo, in ten. books, which was the
original number; but to us it seemed rich all over, as a
summer's sunset with glory. Every one has heard, probably,
of the price, the goodly price, at which it was prized and
bought-five pounds, with a contingency of fifteen more in
case of sale. For two years before it seems to have slumbered
in manuscript, and very likely was the while carried round
the trade, seeking for one hardy enough to be its literary
accoucheur. But let us not imagine that in ouir day it would
have met with a different reception. We can well fancy Adam
Black, or John Murray, saying to Milton, " Splendid poem,




i 8,'OHN MILTON.
sir-great genius in it; but it won't sell, we fear-far too
long-too many learned words in it-odd episode that on
sin and death. If you could rub it down into a tragedy,
and secure Macready for Satan, and Helen Faucit for Eve, it
might take; or, if you could write a few songs on the third
French RIevolution, or something in the style of'Donibey
and Son.' Good morning, Mr. Milton." It appeared in1667,
but was a long time of rising to its just place in public
estimation.  The public preferred Waller's insipid commonplaces, and Dryden's ranting plays, to the divine blank verse
of Milton.  Waller himself spoke of it as a long, dull poem
in blank verse; if its length could not be considered a
merit, it had no other.  The case is not singular.  Two of
the greatest poems in English of this century are, in our
judgmlnent, Wordsworth's " Excursion" and Bailey's " Festus."
Both were for years treated with neglect, although we are
certain that both will survive the "Course of Time" and
the' "Pickwick Papers." Between his masterpiece and his
death, little occurred except the publication of some minor,
but noble  productions, including  " Paradise  Regained,"'Sanmson Agonistes," "A system of Logic," " A Treatise
of True ieligion,' and a collection of his familiar epistles
in Latin.  At last, in November, 1647, at the age of sixtysix, under an exhaustion of the vital powers, Milton expired,
and that spirit, which was " only a little lower than the angels," went away to mingle with his starry kindred.  It is
with a certain severe' satisfaction that we contemplate the
death of a man like Milton. We feel that tears and lamentations are here unbecoming, and would mar the solemn
sweetness of the scene. With serenity, nay, joy, we witness
this majestic man-child caught up to God and his throne,
soaring away from the many shadows which surrounded him
on earth, into that bright element of eternity, in which he
seemed already naturalized.  Who seeks to weep, as he sees
the river, rich with the spoils of its long wandering, and become a broad mirror for the heavens, at length sinking in the
bosom of the deep?  Were we permitted to behold a star
re-absorbed into its source, melted down in God, would it
not generate a delight, graver, indeed, but as-real, as had we
stood by its creation; and although there were no shouting,
as on its natal morn, might there not be silence-the silence




JOHN MILTON.                   19
of joyous wonder among the sons of God? Thus died Milton,
the prince of modern men, accepting death as gently and
silently as the sky receives into its arms the waning moon.
We are reminded of a description in'" Hyperion," of the
death of Goethe: "His majestic eyes looked for the last time
on the light of a pleasant spring morning. Calm like a god,
the old man sat, and, with a smile, seemed to bid farewell to
the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty
years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just
dropped from his dying fingers.' Open the shutters, and
let in more light,' were his last words. Slowly stretching
forth his hand, he seemed to write in the air, and, as it sank
down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man
was gone."
The next portion of our task is, to speak of the constituents of Milton's mind. Many critics have spoken of him
as one who possessed only two or three faculties in a supreme and almost supernatural degree. They speak of his
imagination and intellect as if they were his all. Now, in
fact, Milton, as well as Goethe or Shakspeare, seemns to us
a many-sided man.  He was complete in all powers and
accomplishments, almost as his own Adam. He had every
faculty, both of body and of mind, well developed and finely
harmonized. He had philosophic sagacity, and could, upon
occasion, reason as acutely as Thomas Aquinas.  He had
broad grasp as well as subtle discrimination, and some of
his treatises nearly exhaust the topics of which they treat.
He had, in vast measure, understanding, the power which
comprehends; memory, the power which retains; imagination, the power which combines and reproduces; will,
the power which moves; and eloquence, the power which
communicates.  l-e had, besides, the subordinate talents
of wit, sarcasm, invective, rhetoric, and logic; even the
characters of the sophist and the buffoon he could adopt at
pleasure. In what species of literature did he not shine?
In the epic, in the drama, in the pastoral, in the ode, in
the elegy, in the masque, in the sonnet, in the epistle, in
the song, in the satire, in the argument, in the essay, in the
religious discussion, in the history, and in the etymological
treatise, he was equally a master.  He added more than the
versatility of Voltaire to more than the sublimity of Homer.




20                    JOHN MILTON.
While Voltaire skips from topic to topic with the agility of
an elated monkey, Milton's versatility reminds you of the
great Scripture image, " The mozountains leaping like rams,
and the hills like lambs."  And if it be asked, what was it
that gave him that august air of unity, which has made
many overlook his multiform nature? We answer, it was the
subordination of all his varied powers to a religious purpose,
such as we find in no other uninspired man; and it was
again, that glare of awful grandeur which shone around him
in all his motions, and made even his least efforts, even his
failures, and almost his blunders, great. As St. Peter's in
Rome seems one, because it unites, condenses, and rounds
in all the minutie and details of its fabric into a dome, so
lofty and proud that it seems a copy of the sky to which it
points —to imitate as well as to adore-so-Milton gathers in
all the spoils of Lime, and all the faculties of man, and offers
them as in one sacrifice, and on one vast altar to heaven.
In attempting a climactic arrangement of his poetical
works, we may trace his whole life over again, as in a calm
under-current; not that, in point of chronological order, his
works form  a complete history of the man, inasmuch as
"Paradise Lost," in which his genius culminatedcl, preceded
" Samson Agonistes " —still some of the epochs of his life
are distinctly marked by the advancing stages of his writings.  Lowest in the scalp, then, are usually ranked his
Latin poems, which, with many beauties, are lather imitations and echoes of the classical poets than the native utterances of his mind; it is in them, as in many modern Latin
and Greek poems, where the strange dress, the graceful veil,
the coy half-perceived meaning, -as with the beauty of female
coquettes, give a factitious interest to very ordinary and
commonplace thoughts.  Half the merit of the classics themselves springs from the difficulty we have in understanding
them, and if we wish effectually to disguise nonsense, let us
roll it up in Greek or Latin verse, and it may lie there unsuspected for centuries together.  Milion could not write
nonsense, to be sure, even in Latin, but his usual power and
majesty here well nigh forsake him; and in hexameters and
pentameters he walks like a Titan in irons, and in irons
too narrow for his limbs. We may rank next, as next lowest in popular estimation, his sonnets. We are not. sure,




JOHN MILTON.                    21
however, but that popular estimation has underrated those
productions. Dr. Johnson certainly did. When asked once
his opinion of Milton's sonnets, he said,' "Milton could hew
out a Colossus from a rock, but he could not carve heads upon
cherry-stones." Literally, of course, he could -not do either
the one or the other; but had he been a sculptor, we believe
that the slightest stroke of his chisel would, as well as his
most elaborate work, have evinced the master. Hogarth's
genius appeared as really in those sketches which he used
to draw on his thumb-nail, as in his "LRake's Progress," or
"i Marriage a la Mode."  So Milton's sonnets are sonnets
which Milton, and none but Milton, could have written.
WVe see, in the compass of a crown-piece, his most peculiar
qualities: his gravity, his severe and simple grandeur, his
chaste and chary expression, his holy purpose, and the lofty
and solitary character of his soul.  His mind might be compared to a mountain river, which having first torn its way
through high rocks, then polishes the pebbles over which it
rolls at their base.
"'Tis the same wind unbinds the Alpine snow,
And comforts violets on their lowly beds."
We confess, however, that we are not much in love with
the structure of the sonnet. Its principle, which is to include into fourteen lines one thought or sentiment, seems too
artificial, and savors too much of the style of taste from
which have sprung anagrams and acrostics, and the like ingenious follies.  When a large thought is successfully
squeezed into it, it reminds us irresistibly of a big head
which has worked and wriggled its way into a narrow nightcap; and when a small thought is infused into it, it becomes almost invisible in the dilution.
We come next to that delightful class of Milton's poems,
which we call pastorals, namely, "Arcades," "L'Allegro,"
and " I Penseroso.'" They breathe the sweetest spirit of
English landscape.  They are composed of every-day life,
but of every-day life shown under a certain soft ideal
strangeness, like a picture or a prospect, through which you
look by inverting your head.  Your wonder is, how he can
thus elevate the tame beauties of English scenery, which
are so tiny that they might be fitly tenanted by Lilliputians,




22                    -JOHN MILTON.
and through which men stalk like monstrous giants.  L'A1legro is an enumeration of agreeable images and objeets,
pictured each by a single touch, and set to a light easy measure, which might accompany the blithe song of the milkmaid, and the sharp whetting of the mower's scythe.  "; I1
Penseroso" is essentially the same scenery, shown as if in soft
and pensive moonlight.  Both, need we say, are exquisitely
beautiful; but we think the object would have been better
gained, could two poets, of different temperaments, have, in
the manner of Virgil's shepherds, exchanged their strains
of joy and pensiveness in alternate verses, or if Milton
had personated both in this way.  As  the poems are, it
is too obviously one mind describing its own peculiar
sources of gratification in different moods.  A modern poet
might now, if he had genius enough, effect what we mean,
by describing a contest between Horace and Dante, or
Mioore and Byron-the one singing the pleasures of pleasure, the other the darker delights which mingle even with
misery, like strange, scattered, bewildered flowers, growing
on the haggard rocks of hell!
An acute critic, in an Edinburgh periodical, has undertaken the defence of " The Town" ve rsus "' The Country" as
the source of poetry-has  called us, amohg others, to
account for preferring the latter to the former-and has
ventured to assert that, cceteris przaiblus, a poet residing in
the town will describe rural scenery better than one living
constantly in the country, and adduces Milton in proof.
We admit, indeed, that there will be more freshness in the
feeling of the Cockney, let loose upon the country in spring,
be he poet or porter, just as there will be more freshness
in the feeling of the countryman entering London for the
first time, and gaping with unbounded wonder at every
sign, and shop, and shopkeeper he sees. But we maintain,
that those always write best on any subject who are best
acquainted with it, who know it in all is shades and phases;
and that such minute and personal knowlege can only be
obtained by long residence in, or by frequent visits to, the
country.  We cannot conceive, with this writer, that the
country is best seen in the town, any more than that the
town is best seen in the country. Bennevis is not visible
from Edinburgh any more than Edinburgh from Bennevis.




JOHN MILTON.                   23
WYe can never compare the beggarly bit of blue sky seen from
a corner of Goosedubs, Glasgow, with the " dread nmagnificence of heaven" broadly bending over Benlonmond; nor the
puddles running down the Wellgate of Dundee, after a
night of rain, with the red roaring torrents from the hills,
which meet at the sweet village of Comrie.  And even the
rainbow, when you see it at the end of a dirty street, loses
caste, though not color, and can hardly pass for a relation
to that arch of God, which seems erected by the hands of
angels, for the passage of the Divine footsteps between the
ridges which confine the valley of Glencoe. And among
our greatest descriptive poets, how many have resided in the
country, either all their lives, or at least in their youth!
Think of Virgil and Mantua, of Thomson and Ednam, of
Burns,and Mossgiel, of Shelley and Marlowe, of Byron and
Lochnagar, of Coleridge and Nether Stowey, of Wilson and
Elleray, of Scott and Abbotsford, of WVordsworth and Ryydal
Mount, and of Milton and Horton, where, assuredly, his
finest rural pieces were composed: and say with Cowper,
the Cowper of Olney, as we have said with him  already"God made the country, and man made the town."
We pass to two pieces, which, though belonging to different styles of poetry, class themselves together by two circumstances-their similar length, and their surpassing excellence
-the one being an elegy, and the other a hymn. The elegy
is " Lycidas"-the hymn is on the "Nativity of Christ." To
say that " Lycidas" is beautiful, is to say that a star or rose
is beautiful. Conceive the finest and purest graces of the
Pagan mythology culled and mingled, with modest yet daring hand, among the roses of Sharon and the lilies of the
valley-conceive the waters of Castalia sprinkled on the
flowers which grow in the garden of God-and you have a
faint conception of what " Lycidas" means to do. Stern but
short-sighted critics have objected to this as an unhallowed
junction. Milton knew better than his judges. He felt that,
in the millennial field of poetry, the wolf and the lamb
might lie down together; that every thing at least that was
beautiful might enter here.  The Pagan mythology possessed this pass-word, and was admitted; and here truth and
beauty accordingly met, and embraced each other. A museum,?
he felt, had not the severe laws of a temnple.  There, whatever




24                    JOHN MILTON.
was curious, interesting, or rare, might be admitted. Pan's
pipe might lean upon the foot of the true cross-Apollo's
flute and David's lyre stand side by side-and the thunderbolts of Jove rest peacefully near the fiery chariot of Elijah.
But what shall we say of his hymn? Out of the Hebrew
Scriptures, it is (besides his own "H Iymn of our First Parents," and Coleridge's "Hymn to Mont Blanc") the only
one we remember worthy of the name. When you compare
the ordinary swarm of church hymns to this, you begin to
doubt whether the piety which prompted the one, and the
piety which prompted the other, were of the same qualitywhether they agreed in any thing but the name.  We have
here no trash, as profane as it is fulsome, about " sweet Jesus! dear Jesus!" no effusions of pious sentimentalism,
like certain herbs, too sweet to be wholesome; but a strain
which might have been sung by the angelic host on the plains
of Bethlehem, and rehearsed by the shepherds in the ears of
the Infant God.  Like a belated member of that deputation
of Sages who came from the East to the manger at Bethlehem, does he spread out his treasures, and they are richer
than frankincense, sweeter than myrrh, and more precious
than gold.  With awful reverence and joy, he turns aside to
behold this great sight-the Eternal God dwelling in an infant! Here the fault (if fault it be) with which " Lycidas" has
been charged is sternly avoided. From the Stable he repulses
the heathen deities, feeling that the ground is holy. And
yet,, methinks, Apollo would have desired to stay-would
have lingered to the last momnent-to hear execrations so sublime:,The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arch'd roof in words, deceiving
Apollo from his shrine,
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
He feels from Judah's land
The dreadful Infant's hand:
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne.
Nor all the gods beside
Dare longer now abide,
Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine:




JOHN MLT ILTON.                 25
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can, in his swaddling bands, control the damned crew."
" Samson Agonistes" is perhaps the least poetical, but certainly by no means the least characteristic of his works. In
style and imagery, it is bare as a skeleton, but you see it to
be the skeleton of a Samson.  It is the purest piece of litera)ry scudlt'tre in any language.  It stands before you, like a
statue, bloodless and blind.  There can be no doubt that
Milton chose Samson as a subject, from  the resemblance inl
their destinies.  Sanmson, like himself, was made blind in the
cause of his country; and through him, as through a new
channel, does Mhilton pour out his old complaint, but more
here in anger than in sorrow.  It had required-as the Nile
had seven mouths-so many vents to a grief so great and
absolute as his.  Consolation Samson has little, save in the
prospect of vengeance, for the prospect of the resurrectionbody had not fully dawned on his soul.  He is, in short, a
hard and Hebrew shape of Milton.  Indeed, the poem might
have been written by one who had been born blind, from its
sparing natural imagery.  He seems to spurn that bright
and flowery world which has been shut against him, and to
create, within his darkened tabernacle, a scenery and a
companionship of his own, distinct as the scenery and the
companionship of dreams.  It is, consequently, a naked and
gloomy poem; and as its hero triumphs in death, so it seems
to faill upon and crush its reader into prostrate wonder
rather than to create warmn and willing admiration., You
believe it to be a powerful poem, and you tremble as you
believe.
What a contrast in "Comus," the growth and bloom
rather than the work of his youth! It bears the relation to
the other works of Milton, that " Romeo and Juliet " does
to the other works of Shakspeare.  We can conceive it the
effluence of his first love.  Hie here lets his genius run riot
with him —" in the colors of the rainbow live, and play i'
the plighted clouds."  It is rather a dream than a dramasuch a dream  as might have been passing across the fine
features of the young Milton, as he lay asleep in Italy.  It
is an exercise of fancy, more than of imagination.  And if
our readers wish us, ere going farther, to distinguish fancy
from imagination, we would do so briefly, as follows: —They
2




26                    JOHN MILTON.
are not, we maintain, essentially different, but the same
power under different aspects; attitudes, and circumstances.
Have they ever contemplated the fire at even-tide? then
must they have' noticed how the flame, after warming and
completely impregnating the fuel, breaks out above it into
various fantastic freaks, motions, and figures, as if, having
performed its work, it ware disposed to play and luxuriate a
little, if not for its own delectation, for the amusement of the
spectator.  Behold in the evening experiences of the fire the
entire history of the mind of genius.  There is first the
germ, or spar]k, or living principle, called thought, cr intuition, or inspiration.  That fiery particle, coming into contact with a theme, a story, with the facts of history, or the
abstractions of intellect, begins to assimilate them  to itself,
to influence them with its own heat, or to brighten them
into its own light.  That is the imaginative, or shall we call
it the transfiguring process by which dead matter is changed
into quick flame —by which an old fabulous chronicle becomes the tragedy of " Macbeth " —or by which some lascivious tale in an Italian novel is changed into the world-famous,
and terribly-true story of'; Othello, the Moor of Venice."
But after this is done, does the imaginative power always
stop here?  No; in the mere exuberance of its strengthin the wantonness of its triumph-it will often, like the fire
on the hearth, throw out gushes of superfluous but beautiful
flame; in other words, images, " quips, cranks, and wreathed
smiles "-and thus and here we find that glorious excrescence
or lutxury, which we call fancy. Fancy is that crown of rays
round the sun which is seen in the valley of Chamou.ni, but
not on the summit of Mont Blanc, where a stern and stripped
stillness proclaims collected and severe power. It is the
dancing spray of the waterfall, not the calm, uncrested, voluminous might of the river; or it may be compared to those
blossoms on the apple-tree, which that tree pours forth in
the exuberance of its spring vigor, but which never produce
fruit.  Imagination is the war-horse pawing for the battlefancy, the war-horse curvetting and neighing on the mead.
From  such notions of imagination and fancy, there follow,
we think, the following conclusions: —First, that true fancy
is rather an excess of a power than a power itself. Secondly,
that it is generally youthful, and ready to vanish away with




JOHN MILTON.                   27
the energy and excitement of youth. Thirdly, that it is incident to, though not inseparable from, the highest geniusabounding in Mtilton, Shakspeare, and Shelley-not to be
found, however, in Homer, Dante, or Wordsworth.  Fourthly, that the want of it generally arises from severity of purpose, comparative coldness of temperament, or the acquired
prevalence of self-control; and, fifthly, that a counterfeit of
it exists, chiefly to be known by this, that its images are not
representative of great or true thoughts; that they are not
original; and that, therefore, their profusion rather augurs
a mechanical power of memory than a native excess of imagination.  In "( Comus " we find imagination, and imagination with a high purpose; but more than in any of Milton's
works do we find this imagination at play, reminding us of
a man whose day's work is done, and who spends his remaining strength in some light and lawful game. Our highest
praise of " Comus " is, that when remembering and repeating
its lines, we have sometimes paused to consider whether they
were or were not Shakspeare's.  They have all his mingled
sweetness and strength, his careless grace or grandeur, his
beauty as unconscious of'itself as we could conceive a fair woman in some world where there was not even a river, or lake,
or drop of water to mirror her charms. In this poem, to
apply his own language, we have the " stripling cherub," all
bloom, and grace, and liveliness; in the "Paradise Lost"
we have the " giant angel," the emblem of power and valor, and whose very beauty is grave and terrible like his
strength.'" Paradise Regained " stands next in the catalogue.  No
poem has suffered more from comparison than this. Milton's preference of it to " Paradise Lost" has generally been
quoted as an instance of the adage, that authors are the
worst judges of their own works; that, like some mothers,
they prefer their deformed and sickly offspring. We should
think, however, that even were the work much worse than it
is, Milton's liking for it might have been accounted for on
the principle that authors are often fondest of their last production; like the immortal Archbishop of Granada, whom
Gil Bias so mortally offended by hinting that his sermons
were beginning to smell of his apoplectic fit, instead of, as a
wise flatterer would have done, stretching out his praises till




28                   JOHN MILTON.
they threatened to crack against the horizon. But, in truth,
Milton was not so much mistaken as people suppose. There
are men who at all times, and there are moods in which all
men prefer the 23d Psalm to the 18th, the first Epistle of
John to the Apocalypse; so there are moods in which we
like the " Paradise Regained," with its profound quiet-with
its Scriptural simplicity-with its insulated passages of unsurpassed power and grandeur-with its total want of effort
-and with its modest avoidance of the mysterious agonies
of the crucifixion, which Milton felt was a subject too sublime
even for his lyre-to the more labored and crowded splendors of the  "Paradise Lost."  The one is a giant tossing
mountains to heaven in trial of strength, and with manifest
toil; the other is a giant gently putting his foot on a rock,
and leaving a mark inimitable, indelible, visible to all after
time. If the one remind you of the tumultuous glories and
organ-tempests in the Revelation, the other reminds you of
that silence which was in heaven for the space of half an
hour.
The principal defect of this poem is the new and contemptible light in Which it discovers the Devil. The Satan
of the " Paradise Lost " had many of the elements of the
heroic, and even when starting from  his toad-shape, he recovers his grandeur instantly by his stature reaching the
sky. But the Satan of the " Paradise Regained " is a mean,
low, crawling worm-a little and limping fiend.  He never
looks the Saviour full in the face, but keeps nibbling at his
heels. And although in this Milton has expressed the actual history of intellect'and courage, when separated from
virtue, happiness and hope, and degraded into the servile
vassals of an infernal will, yet it is not so pleasing for us to
contemplate the completed as it is the begun ruin. Around
the former some rays of beauty continue to linger; the latter is desolation turned into despicable use. The Satan of the
" Paradise Lost," the high, the haughty, the consciously
second only to the Most High, becomes, in the "Paradise
Regained," at best, a clever conjurer, whose tricks are constantly baffled, and might, as they are here described, we
think, be baffled by an inferior wisdom to that of incarnate
Omnipotence.
We pass to the greatest work of Milton's genius; and




JOHN MILTON.                      29
here we feel as if, in using the word art or genius, we were
guilty of profanation; for so long have we been accustomed
to think and speak of the " Paradise Lost," that it seems to
us to rank with the great works of nature themselves.  WVe
think of it as of Enoch or Elijah, when just rising out of
the sphere of earth's attraction, and catching a brighter
radiance than any that earth owns upon their ascending
forms.  And there are works of genius which seem standing
and stretching up towards the measure and the stature of
the works of God, and to which these seem to nod in responsive sympathy.  For, as the poet says" Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er Enaland's abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adapted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."
Such a work is that of "Paradise Lost," where earth ant
heaven appear contending for the mastery-where, as over
the morning star, the night and thbe dawning seem engaged
in contest as to the possession of a thing so magnificent,
because in it, and in fine proportions, gloom and glory-the
gloom of hell and the glory of heaven-have met and embraced each other.
" Paradise Lost " has sometimes been called the most
perfect of human productions-it ought to be called the
most ambitious.  It is the Tower of Babel, the top of which
did not, indeed, reach unto heaven, but did certainly surpass
all the other structures then upon earth. It stands alone, unequalled — 4Icazn's lliiountaint. It is a Samson throw, to reach
which, in our degenerate days, no one need aspire. Even to
higher intelligences it may appear wonderful, and strange
as to us those likenesses of the stars and of man which are
to be found in flowers and animals. In the language of
Pope, they may




30                    JOHN MILTON.
" Admire such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And show a Miilton as men show an ape.'
But in proportion, perhaps, as this work rises above the
works of man, and hangs aloft like a half-born celestial product, it loses a portion of its interest with "' human mortals."
It is not, on the one hand, a book like the Bible, commanding
all belief as well as all admiration; it is not, on the other
hand, a popular and poetical manual, like the "Pilgrim's
Progress," commending itself to the hearts of all who have
hearts to feel its meaning; nor is it a work valuable to a
party, as having inshrined and transfigured some party
notion, which, like a Gipsy in the wild, had been wandering
undistinguished, till a sudden slip of sunshine had bathed
him in transient glory. It is the written-out, illuminated
creed of- a'solitary, independent, daring, yet devout man,
which all ages have agreed to admire in Milton's poem.
And hence the admiration awarded has been rather general
than particular-rather that of the whole than of the part,
-rather that of stupefied and silent amazement than of
keen, warm, and anxious enthusiasnm-rather the feeling of
those who look hopelessly upon a cloud or a star, or a
glowing west, than of those who look on some great, yet imitable perfection, in the arts of painting, statuary, or poesy.
We must be permitted a word about the hero of this
poem, about its picture of hell, about its pictures of paradise
and heaven, about the representation of Adam  and Eve,
about its subordinate machinery of angels and devils, and
about its place and comparative merits when put beside the
other masterpieces of the human mind. Its hero is undoubtedly, as Dryden long ago asserted, Satan, if the most
interesting character in the book deserves the name of hero
-if, for example, Fergus MlacIvor, and not Waverley, is the
hero of that tale-if of Ivanhoe not that insipid personage
himself, but Richard, the lion-hearted, be the real hero.
Wherever Satan appears, he becomes the centre of the scene,
Round him as he lies on the fiery gulf, floating many a rood,
the flames seem to do obeisance, even as their red billows
break upon his sides. When he rises up into his proper
stature, the surrounding hosts of hell cling to him, like
leaves to a tree.  When he disturbs the old deep of Chaos,
its Anarchs, Orcus, Hades, Demogorgon, own a superior.




JOHN MILTON.                       31
When he stands on Niphates, and bespeaks that -sun which
was once his footstool, Creation becomes silent to listen to
the dread soliloquy.  When he enters Eden, a shiver of
horror shakes all its roses, and makes the waters of the four
rivers to tremble.  Even in heaven, the Mountain of the
Congregation on the sides of the north, where he sits, almost
mates with the throne of the Eternal. Mounted on the night
as on a black charger, carrying all hell in his breast, and the
trail of heaven's glory on his brow-his eyes eclipsed suns
-his cheeks furrowed not by the traces of tears but of
thunder-his wings two black forests-his heart a mount of
millstone-armed to the teeth-doubly armed by pride, fury,
and  despair-lonely as death —hungry  as the grave-intrenched in immortality-defiant against every difficulty and
danger, does he pass before us, the most tremendous conception in the compass of poetry-the sublimest creation
of the mind of man.  There is but one other, which approaches it at a distance-that of Lucifer, in Dante, who
appears with three faces:" Under each shot forth'
Two mighty wings, enormous, as became
A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
Outstretched on the wide sea. No plumes had they,
But were in texture like a bat, and these
He flapped i' the air, that from them issued still
Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth
Was frozen. At six eyes he wept; the tears
Adown three chins distill'd with bloody foam!
At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ'd,
Bruised as with ponderous engine.
Judas is he that hath his head within,
And plies the feet without; of the other two,
The one is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe,
And speaks not. The other Cassius, that appears
So large of limb."
Nothing can be more frightfully picturesque than this
description, but it is, perhaps, too grotesque to be sublime;
and the thought of the Devil being a vast windmill, and
creating ice by the action of his wings, is ludicrous.  One
is reminded of Don Quixotte's famous mistake of the windmills for giants.
Burns, in one of his letters, expresses a resolve to buy a
pocket-copy of Milton, and study that noble character, Satan




32                     30IoIN MILTON.
WTe cannot join in this opinion entirely, although very charac.
teristic of the author of the  "Address to the De'il;" but we
would advise our readers, if they wish to see the loftiest
genius passing into the highest art-if they wish to see colllbined in one stupendous figure every species of beauty, deformity, terror, darkness, light, calm, convulsion —the essence
of m.an, devil, and angel, collected into a something distinct
from each, and absolutely unique-all the elements in nature
ransacked, and all the characters in history analyzed, in order
to deck that brow with terror-to fill that eye with fire-to
clothe that neck with thunder —to harden that heart into
stone-to give to that port its pride, and to that wing its
swiftness-and that glory so terrible to those nostrils, snorting with hatred to G-od, and scorn to man-to buy, beg, or
borrow a copy of Milton, and study the character of Satan,
not like Burns, for its worth, but for the very grandeur of
its worthlessness.  An Italian painter drew a representation
of Lucifer so vivid and glowing, that it left the canvas, and
came into the painter's soul; in other words, haunted his
nlind by night and day-becamue palpable to his eye, even
when he was absent from  the picture-produced at last a
frenzy, which ended in death.  We might wonder that a
similar effect was not produced upon Milton's mind, from the
long presence of his own terrific creation (to be thinking of
the Devil for six or ten years together looks like a Satanic possession), were it not that we remember his mind was more
than equal to confront its own workmanship.  Satan was not
a spasm, but a calm, deliberate production of Milton's mind:
le was greater, therefore, than Satan, and was enabled, be
sides, through his habitual religion, to subdue and master his
tone of feeling in referencfto him.
Milton's Hell is the most fantastic piece of fancy, based
on the broadest superstructure of imagination.  It presents
such a scene, as though Switzerland were set on fire.  Such
an uneven colossal region, full of bogs, caves, hollow valleys,
broad lakes, and towering Alps, has M3ilton's genius cut out
from chaos, and wrapped in devouring flames, leaving, indeed,
here and there a snowy mountain, or a frozen lake, for a
variety in the horror. This wilderness of death is the platform
which imagination raises and peoples with the fallen thrones,
dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers. On it the




JOHN MILTON.                    33
same power, in its playful, fanciful mood, piles up the pandemonian palace, suggests the trick by which the giant fiends
reduce their stature, shrinking into imps, and seats at the
gates of hell the monstrous forms of sin and death.  These
have often been objected to, as if they were unsuccessful and
abortional efforts of imagination; whereas they are the curvettings and magnificent nonsense of that power after its
proper work-the creation of hell-has been performed.
The great merit of Milton's hell, especially as compared to
Dante's, is the union of a general sublime indistinctness,
with a clear statuesque marking out from, or painting on, the
gloom, of individual forms. From a sublime idea of hell, he
descends to severely-selected particular forms and features.
Dante, on the contrary (although literally descending), in
reality ascends, on endless lost spirits, as on steps, to that
dreadful whole which he calls the Inferno; and in the strange
inverted climax lies much of the power of the poem.  Milton
is the synthetist, Dante the analyst of hell —the one here
practises the transcendental, the other the aseendental
method.  The one describes hell like an angel, passing
through it in haste, and with time only to behold its leading outlines and figures-the other, like a pilgrim, compelled with slow and painful steps to thread all its highways
and byways of pain and punishment. Milton has pictured
to us the young flames, and unpeopled wastes of hell as well
as of earth.  By Dante's time, it is overflowing with inhabitants, and teeming with sad incidents. The hell of each has
its root as much in the heart as in the imagination-it is to
each a red reservoir, into which he pours his ire and disappointmnent;  but as Milton's sadness was of a milder type
than Dante's, so his hell is less savage and more sublime.
I-Ie gazes reverently, and from  a distance, on the awful
scene-whereas the fierce Florentine enters into its heart,
goes down on his knees to watch more narrowly the degradations of the down-trodden damned-nay, applies a microscope
to their quivering flesh and fire-shrivelled skin; nor did
Ugolino, over the skull, go to his task with a more terrible
and tingling gusto.
In Milton's Paradise, no less than in his Pandemonium,
we find the giant character of his genius.  It is no smug
garden-plot,-it is no tame, though wide, landscape; no




34                     3011N MILTON.
English hall, with garden and park-it is a large undula
ting country as bold as beautiful; and as in hell he made
Switzerland run fire, in Paradise he makes Britain flow
with milk and honey. As the one was a wilderness of death,
this is a wilderness of sweets. There are roses in it, but there
are also forests.  There are soft vales, but there are also
mountains. There are rippling, dancing streams; but there
is also a large, grave river, -running south.  There are birds
singing on the branches; but there is also Behemoth reposing below.  There is the lamb; but there is the lion too,
even in his innocence awful. There is a bower in the midst;
but there is a wall vast and high around. There are our
happy parents within; but there are hosts of angels without.
There is perfect happiness; but there is also, walking in the
garden, and running amid the trees, a low whisper, prophesying of change, and casting a nameless gloom over all the
region.
Such is the Paradise of Milton.  It is not that of Macaulay, whose description of it in "Byron," vivid as it is,
gives us the idea rather of a beautiful, holy and guarded spot,
than of a great space, forming a broad nuptial crown to the
young world.
In his Heaven, Milton finds still fuller field for the serious as well as sportive exercise of his unbounded imagination. He gives us the conception of a region immeasurably
large.  Many earths are massed together to form one continent surrounding the throne of God-a continent, not of
cloud, or airy light, but of fixed solid land, with steadfast
towering mountains, and soft slumbrous vales; to which
Pollok, in his copy of it, has added, finely, wastes and wildernesses —retreats, even there, for solitary meditation; and
it is a beautiful thought, that of there being hermits even in
heaven.  Afar, like a cloud, rises, the centre and pinnacle
of the region, the throne of Jehovah, now bathed in intolerable light, and now shaded by profound darlness. Thus far
imagination, sternly and soberly, accomplishes her work.
But then she describes the cave, whence, by turns, light and
darkness issue —the artillery employed by the rebel angels
-their punning speeches to each other-their tearing up
mnountains —the opening and closing of their wounds —she
runs wild; nor is her wildness beautiful; it is the play




JOHN MILTON.                     35
rather of false than of true fancy —rather a recollection of
the " Arabian Nights," than the carol and spring of a Titanic
original faculty.  The councils of the Godhead are proverbial
for feebleness and prolixity.  MIilton's hand trembles as it
takes down the syllables from  the Divine lips; and lie returns, with eager haste, to the consult, on the midnight
MIount of the Cengregation.  But the coming forth of the
Messiah to destroy his foes is the'most sublime passage in
the poem. It is a " torrent rapture" of fire.  Its words do
not run, but rush, as if hurrying from the chariot of the Son.
They seem driven, even as the fiends are driven, before him.
Suggested partly by Hesiod's "War of the Giants," and
partly by Achilles coming forth upon the Trojans, it is superior to both —indeed, to any thing in the compass of poetry.
As the Messiah, in his progress, snatched up his fallen foes,
and drove theml before him like leaves on the blast, Milton,
in the whirlwind of his inspiration, snatches up words, allusions, images, from  Homer, Hesiod, and the Book of God,
and bears them, in terror and in triumph, on.  As soon call
a tornado the plagiarist of the boughs, rafters, houses, and
woods which it tears up, and carries forward in the fury of
its power, as Milton, in a mood like this. To quote any part
of it, were as wise as to preserve a little of the air of a hurricane.  We must read it at a sitting —nay we cannot; for
though sitting as we commence it, we will be standing up —
feet, hair, and soul —ere we are done. And would, we cry
aloud, that the same pen of living fire had described for us
that second and sublimer rising of the Son of man, when he
shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels; which
must now remain undescribed, till every eye shall see it, and
all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of it.  Even so.
Amen.
The difficulty which met Milton in his portrait of our
first parents was, obviously, to make them perfect, without
being unnatural-to make them  sinless, and yet distinguish
them from angels-to show them human, yet unfallen; to
make, in short, a new thing on the earth, a man and a
Nwoman, beautiful beyond desire, simple beyond disguise,
graceful without consciousness, naked without shame, innocent but not insipid, lofty but not proud; uniting, in themselves, the qualities of childhood, manhood, and womanhood,




36                    JOHN IMILTONM
as if, in one season, spring, sumlmer, and autumn   could be
imagined.  This was the task Milton had to accomplish;
and, at his bidding, there arose the loveliest creatures of the
human ilagination, such as poet's eye never, before'or since,
imaged, in the rainbow or the moonshine, or saw in the
light of dreams; than fairies more graceful, than the cherubim and the seraphim themselves more beautiful.  It is the
very image of God set in clay; and, in proportion to the
baseness of the material, is the costliness and the masterdom of the work.  "Oh, man! over all," we exclaim, "be
thou blessed for ever.  And thou, his sister and spouse, his
softer self, man's moon and miniature, may every flower be
thy lover, every bird thy morning and evening songstress;
may the day be but thy sunny mantle, and the stars of
night seem but gems in thy flowing hair!"
Milton's Adam is, himself, as he was in his young manhood, ere yet the cares of life had ploughed his forehead or
quenched his serene eyes.  Eve, again, is 3Milton's life-long
dream of what woman was, and yet may be —a dream, frlom
which he again and again awoke, weeping, because the
bright vision had passed away, and a cold reality alone remained.  You see, in her every lineament, that he was on.e
who, from the loftiness of his ideal, had been disappointed
in woman.  In the words, frequently repeated as a specimen
of a b6ll —
"Adam, the goodliest man of men, since born
His sons-the fairest of her daughters Eve"he has unwittingly described the process by which his mind
created them.  Adam is the goodliest of his sons, becaus~
he is formed from themn by combining their better qualities;
and thus are the children the parents of their father.  Eve
is the fairest of her daughters; for it would require the
collected essence of all their excellences to form such another Eve.  How beautiful the following words of Thomas
Aird! "Lo! now the general father and mother! What a
broad, ripe, serene, and gracious composure of love about
themi! O! could but that mother of us all be permitted to
make a pilgrimage over the earth, to see her many sons and
daughters! How kindly would the kings and queens of the
world entreat her in their palaces! How affectionately would
her outcast children of the wilderness give her honey and




JOl1N MILTON,                   37
milk, and wash her feet! No thought of the many woes she
brought upon us! No reproaches! Nothing but love! So
generous is the great soul of this world!"
Let the world, however, take comfort.  If Eve has not
accomplished such a pleasant peregrination (not so pleasant,
by the way, for her to pass through such infernal nurseries
as the "-high viced" cities and reeking battle-fields of the
earth), her picture and her lord's have visited somle millions
of her children, who have shown their affection for her by
admiring two of the most monstrous of that progeny which
French affectation and self-conceit, mistaking the pressure of
nightmare for the stoop of the god, have ever produced.
Approach, ye admirers of Milton's matchless pair, and see
them translated into French, and tell us whether you think
Monsieur Adam —himself a proof (were he a portrait) that
the species did not need two progenitors, being as much a
black as a white; or Madalnme Eve, smacking more of the
Palais Royal than of Paradise-the first man and woman or
the last man and woman-the first noble beginning, or the
last meretricious and degraded end of their species?  Such
artificial beings, you feel, are quite secure.  They cannot
fall: they are fallen already, and too far ever to arise. One
is reminded of the words of Shakspeare: —" If Adam fell in
his innocency, no wonder though John Falstaff fall in his sin."
We cease to wonder at their fall, and humbly think that
that of Sir John, in the gutter before the Boar's Headcl, Eastcheap, might as soon have provoked the fantastic and forced
symptoms of nature's sympathy with which the " Expulsion"
abounds.
Milton's management of his angels and devils proves as
much as any thing in the poem the versatility of his genius,
the delicacy of his discrimination of character, that Shakspearean quality in him which has been so much overlooked.
To break up the general angel or devil element into so many
finely-individualized forms —to fit the language to the character of each-to do this, in spite of the dignified and somewhat unwieldy character of his style-to avoid insipidity of
excellence in his seraphs, and insipidity of horror in his
fiends-to keep them erect and undwindled, whether in the'presence of Satan on the one side, or of Messiah on the other
-was a problem requiring skill as well as daring, dramiatic




38                    JOHN MILTON.
as well as epic powers.  No mere mannerist could have succeeded in it.  Yet, what vivid portraits has he drawn of
Michael, Raphael, (how like, in their difference from  each
other, as well as in their names, to the two great Italian
painters!) Abdiel, Uriel, Beelzebub, Moloch, Belial, Mammon-all perfectly distinct-all speaking a leviathan language, which, in all, however, is modified by the character of
each, and in none sinks into mannerism.  If Milton had not
been the greatest of epic poets, he might have been the
second of dramatists.  Macaulay has admirably shown how,
or rather that Shakspeare has preserved the distinction between similar characters, such as HEotspur and Falconbridge;
and conceded even to Madame d'Arblay a portion of the same
power, in depicting several individuals, all young, all clever,
all clergymen, all in love, and yet all unlike each other. But
Milton has performed a much more difficult achievement.
lie has represented five devils, all fallen, all eloquent, all in
torment, hate, and hell, and yet all so distinct that you could
with difficulty interchange a line of the utterances of each.
None but Satan, the incarnation of egotism, could have
said" Wthat matter where, if I be still the same?"
None but Moloch-the rash and desperate-could thus
abruptly have brokefi silence"1 My sentence is for open war."
None but Belial-the subtle, far-revolving fiend, could
have spoken of
"Thoue thoughts that wander through eternity."
None but lMammon, the down-looking demon, would
ever, alluding to the subterranean riches of hell, have
asked the question" W7iat can heaven show more?"
Or, who but Beelzebub, the Metternich  of Pandemonium, would have commenced his oration with such grave,
terrific irony as —
" Thrones, and imperial powers, offspring of heaven,
Ethereal virtues, or these titles now




JOHN 11IILTON.                   39
Must we renounce, and changing style, be called
Princes of hell?"
Shakspeare could have done a similar feat, by creating
five men, all husbands, all black, and all jealous of their
white wives; or else, five human fiends, all white, all Italian,
and all eager to throw  salt and gunpowder on the rising
flame of jealousy, and yet each distinct from  our present
Othello and Iago; and this Shakspeare might have done,
and done with ease, though he did it not.
Perhaps, to settle the place, and comparative merit, of
the "' Paradise Lost," is an attempt which appears more difficult than it really is.  Milton himself may have, and has a
considerable number of competitors, and, in our judgment, two
superiors: Shakspeare and Dante. His work can be compared properly to but two others; the "Iliad" and the
"Divina Comedia."  These are the first three among the
productions of imaginative genius.  Like Bennevis, Benmacdhui, and Cairntoul, still contesting, it is said, the sovereignty of Scotland's hills, (now rising above, and now sinking below  each other, like three waves of the sea,) seem
those surpassing masterpieces.  We cannot, in our limits,
even enter into a field so wide as the discussion of all the
grounds on which we prefer the English poem. It is not
because it is of later date than both, and yet as original as
either.  Time should never be taken into account when we
speak of an immortal work; what matters it whether it was
written in the morning, in the evening, or at noon? It is
not that it was written amid danger and darkness-who
knows how Homer fared as he rhapsodized the " Iliad?" or
who knows not that Dante found in his poem the escape of
immeasurable sorrow? It is not (Warton notwithstanding)
that it has borrowed so much from Scripture: such glorious
spangles we are ready to shear off, and deduct, in our estimate of the poem's greatness.  It is not that it bears unequivocal traces of a higher path of genius, or that it is more
highly or equally finished.  But it is that, begun with a
nobler purpose, and all but equal powers, it has called down,
therefore, a mightier inspiration. Homer's spur to write or
rhapsodize was that which sends the war-horse upon the
spears; and the glory of the " Iliad" is that of a garment
rolled in blood.  In Dante, the sting is that of personal




40                     JOHN MILTON.
anguish, and the acmni of his poem is in the depth of hell —a
hell which he has replenished with his foes. Milton, in fact,
as well as in figure, wrote his work to vindicate the "ways
of God to men;" and this purpose never relinquishedpenetrating the whole poem straight as a ray passing through
an unrefracting medium, gathering around it every severe
magnificence and beauty, attracting from on high, from the
very altar of celestial incense, burning coals of inspiration
-becomies at last the poem's inaccessible and immortal
crown.
Let us glance for a moment, ere we close, at what was
even finer than Milton's transcendent genius-his character.
His life was a great epic itself; Byron's life was a tragicomedy; Sheridan's was a brilliant farce; Shelley's was a
wild, mad, stormy tragedy, like one of Nat Lee's; Keats'
life was a sad, brief, beautiful lyric; Moore's has been a lovesong; Coleridge's was a "Midsummer Night's Dream;"
Schiller's was a harsh, difficult, wailing, but ultimately victorious war ode, like one of Pindar's; Goethe's was a brilliant,
somewhat meloclranmatic, but finished novel; Tasso's was an
elegy; but Milton, and Milton alone, acted as well as wrote
an epic complete in all its parts-high, grave, sustained, majestic.  His life was a self-denied life.  " Susceptible," says
one, "as Burke, to the attractions of historical prescription,
of royalty, of chivalry, of an ancient church, installed in cathedrals, and illustrated by old martyrdoms-he threw himself, the flower of elegance, on the side of the reeking conventicle-the side of humanity, unlearned and unadorned."
It was a life of labor and toil; labor and toil ~unrewarded,
save by the secret sunshine of his own breast, filled with the
consciousness of divine approbation, and hearing from afar
the voice of universal future fame.  It was a life of purity.
Even in his youth, and in the countries of the south, he
seems to have remained entirely unsullied.  Although no
anchorite, he was temperate to a degree, saying with John
Elliot, "Wine is a noble, generous liquor, and we should be
thankful for it, but water was made before it." Rapid in his
meals, he was never weary of the refreshment of music; his
favorite instrument, as might have been expected,. being the
organ.  It was a life not perfect: there were spots on his
Came, acerbities of temper, harshness of language, peculiar



JOHN MhILTON.                  41
ities of opinion, which proved him human, and grappled him
with difficulty to earth, like a vast balloon ere it takes its
bound upwards.  It was in some measure a complete life,
not a tantalizing fragment, nor separated segment; but it
evolved as gradually and certainly as a piece of solemn lnusic.  It was the life of a patriot, faithful found among the
faithless, faithful only he; and Abdiel, that dreadless angel,
is just Milton transferred to the skies.  It was, above all,
the life of a Christian-yes, the life of a Christian, although
the Evangelical Alliance would now shut its door in his face.
It was a life of prayer, of faith, of meek dependence, of perpetual communing with heaven.  Milton's piety was not a
hollow form, not a traditional cant, not a bigotry, not the
remains merely of youthful impression, as of a scald received
in childhood; it was founded on personal inquiry; it was at
once sincere and enlightened, strict and liberal; it was practical, and pressed on his every action and word, like the
shadow of an unseen presence.  Hence was his soul cheered
in sorrow and blindness, the more he lived in daily, hourly
expectation of Him whom he called "the shortly-expected
King," cwho, rending the heavens, was to, and shall yet, give
him a house from heaven, where they that look out at the.
windows are not darkened..
Thus faintly have we pictured John 3Milton.  Forgive us,
mighty shade! wherever thou art, mingling in whatever choir
of adoring spirits, or engaged in whatever exalted milnisterial service above, or whether present now among those "millions of spiritual creatures which walk the earth;" forgive us
the feebleness, for the sake of the sincerity of the offering;
and reject it not from that cloud of incense which, with enlarging volumne, and deepening fragrance, is ascending to thy
name, from every country and in every language!
We say with enlarging volume, for the fame of Milton
must not only continue but extend. And perhaps the day
may come, when, after the sun of British empire is set, and
Great Britain has become as Babylon, and as Tyre, and even
after its language has ceased to be a living tongue, the works
of Milton and Shakspeare shall alone preserve it-for these
belong to no country, and to no age, but to all countries, and
all ages, to all ages of time-to all cycles of eternity.  Some
books may survive the last burning, and be preserved in ce



4n2                     LOrD BYRON.
lestial archives, as specimens and memorials of extinguished
worlds; and if such there be, surely one of them must be the
" Paradise Lost."
In fine, we tell not our readers to imitate Milton's genius
-that may be too high a thing for them; but to imitate his
life, the patriotism, the sincerity, the manliness, the purity,
and the piety of his character.  When considering him, and
the other men of his day, we are tempted to say, " There
were giants in those days," while we have fallen on the days
of little men —nay, to cry out with her of old, " I saw gods
ascending from  the earth, and one of them  is like to an
old mcan whose face is covered with] a vazcntle."  In these
days of rapid and universal change, what need for a spirit so
pure, so wise, so sincere, and so gifted, as his! and who will
not join in the language of Wordsworth?-, Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour.
England hath need of thee. She is a fen
Of stagnant waters. We are selfish men.
Thy soul was like a star; and dwelt apart;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay."
LORD BYRON.
AN objection may meet us on the threshold of this, as
well as on that of our previous paper.  It may seem that to
attempt a new estimate of a character so thoroughly scrutinized, and so widely appreciated as Byron's, is an attempt
alike hopeless and presumptuous. And if we did approach
it with the desire of finding or saying any thing absolutely
new, we should feel the full force of the objection. But this
is far from being our ambition.  We have decided to sketch
Lord Byron's genius for the following reasons. In the first
place, a very minute is never a very wide, a very particular
is seldom a very just, scrutiny or estimate. In the second




LORD BYRON.                     43
place, the criticism of single works pouring from the press,
however acute and admirable, is not equivalent to a review
of those works taken as a whole.  A judgment pronounced
upon the first, second, or third stories of a building, as they
successively arise, does not forestall the opinion of one who
can overlook the completed structure.  Of Byron's several
writings we have every variety of separate critiques, good,
bad, and indifferent-of his genius, as animating his whole
works, we have little criticism, either indifferent, bad, or
good. In the third place, the tumult which all Byron's productions instantly excited, the space they cleared and burnt
out for themselves, falling like bombshells among the crowd,
the strong passions they awakened in their readers, through
that intense personality which marked them all, rendered
cool appreciation at the time impossible. They came upon
the public like powerful sermons on an excited audience,
sweeping criticism away before them, blotting out principles of art from the memory of the severest judges, whose
hearts they stormed, whose passions they inflamed-at the
saame time that they sometimes revolted their tastes, and
sometimes insulted their understandings.  At night there
was intoxication-in the morning calm reflection came.
But, in the meantime, the poet was away, his song had
become immortal, and the threatened arrows were quietly
returned to the quiver again. In the next place, Byron's
life and story formed a running commentary upon his
works, which tended at once to excite and to bewilder
his readers.  His works have now illustrated  editions:
they did not require this while he lived. Then, his romantic history, partially disclosed, and, therefore, more effective in its interest-his early, hapless love-his first unfortunate publication-his Grecian travels- his resistless
rush into fame-his miserable marriage-his amours-the
glorious backgrounds which he chose for his tragic attitudes,
Switzerland and Italy-his personal beauty-his very lameness-the odd and yet unludicrous compound which he formed
of Vulcan and Venus, of Apollo and Satyr, of favorite and
football of destiny-the mysterious spectacle he presented
of a most miserable man, composed of all the materials which
make others happy —the quaint mixture of all opposites in
his character, irreconcilable till in the ruin of death. —the




44                   LORD BYRON.
cloak of mystery which he now carefully threw over, and
now pettishly withdrew fi'om, his own character-the impossibility of either thoroughly hating, or loving, or laughing
at him —the unique and many-sided puzzle which he thus
made, had the effect of maddening the public, and of mystifying his critics. Hal is charged by Falstaff with giving him
medicines to make him love him. Byron gave men medicines
to educe toward himself a mixture of all possible feelingsanger, envy, admiration, love, pity, blame, horror, and, above
all, wonder as to what could be the conceivable issue of a
life so high and so low —so earthly and so unearthly-so
spiritual and so sensual-so melancholy and so mirthful, as
he was notoriously leading.  This was the perpetual stimulus to the readers of his works-this the face and figure,
filling the margins of all his pages. This now is over. That
strange life is lived-that knot, too hard and twisted for man,
is away elsewhere to be solved-that heart, so differently
reported of by different operators, has undergone the stern
analysis of death.  His works have now emerged from that
fluctuating and lurid shadow of himself, which seemed to
haunt and guard them all; and we can now judge of them,
though not apart from his personal history, yet undistracted
by its perpetual protrusion.  In the next place, Byron was
the victim of two opposite currents in the public feelingone unduly exalting, and the other unduly depressing his
name —both of which have now so far subsided. that we can
judge of him  out of the immediate and overbearing influence of either. And in the last place, as intimated already,
no attempt has been made since his death, either to collect
the scattered flowers of former fugitive criticism, to be bound
in one chaplet round his pale and noble brow, or to wreath
for it fresh and independent laurels.  Moore's life is a long
apology for his memory, such as a partial friend might be
expected to make to a public then partial, and unwilling to
be convicted of misplaced idolatry.  MIacaulay's critique is
an elegant /fksciczlzus of all the fine things which, it had occurred to him, might be said on such a theme-exhibits!
besides, the coarse current of Byron's life caught in crystal
and tinged with coulzur de rose, like a foul winter stream
shining in ice and evening sunshine —and has many beautiful remarks about his poems; but neither abounds in original




LnoD BY:RON.                    45
views, nor gives, what its author could so admirably have
given, a collection of common opinions on his entire genius
and works, forming a full-length portrait, ideally like, vigorously distinct, and set, in his own brilliant imagery and
language, as in a frame of gold.
Our endeavor at present is to make some small contribution towards a future likeness of Byron. And whatever
may be the effect of our remarks upon the public, and however they may or may not fail in starting from slumber the'! coming man" who shall criticise Byron as Thomas Carlyle
has criticised Jean Paul, and'Wilson, Burns: this, at least,
shall be ours —we shall have expressed our honest convictions-uttered an idea that has long lain upon our mindsand repaid, in part, a debt of gratitude which we owe to
Byron, as men owe to some terrible teacher, who has at once
roused and tortured their minds; as men owe to the thunderpeal which has awakened them, sweltering, at the hour when
it behoved them to start on some journey of life and death.
We propose to methodise our paper under the following
outlines:.We would, in the first place, inquire into Byron's
purpose. Secondly, into the relation in which he has stood
to his age, and the influence he has exerted over it. Thirdly,
into the leading features of his artistic execution. Fourthly,
speak of the materials on which his genius fed. Fifthly,
glance at the more characteristic of his works. And, sixthly,
try to settle his rank as a poet.  We would first ask at
Byron the simple question, "What do you mean?"  A
simple question truly, but significant as well, and not always
very easy to answer.  It is always, however, our duty to ask
it; and we have, in general. a right, surely, to expeit a
reply. If a man come and make us a speech, we are entitled
to understand his language as well as to see his object. If
a man administer to us a reproof, or salute us with a sudden
blow, we have a double right to turn round and ask, i"Why?"
Nay, if a man come professing to utter an oracular deliverance, even in this case we expect some glimmer of definite
meaning and object; and if glimmer there be none, we are
justified in concluding that neither has there been any
oracle. " Oracles speakl;" oracles should also shine.  Now,
in Byron's case, we have a man coming forward to utter
speeches, to administer reproofs, to smite the public on both




'~C6                  aLO-RD BYRON.
cheeks-in the attitude of an accuser, impeaching man-of
a blasphemer, attacking God-of a prophet expressing himself, moreover, with the clearness and the certainty of profound and dogmatic conviction; and we have thus more
than a threefold right to inquire, what is your drift, what
would you have us to believe, or what to do? Now here,
precisely, we think, is Byron's fatal defect. He has no such
clear, distinct, and overpowering object, as were worthy of
securing, or as has secured, the complete concentration of
his splendid powers.  His object! What is it?  Not to
preach the duty of universal despair; or to inculcate the
propriety of an "act of universal, simultaneous suicidei"
else, why did he not, in the first place, set the example himself, and from " Leucadia's rock," or Etna's crater, precipitate
himself, as a signal for the species to follow? and why, in
the second place, did he profess such trust in schemes of
political amelioration, and die in the act of leading on a
revolutionary war. Not to teach, nor yet to impugn any
system of religion: for if one thing be more certain about
him than another, it is, that he had no settled convictions on
such subjects at all, and was only beginning to entertain a
desire toward forming them when the "great teacher," death,
arrived.  Nor was his purpose merely to display his own
powers and passions in imposing aspects.  Much of this
desire indeed mingled with his ambition, but he was not
altogether a vain attitudinizer. There is sterling truth in
his taste and style of writing —there is sincerity in his
anguish-and his little pieces, particularly, are the mere
wringings of his heart.  Who can doubt that his brow, the
index of the soul, darkened as he wrote that fearful curse,
the burden of which is "Forgiveness?"  The paper on
which was written his farewell to Lady Byron, is still extant,
and it is all blurred and blotted with his tears.  His poem
entitled " The Dream," is as sincere as if-it had been penned
in blood. And was he not sincere in sleep, when he ground
his teeth to pieces in gnashing them? But his sincerity
was not of that profound, constant, and consistent kind
which deserves the stronger name of earnestness. It did
not answer to the best description in poetry of the progres
Df such a spirit, which goes on



LORD BYRON.                      47
"Like to the Pontic sea
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps right on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont."
It was a sincerity such as the falsest and the most hollow of
men must express when stung to the quick; for hath not he,
as well as a Jew, "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, af%ections, passions.  Is he not fed with the same food, and
hurt by the same weapons?  If you prick him, does he not
bleed. If you tickle him, does he not laugh?  If you poison him, does he not die? And if you wrong him, does he
not revenge 2" Purpose, therefore, in its genuine simplicity,
and quiet deep sincerity, was awanting in Byron's character.
And this greatly accounts for the wreck which lie became;
and for that misery-a misery which was wonderful, passing
the wo of nman-which sat down upon his spirit.  Many accounts have been given of his grief.  Macaulay says that he
was a spoiled child. Shelley declares" The thought that he was greater than his kind
Hlad struck, methought, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing at its own exceeding light."
But the plain prose and English of it lay in his union of intensity of power with the want of intensity of purpose. He
was neither one thing nor yet another. Life with him was
neither, on the one hand, an earnest single-eyed effort, nor
was it, could it be, a mere display. He believed, and trembled as he believed, that it was a serious thing to die, but
did not sufficiently, if at all, feel that it was as serious a
thing to live.  IHe would not struggle: he must shine; but
could not be conazent with mere shining without struggle.
And hence, ill at ease with himself, aimless and hopeless,
"like'the Cyclops-m-ad with blindness,"' he turned to bay
against society —man-and his Maker.  And hence, amid all
that he has said to the world-and said so eloquently, and
said so mournfully, and said amid such wide, and silent, and
profound attention-he has told it little save his own sad
story.
We pass, secondly, to speak of the relation in which he
stood to his age.  The relations in which a man stands to
his age are perhaps threefold.  He is either before it or be



48                    LORD  YIRON.
hind it, or exactly on a level with it.  I-le is either its forerunner; or he is dragged as a captive at its chariot wheels;
or he walks calmly, and step for step, along with it.  W~e behold in Milton the man before his age-not, indeed, in point
of moral grandeur or mental power; for remember, his age
was the age of the Puritans, the age of lHampden, Selden,
Howe, Vane, and of Cromwell, who was a greater writer than
fMilton himself-only, it was with the sword that he wrote
-and whose deeds were quite commensurate with Milton's
words.  But in point of liberality of sentiment and width
of view, the poet strode across entire centuries. We see in
Southey the man behind his age, who, indeed, in his youth,
took a rash and rapid race in advance, but returned like a
beaten dog, cowed, abashed, with downcast head, and tail between his legs, and remained, for the rest of his life, aloof
from the great movements of society.  We behold in Brougham one whom once the age was proud to claim as its child
and champion, the express image of its bustling, restless,
versatile, and onward character, and of whom we still at
least say, with a sigh, he mzight have been the man of his
tinme.  in which of these relations, is it asked, did Byron
stand to his age?  We are forced to answer, in none of
them.  He was not before his age in any thing-in opinion,
or in feeling.  He was not, in all or many things, disgracefully behind it; nor did he move with equal and measured
step in its procession. He. stood to the age in a most awkward and uncertain attitude.  He sneered at its advancement, and he lent money, and ultimately lost his life, in
attempting to promote it.  He spoke with uniform  contempt, and imitated with as uniform  emulation, the masterpieces of its literature.  ITe abused Wordsworth in public, and in private " rolled him  as a sweet morsel under
his tongue;" or rather, if you believe himself, took him  as
a drastic dose, to purify his bilious and unhappy nature,
by the strongest contrasted element that he could find.  I-He
often reviled and ridiculed revealed religion, and yet read
the Bible more faithfully and statedly than most professed
Christians —made up in superstition what he wanted in faith
-had a devout horror at beginning his poems, undertaking
his journeys, or paring his nails on a Friday-and had he
lived, would probably have ended, like his own Giaour, as




LOPD BYRQ0N.                     49
" brother Byron,' with hair shirt, and iron-spiked girdle, in
some Achaian or Armenian convent. HIe habitually trampled
on, and seems sometimes to have really despised, the opinion
of the public; and yet, in some points, felt it so keenly, that,
says Ebenezer Elliot, hlie would have gone into hysterics
had a tailor laughed at him."   And although, when the
"Edinburgh Review" sought to crush him  like a worm, he
rose from the heel, a fiery, flying dragon; yet, to the assaults
of the meaner creatures of the press, he was pervious all
over, and allowed minikin arrows, which were beneath his
laughter, to rouse his rage. Absurd and ludicrous the spectacle of this Laocoon, covered from  head to foot with the
snakes of supernal vengeance, yet bearing their burden with
deep agonized silence, starting and shrieking upon the application of a thorn, which the hand of some puny passing malignant had thrust into his foot. In one respect we grant
that Byron was the spirit of the age; he was the representative of its wants, its weakness, its discontents, its dark
unrest-but not of its aspirations, its widening charity, and
its hopeful tendencies.  His voice was the deep vague moan
of the world's dream-his writhing anguish, the last struggle
of its troubled slumber: it has since awakened, or is awakening,
and, " as a dream when one awakeneth," it is despising, too
much despising, his image.  He stood high yet helpless between the old and the new, and all the helpless and the hopeless rallied round to constitute him first magistrate over a
city in flames-supreme ruler in a blasted and ruined realln.
1In one thing he was certainly a prophet; namely, a prophet
of evil. As misery was the secret sting of all his inspiration,
it became the invariable matter of all his song.  In some of
his poems, you have misery contemplating; in others, misery
weeping aloud; in others, misery revolving and reproducing
the past; in others, misery bursting the confines of the world,
as if in search of a wider hell than that in which it felt itself
environed; in others, misery stopping to turn and rend its
real or imaginary foes; and in others, misery breaking out
into hollow, hopeless, and heartless laughter.  (What a terrible thing is the lacugh' of the unhappy! It is the very " echo
to the seat where sorrow is throned.")  But in all, you have
misery; and whether lie returns the old thunder in a voice
of kindred power and majesty, or sings an evening song with
3




50                   TORD BYRON.
the grasshopper at his feet-smiles the smile of bitterness,
or sheds the burning tears of anger-his voice still speaks of
desolation, mourning, and woe; the vocabulary of grief labors
under the demands of his melancholy genius; and never, never more, till the scene of tears and sighs be ended, shall we
meet with a more authentic and profound expounder of the
wretchedness of man. And as such we have deemed him to
have done good service; first, because he who approaches
toward the bottom of human woe, proves that it is not altogether bottomless, however deep; because, if human grief
spring from human greatness, in unveiling the grief he is
illustrating the grandeur of man; and, because, the writings
of Byron have saved us, in this country, what in [France has
been so pernicious, " the literature of desperation:" they are
a literature of desperation in themselves; they condense into
one volume what in France has been diluted throughout
many, and, consequently, our country has drained off at one
gulp, and survived the experiment, the poison which our neighbors have been sipping for years to their deadly harm.
Thus, on the whole, We regard Byron neither as, in any
sense, a creator, nor wholly, as a creature of his period;
but rather as a stranger entangled in the passing stream of
its crowd, imperfectly adjusted to its customs, indifferently
reconciled to its laws-among men, but not of them-a man
of the wtorld, but not a man of the age; and who has
rather fallen furiously through it-spurning its heights, and
seeking its depths-than left on it any deep or definite impression.  Some men are buried, and straightway forgottenshovelled out of memory as soon as shovelled into the tomb.
Others are buried, and from their graves, through the hands
of ministering love, arise  fragrant flowers and verdant
branches, and thus are they in a subordinate sense, "raised
in glory."  Others, again, lie down in the dust, and though
no blossom or bough marks the spot, and though the timid
shun it at evening-tides as a spot unblessed-yet, forgotten it can never be, for there lies the record of a great
guilty life extinct, and the crown of crime sits silent and
shadowy on the tombstone. This is Byron's memorial in
the age.  But, as even on Nero's tomb " some hand unseen
strewed flowers," and  as "nothing dies but something
mourns," let us lay a frail garland upon the sepulchre of a




LORD BYRON.                     51
ruin-itself a desolation —and say Rgeziescaz' in pace, as we
hurry on.
We come, thirdly, to speak of the leading features of his
artistic execution, and the materials which his genius used.
And here there are less mingled feelings to embarrass the
critical contemplator. Strong, direct intellect, descriptive
force, and personal passion, seem  the main elements of
Byron's poetical power.  He sees clearly, he selects judiciously for effect from among the points he does see, and
he paints them with a pencil dipped in his own fiery heart.
He was the last representative of the English character of
mind.  His lordly independence and high-spiritedness; his
fearless avowal of his prejudices, however narrow, and
passions, however coarse; his constant clearness and decision of tone and of style; his manly vigor and directness; his strong unreasoning instinctive sense; his abhorrence of mysticism; and his frequent caprices-all savored
of that literature which had reared Dryden, Pope, and
Johnson; and every peculiarity of the English school seems
to have clustered in and around hinl, as its last splendid
specimen. Since then our higher literature is rapidly charging with the German element.  Byron was ultimvus lRoynanzorwnzz —the last, and with the exception of Shakspeare and
Milton, the greatest purely Eng',lish poet.  His manner had
generally all the clearness and precision of sculpture; indeed his clearness serves often to disguise his depth. As
obscurity sometimes gives an air of mystic profundity and
solemn grandeur to a shallow puddle, so; on the other hand,
we have seen pools among the mountains, whose pellucidity
made them appear less profound, and *where every small
shining pebble was a bright liar as to the real depth of the
waters; such pools are many of the poems of Byron, and,
we may add, of Campbell.
His dominion over the darker passions is one of the
most obvious features in his poetic character.  He rode in a
chariot drawn, if we may use the figure, by those horses
described in the visions of the Apocalypse, 1"whose heads
were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued
fire, and smoke, and brimstone."  And  supreme is his
management of these dreadful coursers. Wherever human
nature is fiercest and gloomiest-wherever furnace-bosoms




52                    LORD BYRON
have been heated seven times hotter by the unrestrained
passions and the torrid suns of the east and the southwherever man verges toward the animal or the fiendwherever misanthropes have folded their arms, and taken
their desperate attitude-wherever stands "'the bed of sin,
delirious with its dread" -wherever devours "'the wormn
that cannot sleep, and never dies "-there the melancholy
muse of Byron finds its subjects and its haunts.  Driven
from a home in his country, he seeks it in the mansions of
all unhappy hearts, which open gloomily; and admit him
as their tenant and their bard.  To escape from  one's self
is the desire of many, of all the miserable-the desire of
the drunkard, of the opium-eater, of those who plunge into
the vortex of any dissipation, who indulge in any delicious
dream; but it is the singularity of Byron that he uniformly
escapes from himself into something worse and more miserable.  His being transmigrates into a darker and more demoniac shape; he becomes an epicure even in wretchedness;
he has supped full of common miseries, and must create and
exhaust imaginary horrors.  What infinite pity that a being
so gifted, and that might have been so noble, should find
it necessary perpetually to evade himself! Hence his writings abound, more than those of other authors, with lines
and phrases which seem to concentrate all misery within
them-with texts for misanthropes, and mottoes for the
mouths of suicides.  " Years all winters" —what a gasp is
that, and how characteristic of him  to whose soul summer
had not come, and spring had for ever faded! The charge
of affectation has often been brought against Byron's proclamations of personal woe. But no one, we believe, was
ever a constant and consistent hypocrite in such a matter as
misery; and we think we can argue his sincerity, not
merely from his personal declarations, but from this fact,
that all the characters into whom he shoots his soul are unhappy. Tasso writhing in the dungeon. Dante prophesying evil, not to speak of imaginary heroes, such as Conrad,
Alp, the Giaour, and Childe Harold, betray in what direction ran the master current of his soul; and as the bells
and bubbles upon the dark pool form Ian accurate measurement of its depth, so his mirth, in its wildness, recklessness,
and utter want of genuine gayety, tells saddest tales about




LORD BYrrON.                    53
the state of a heart which neither on earth nor in heaven
could find aught to cheer or comfort it.
Besides those intensely English qualities which we have
enumerated as Byron's, there sprung out from  him, and
mainly through the spur of woe, a higher power than appeared originally to belong to his nature. After all his
faculties seemed fully developed, and after critics and craniologists had formed their unalterable estimate of them, he
began, as if miraculously, to grow into a loftier shape and
stature, and compelled these same sapient judges, slowly
and reluctantly, to amend their conclusions.-In his " Cain "
his "HIeaven and Earth," and his "Vision of Judgment,"
he exhibited the highest form  of the faculty divine-the
true afflatus of the bard. He seemed to rise consciou'sly
into his own region; and, certainly, for gloomy grandeur,
and deep, desolate beauty, these productions surpass all the
writings of the period.  Now, for the first time, men saw
the Pandemonian palace of his soul fully lit, and they
trembled at its ghastly splendor; yet, curious it is to remark that those were precisely the poems which the public
at first received most coldly.  Those who shouted applause
when he issued the two first elegant, but comparatively
shallow, cantos of " Childe Harold," which were the reflection of other minds, shrank from him when he displayed the
terrible riches of his own,
WVe need only mention the materials on which Byron's
genius fed-andcl,indeed, we must substitute the singular
term-for his miaterial was not manifold, but one; it was
the history of his own heart that his genius reproduced in
all his poems. His poetry was the mirror of himself.
In considering, fourthly, the more characteristic of his
works, we may divide them  into his juvenile productions,
his popular, and his proscribed works.  His juvenile productions testified to nothing but the power of his passions,
the strength of his ambition, and the uncertainty of his
aims.  His "' Hours of Idleness" was, in one respect, the
happiest hit he ever made: it was fortunate enough to
attract abuse from the highest critical authority in the enipire, and thereby stirred his pride, and effectually roused
his faculties.  It required a scorching heat to hatch a
Byron! In his " English Bards " he proved himself rather




54.                   SLORD BYRON.
a pugilist than a poet.  It is the work of a man of Belial,
"flown with insolence and wizne."  His popular productions
were principally written when he was still a favorite son
of society, the idol of drawing-rooms, and the admired, as
well as observed, of all observers.  " Childe Harold7" is a
transcription of the serious and p2bliscab6le part of his journal, as he travelled in Greece, Spain, and Italy.  "The
Giaour " is a powerful half-length picture of himself.  "The
Bride of Abydos" is a tender and somewhat maudlin
memory of Greece.  " The Corsair " was the work of one
fierce fortnight, and seems to have brought one period of
his life, as well as of his popularity, to a glittering point.
In all this class of his poems we see him rather revolving
the memory of past, than encountering the reality of present, misery.  You have pensive sentiment rather than
quick and fresh anguish.  But his war with society was
now about to begin in right earnest; and in prophetic anticipation of this, lie wrote his "Parisina" and his "Siege
of Corinth."  These were the first great drops of the thunder-storm he was soon to pour down upon the world; and
the second of them, in its heat and frenzied haste, proclainms a troubled and distracted state of mind.  In referring his medical advisers to it as a proof of his mental
insanity, he rather blundered; for although it wants the
incoherence, it has the fury of madness.  It is the most
rapid and furious race he ever ran to escape from himself.
Then came his open breach with English society, his separation from his lady, and his growling retreat to his Italian
den. But ere yet he plunged into that pool, where the degradation of his genius, and where its power was perfect,
he must turn round, and close in wilder, loftier measures
the sad song of " Childe Harold," which in life's summer
he had begun; and strange it was to mark, in those two
last cantos, not only their deepened power and earnestness,
but their multiplied sorrow.  He seemed to have gone
away to Addison's "Mountain of Miseries," and exchanged
one burden for a worse-sorrow for despair. HIle had fallen
so low, that suicide had lost its charms; and when one
falls beneath the suicide point, his misery is perfect; for
his quarrel then is not with life but with being'. Yet how
horribly beautiful his conversation with the dust of empires




LORD BYRON.                     55
-with  the gigantic skeleton of Rome-with  the ocean,
which meets him like that simulacrum of the sea whilh
haunted the madness of Caligula-with all the mighty miserable in the past-with those spirits which he summons from
the " vasty deep " —or with those ill-favored ones " who walk
the shadow of the vale of death."  He speaks to them  as
their equal and kindred spirit. "Hell from beneath is moved
to meet him at his coming: they speak, and say unto him,
Art thou become like unto us "  As another potentate, do
those "Anarchs old "'-Orcus, Hades, and the " dreaded
name of Demogorgon — admit him into their chaotic company, and make him free of the privileges of their dreary
realm.
Having thus taken a last proud farewell of society, with
all its forms and conventionalities, he turned him to the
task of pouring out his envenomed and disappointed spirit
in works which society wa~ as certain to proscribe as it
was to peruse; and there followed that marvellous series
of poems to which we have already referred as his most
peculiar and powerful productions-most powerful, because
most sincere.. And yet the public proved how false and
worthless its former estimate of Byron's genius had been,
by denouncing those, his best doings, not merely for their
wickedness, but for their artistic execution.  It is humiliating to revert to the reviews and newspapers of that
period, and to read the language in which they speak of
"Cain," "Sardanapalus," and the "Vision of Judgment,"
uniformly treating them as miserable fallings-off from his
former self-beneath even the standard of his'" English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers."  " Cain " we regard not
only as Byron's noblest production, but as one of the -finest
poems in this or any language.  It is such a work as Milton, had he been miserable, would have written.  There is
nothing in "Paradise Lost " superior to Cain's flight with
Lucifer through the stars, and nothing in Shakspeare superior to his conversations with his wife Adah.  We speak
simply of its merits as a work of art-its object is worthy
of all condemnation: that is,. to paint a more soured and
savage Manfred, engaged in a controversy, not merely with
himself, but with the system of which he is one diseased
and desperate member; in the unequal strife overwhelmed,




56                     LOnD IBYROIN.
andc  as if the crush of Omnipotence were not enough,
bringing down after him, in his fall, the weight of a brother's blood; and the object of the fable is not, as it ought
to have been, to show the madness of all selfish struggle
against the laws of the universe, but to more than intimate
the poet's belief, that the laws which occasion such a struggle are cruel and unjust.  There is an unfair distribution of,misery and guilt in the story.  The mnisery principally
accrues to Cain; but a large proportion of the guilt is
caught, as by a whirlwind, and flies up in the face of his
Maker.  The great crime of the poem  is not that its hero
utters blasphemies, but that you shut it with a doubt whether these blasphemies be not true.  Milton wrote his great
poeml to' justify the ways of Gocd to man;" Byron's object
seems to be, to justify the ways of man to God-even his
wildest and most desperate doings.  The pleading is eloquent, but hopeless.  It is the -bubble on the ridge of the
cataract praying not to be carried over and hurried on.
Equally vain it is to struggle against those austere and
awful laws by which moments of sin expand into centuries
of punishment. Yet this was Byron's own life-long struggle, and one which, like men who fight their battles o'er.
again in sleep, he renewed again and again in every dream
of his imagination.
M"The Vision of Judgment," unquestionably the best
abused, is also one of the best, and by no means the most
profane, of his productions.  It sprung from  the savage
disgust produced in his mind by Southey's  C double-distilled" cant, in that poem of his on the death of George III,
-which, reversing the usual case, now lives suspended by a
tow-line from. its caricature.  All other hatred-that of
Johnson-that of Burke-that of Juvenal-that of all, save
Junius-is tame and maudlin compared to the wrath of
Byron expressed in this poem.  Scorn often has the effect
of cooling and carrying  off rage-but here "the ground
burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire."   His
very contempt is molten; his tears of laughter, as well as of
misery, fall in bwziring' showers.  In what single lines has
he concentrated the mingled essence of the coolest contempt,
and the hottest indignation!




LORD BYRON.                      57
"A better farmer ne'er brushed dew from lawn.
A worse king never left a realm undone."
" When the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold."
"' Passion!' replied the Thantom dim,'I loved my country and I hated him.'"
There spoke the authentic shade of Junius, or at least a
spirit worthy of contending with him for the honor of being
the "' Best I-later " upon record.
And yet, mixed with the strokes of ribaldry, are touches
of a grandeur which he has rarely elsewhere approached.
His poetry always rises above itself, when painting the
faded splendor wan-the steadfast gloom —-the hapless magnanimity of the prince of darkness.  With perfect ease he
seems to enter into the soul, and fill up the measure and
stature of the awful personage.
It were unpardonable, even in a rapid review, to omit
all notice of " Don Juan," which, if it bring our notion of
the man to its lowest point, exalts our idea of the poet.
Its great charm is its conversational ease.  How coolly and
calmly he bestrides his Pegasus even when he is at the gallop.  With  what exquisitely quiet and quick transitions
does he pass from  humor to pathos, and niake you laugh
and cry at once as you do in dreams. It is less a man
writing, than a man resigning his soul to his reader.  To
use Scott's beautiful figure —" the stanzas fall off as easily
as the leaves from the autumnal tree."  You stand under a
shower of withered gold.  And in spite of the endless
touches of wit, the general impression is most melancholy;
and not Rasselas, nor Timon. casts so deep a shadow on the
thoughtful reader as the " very tragical mirth" of Don Juan.
In settling, lastly, his rank as a poet, we may simply say,
that he must be placed, on the whole, beneath and apart
from the first class of poets, such as Homer, Dante, Milton,
Shakspeare, and Goethe.  Often, indeed. he seems to rush
into their company, and to stand among them, like a daring
boy amid his seniors, measuring himself proudly with their
superior stature.  And, possibly, had he lived, he might have
ultimately taken his place amongst them, for it was in his,
30




58                    LQRD BYRON.
power to have done this.  But life was denied him.  The
wild steed of his passions-like his own " Mazeppa " —carried
him furiously into the wilderness, and dashed him into premature death. And he now must take his place as one at
the very head of the second rank of poets, and arrested when
he was towering up towards the first.
His name has been frequently but injudiciously coupled
with that of Shelly. This has arisen principally from their
accidental position. They found themselves together one
stormy night in the streets, having both been thrust out by
the strong arm from their homes.  One had been kicking
up a row and kissing the servant-maids; the other had been
trying to rouse the family, but in so awkward a fashion, that
in his haste he had put out all the lustres, and nearly blown
up the establishment.  In that cold, desolate, moonless night,
they chanced to meet-they entered into conversation-they
even tried, by drawing near each other, to administer a little kindly warmth and encouragement. Men seeing them
imperfectly in the lamp-light, classed them together as two
dissolute and disorderly blackguards. And, alas, when the
morning came that might have accurately discriminated
them, both were found lying dead in the streets. In point
of purpose-temperament-tendency of intellect-political
creed-feeling-sentiments-habibits-and character, no two
men could be more dissimilar.
We remember a pilgrimage we made some years ago to
Lochnagar. As we ascended, a mist came down over the
hill, like a veil dropped by some jealous beauty over her own
fair face. At length the summit was reached, though the
prospect was denied us.  It was a proud and thrilling moment. What though darkness was all around?  It was the
very atmosphere that suited the scene. It was " dark Lochnagar."  And only think how fine it was to climb up and
clasp its cairn-to lift a stone from it, to be in aftertime a
memorial of our journey-to sing the song which made it
glorious and dear, in its own proud drawing-room, with those
great fog-curtains floating around-to pass along the brink
of its precipices —-to snatch a fearful joy, as we leant over,
and hung down, and saw from beneath the gleam of eternal
snow shining up from its hollows, and columns, or rather
perpendicular seas of mist, streaming up upon the wind




LORD BYRON.                      59
"Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell,
Where every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heaped with the damn'd, like pebbles-"
tinged, too, here and there, on their tops, by gleams of sunshine, the farewell beams of the dying day.  It was the
grandest moment in our lives.  We had stood upon many
hills-in sunshine and in shade, in mist and in thunderbut never had before, nor hope to have again, such a feeling
of the grandeur of this lower universe-such a sense of
horrible sublimity.  Nay, we question if there be a mountain in the empire, which, though seen in similar circumstances, could awaken the same emotions in our minds.  It
is not its loftiness, though that be great-nor its bold oitline, nor its savage loneliness, nor its mist-loving precipices,
but the associations which crown its crags with a "peculiar
diadem "-its identification with the image of a poet, who,
amid all his fearful errors, had perhaps more than any of the
age's bards, the power of investing all his career-yea, to
every corner which his fierce foot ever touched, or which his
genius ever sung-with profound and melancholy interest.
We saw the name of Byron written in the cloud-characters
above us.  We saw his genius sadly smiling in those gleams
of stray sunshine which gilded the darkness they could not
dispel.  We found an emblem of his passions in that flying
rack, and of his character in those lowering precipices. We
seemed to hear the wail of his restless spirit in the wild sob
of the wind, fainting and struggling up under its burden of
darkness.  Nay, we could fancy that this hill was designed
as an eternal monument to his name, and to image all those
peculiarities which make that name for ever illustrious.
Not the loftiest of his country's poets, he is the most sharply
and terribly defined.  In magnitude and round completeness, he yields to many; in jagged, abrupt, and passionate
projection of his own shadow, over the world of literature,
to none.  The Genius of convulsion, a dire attraction, dwells
around him, which leads many to hang over, and some to
leap down, his precipices. Volcanic as he is, the coldness of
wintry selfishness too often collects in the hollows of his
verse.  He loves, too, the cloud and the thick darkness, and
comes "veiling all the lightnings of his song in sorrow."
So, like Byron beside Scott and Wordsworth, does Lochna



60                    LORD BYRON.
gar stand in the presence of his neighbor giants, Ben-maclDhui, and Ben-y-boord, less lofty, but more fiercely eloquent
in its jaggedl outline; reminding us of the via of the forked
lightning, which it seems dumbly to  limic, projecting its
cliffs like quenched batteries against earth a,nd heaven, with
the cold of snow in its heart, and with a coronet of mist
round its gloomy brow.
No poet, since HIomer and Ida, has thus, everlastingly,
shot his genius into the heart of one great mountain, identifying himself and his song with it.  Nor Horace with
Socrate-not Wordsworth with Helvellyn-not Coleridge
with Mont Blanc-not WXilson with the Black Mount-not
even Scott with the Eildons-all these are still common
property, but Lochnagar is Byron's own —no poet will ever
venture to sing it again.  In its dread circle none durst
walk but he. His allusions to it are not numerous, but its
peaks stood often before his eye: a recollection of its grandeur served more to color his line than the glaciers of the
Alps, the cliffs of Jura, or the " thunder hills of fear," which
he heard in Chimari; even from  the mountains of Greece
he was carried back to Morven, and "Lochnagar, with Ida,
looked o'er Troy."  Hence the severe Dante-like morumental, mountainous cast of his better poetry; for we firmly
believe that the scenery of one's youth gives a permanent
bias and coloring to the genius, the taste, and the style, i. e.,
if there be an intellect to receive an impulse, or a taste to
catch a tone.  Many, it is true, bred in cities, or amid common scenery, make up for the lack by early travel; so did
Milton, Coleridge, and Wilson. But who may not gather,
from  the tame tone of Cowper's landscapes, that he had
never enjoyed such opportunities?  And who, in Pollok's
powerful but gloomy poem, may not detect the raven hue
which a sterile moorland scenery had left upon his mind?
Has not, again, the glad landscape of the Howe of the
lIearns, and the prospect from  the surmounting Hill of
Garvock, left a pleasing trace upon the mild pages of
Beattie's " i3instrel?"  Did not Coila color the genial soul
of its poet?  Has not the scenery of his "own romantic
town" made much of the prose and poetry of Sir Walter
Scott what it is?  So, is it mere fancy which traces the
stream of Byron's poetry in its light and its darkness, its




GEORGE CRABBE.                   61
bitterness and its brilliance, to this smitten rock in the wilderness-to the cliffs of Locknagaix?
GEOItGE CRABBE.
To be the poet of the waste places of Creation-to adopt
the orphans of the mighty mother-to wed her dowerless
daughters-to find out the beauty which has been spilt in
tiny drops in her more unlovely regions —to echo the low
music which arises from even her stillest and most sterile
spots-was the mission of Crabbe, as a descriptive poet.  He
preferred the Leahs to the Rachels of nature: and this he
did not merely that his lot had cast himl amid such scenes,
and that early associations had taught him a profound interest in them, but apparently from native taste.  He actually
loved that beauty which stands shivering on the brink of barrenness-loved it for its timidity and its loneliness.  Nay, he
seems to love barrenness itself; brooding over its dull page
till there arose from it a strange lustre, which his eye distinctly sees, and which in part he makes visible to his readers. It was even as the darkness of cells has been sometimes
peopled to the view of the solitary prisoner, and spiders
seemed angels in the depths of his dungeon.  We can fancy,
too, in Crabbe's mind, a feeling of pity for those unloved spots,
and those neglected glories.  We can fancy him saying, "Let
the gay and the aspiring mate with nature in her towering
altitudes, and flatter her more favored scenes; I will go after
her into her secret retirements, bring out her bashful beauties, praise what none are willing to praise, and love what
there are few to love."  Froma his early circumstances, besides, there had stolen over his soul a shade of settled though
subdued gloom. And for sympathy with this, he betook
himself to the sterner and sadder aspects of nature, where
he saw, or seemed to see, his own feelings reflected, as in a
sea of melancholy faces, in dull skies, waste moorlands, the
low beach, and the moaning of the waves upon it, as if weary
of their eternal wanderings.  Such, too, at moments, was the




62                   GEORGE CRABBE.,
feeling of Burns, when he strode on the scaur of the Nith,
and saw the waters red and turbid below; or walked in a
windy day by the side of a plantation, and heard the "sound
of a going" upon the tops of the trees; or when he exclaimed, with a calm simplicity of bitterness which is most affecting"The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine."
Oh! where, indeed, can the unhappy repair, to escape
from their own sorrows, or worse, froin the unthinking glee
or constitutional cheerfulness of others, more fitly than into
the wastes and naked places of nature?  She will not then
and there seem to insult them with her laughing luxuriance
-her foliage fluttering, as if in vain display, with the
glossy gilding of her flowers, or the sunny sparkle and song
of her streamlets.  But she will uplift a mightier and older
voice. She will soothe them by a sterner ministry. She will
teach them " old truths, abysmal truths, awful truths."' She
will answer their sighs by the groans of the creation travailing in pain; suck up their tears in the sweat of her great
agonies; reflect their tiny wrinkles in those deep stabs
and scars on her forehead, which speak of struggle and contest; give hack the gloom of their brows in the frowns of
her forests, her mountain solitudes, and her waste midnight
darkness; infuse something, too, of her own sublime expectancy into her spirits; and dismiss them from her society,
it may be sadder, but certainly wiser men.  How admirably
is nature suited to all moods of all men! In spring, she is
gay with the light-hearted; in summer, gorgeous as its sun
to those fiery spirits who seem made for a warmer day; in
autumn, she spreads over all hearts a mellow and unearthly
joy; and even in winter-when her temple is deserted of
the frivolous and the timid, who quit it along with the smile
of the sun-she attracts her own few but faithful votaries,
who love her in her naked sculpture, as well as in her glowing pictorial hues, and who enjoy her solemn communion
none the less that they enjoy it by themselves.  To use the
words of a forgotten poet, addressing spring" Thou op'st a storehouse for all hues of men.
To hardihood thou, blustering from the north,




GEORGE CRABBE.                     63
Roll'st dark-hast sighs for them that would complain;
Sharp winds to clear the head of wit and worth
And melody for those that follow mirth;
Clouds for the gloomy; tears for those that weep;
Flowers blighted in the bud for those that birth
Untimely sorrow o'er; and skies wherei sweep
Fleets of a thousand sail for them that plough the deep."
Crabbe, as a descriptive poet, differs from other modern
masters of the art, alike in his selection of subjects, and. in
his mode of treating the subjects he does select. Byron
moves over nature with a fastidious and aristocratic steptouching only upon objects already interesting or ennobled
upon battle fields, castellated ruins, Italian palaces, or Alpine peaks.  This, at least, is true of his "( Childe HIarold,"
and his earlier pieces. In the later productions of his pen,
he goes to the opposite extreme, and alights, with a daring
yet dainty foot, upon all shunned and forbidden things —
reminds us of the raven in the Deluge, which found rest for
the sole of her foot upon carcasses, where the dove durst not
stand-rushes in where modesty and reserve alike have forbidden entrance-and ventures, though still not like a lost
archangel, to tread the burning marl of hell, the dim gulf of
5Hades, the shadowy ruins of the pre-Adamitic world, and
the crystal pavement of heaven.  Moore practises a principle of more delicate selection, resembling some nice fly
which should alight only upon flowers, whether natural or
artificial, if so that flowers they seem  to be; thus, from
sunny bowers, and moonlit roses, and gardens, and blushing
skies, and ladies' dresses, does the Bard of Erin extract his
finest poetry.   Shelley and Coleridge attach  themselves
almost exclusively to the great-nunderstanding this term in
a wide sense, as ifrcluding much that is grotesque and much
that is homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates
to a proper pitch of keeping withl'-the rest.  Their usual
walk is swelling and buskined: their common talk is of
great rivers, great forests, great seas, great continents: or
else of comets, suns, constellations, and firmaments-as that
of all half-mad, wholly miserable, and opium-fed genius is
apt to be.  Sir Walter Scott, who seldom grappled with the
gloomier and grander features of his country's scenery (did
he ever describe Glencoe or Foyers, or the wildernesses




64                   GEORGE CRABBE.
around Ben-mac-Dhui?), had (need we say?) the most exculi
site eye for all picturesque and romantic aspects, in sea,
shore, or sky; and in the quick perception of this element
of the picturesque lay his principal, if not only descriptive
power. Wordsworth, again, seems always to be standing
above, though not stooping over, the objects he describes.
Hle seldom looks up in wrapt admiration of what is above
himn  the bending furze-bush and the lowly broom —the nest
lying in the level clover-field —the tarn sinking away seemingly before his eye into darker depths —the prospect froml the
mountain summnit cast far beneath him: at highest, the stai
burning low upon the mountain's ridge, like an " untended
watchfire:" these are the objects which he loves to describe,
and these may stand as emblems of his lowly yet aspiring
genius-Crabbe, on the other hand, "stoops to conquer Inay, goes down on his knees, that he may more accurately
describe such objects as the marsh given over to desolation
from  immemorial time —the slush left by the sea, and revealing the dead body of the suicide-the bare crag and the
stunted tree, diversifying the. scenery of the saline wilderness-the house on the heath, creaking in the storm, and
telling strange stories of misery and  crime-the pine in
some wintry wood, which had acted as the gallows of some
miserable man-the gorse surrounding with yellow light
the encampment of the Gipsies-the few timid flowers, or
"weeds of glorious feature," which adorn the brink of
ocean-the snow putting out the fire of the pauper, or lying
unmelted on his pillow of death-the web of the spider
blinding the cottager's window-the wheel turned by the
meagre hand of contented or cursing penury-the cards
trembling in the grasp of the desperate debauchee —the
day stocking forminght, and the cap by nigarter at
mnidnig'ht-the dunghill beconming the accidental grave ot
the drunkard-the poor-house of forty years ago, with its.patched windows, its dirty environs, its moist and miserable
walls, its inmates all snuff, and selfishness, and sin-the
receptacle of the outlawed members of English society (how
different from "'Poosie Nancy's!"), with its gin-gendered
quarrels, its appalling blasphemies, its deep debauches, its
ferocity without fun, its huddled murders, and its shrieks
of disease dumb in the uproar around —the Bedlam of forty




GEORGE CRAI4BE.                   65
years ago, with its straw on end under the restlessness of
the insane; its music of groans, and shrieks and mutterings
of still more mnelancholy meaning;  its keepers cold and
stern, as the snow-covered cliffs above the wintry cataract;
its songs dying away in despairing gurgles down the miserable throat; its cells how devoid of monastic Silence; its
"confusion worse confounded," of gibbering idiocy, monomania absorbed and absent fronl itself as well as from the
worldl, and howling frenzy; its daylight saddened as it
shines into the dim, vacant, or glaring eyes of those wretched
men: and its moonbeams shedding a more congenial ray
upon the solitude, or the sick-bed, or the death-bed of derangement-such familiar faces of want, guilt, anad woe —
of nakedness, sterility, and shame, does Crabbe delight in
showing us; and is, in very truth, "nature's sternest painter,
yet the best."  In his mode of managing his descriptions,
Crabbe is equally peculiar.  Objects, in thenselves counted
commonplace or disgusting, frequently become impressive,
and even sublime, when surrounded by interesting circumrstances-when shown in the moonlight of memory —when
linked to strong passion-or when touched by the ray of
imagination.  Then, in Emerson's words, even the corpse is
found to have added a solenmn ornament to the house where
it lay.  But it is the peculiarity and the daring of this poet,
that he often, not always, tries us with truth and nothing but
truth, as if to bring the question to an issue-whether, in
nature, absolute truth be not essential though severe poetry.
On this question, certainly, issue was never so fully joined
before.  In even Wordsworth's eye there is a misty glimmer
of imagination, through which all objects, low as well as
high, are seen.  Even his " five blue eggs " glectan upon hium
through a light which comes not from  themselves-which
comes, it may be, from the Great Bear, or Arcturus and his
sons.  And when le does-as in some of his feebler versesstrive to see out of this medium, he drops his mantle, loses
his vision, and describes little better than would his own
~ Old Cumberlandl  Beggar."  Shakspeare in his witches'
caldron, and Burns in "haly table," are shockingly circumstantial; but the element of imagination creeps in amid all
the disgusting details, and the light that never was on sea
or shore disdains not to rest on " eye of newt," " toe of frog,"




66                   GEORGE CRABBE.
"baboon's blood," the garter that strangled the babe, the
gray hairs sticking to the haft of the parricidal knife, and all
the rest of the fell ingredients  Crabbe, on the other hand,
would have described the five blue eggs, and besides, the
materials of the nest, and the kind of hedge where it was
built, like a bird-nesting schoolboy; but he would never have
given the'"gleam."  IHe would as accurately as Hecate,
Canidia, or Cuttysark, have given an inventory of the ingredients of the hell-broth, or of the curiosities on the "haly
table,' had they been presented to his eye: but could not
have conceived them, nor would have slipped in that one
flashing word, that single cross ray of imagination, which it
required to elevate and startle them into high ideal life.
And yet in reading his pictures of poor-houses, &c., we are
compelled to say, "VWell, that is poetry after all, for it is
truth; but it is poetry of comparatively a low order-it is
the last gasp of the poetic spirit: and, moreover, perfect and
matchless as it is in its kind, it is not worthy of the powers
of its author, who can, and has, at other times risen into
much loftier ground."
We may illustrate still farther what we mean by comparing the different ways in which Crabbe and Foster (certainly a prose poet) deal with a library.  Crabbe describes
minutely and successfully the outer features of the volumes,
their colors, clasps, the stubborn ridges of their bindings,
the illustrations which adorn them, &c., so well that you
feel yourself among them, and they become sensible to
touch almost as to sight.  But there he stops, and sadly
fails, we think, in bringing out the living and moral interest which gathers around a multitude of books, or even
around a single volume.  This Foster has amply done.
The speaking silence of a number of books, where, though
it were the wide [Bodleian or Vatican, not one whisper
could be heard, and yet, where, as in an antechamber, so
many great spirits are waiting to deliver their messages —
their churchyard stillness continuing even when their readers are moving to their pages, in joy or agony, as to the
sound of martial instruments-their awaking, as from deep
slumber, to speak with miraculous organ, like the shell
which has only to be lifted, and "pleased it remembers
its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs




GEORGE CRABBE.                   67
there " —their power of drawing tears, kindling blushes,
awakening laughter, calming or quickening the motions of
the life's blood, lulling to repose, or rousing to restlessness,
often giving life to the soul, and sometimes giving death to
the body-the meaning which radiates from  their quiet
countenances-the tale of shame or glory which their titlepages tell-the memories suggested by the character of their
authors, and of the readers who have throughout successive
celnturies perused them-the thrilling thoughts excited by
the sight of names and notes inscribed on their margins or
blank pages by hands long since mouldered in the dust, or
by those dear to us as our life's blood, who had been snatched
from our sides-the aspects of gayety or of gloom connected
with the bindings and the age of volumes-the effects of
sunshine playing as if on a congregation of happy faces,
making the duskiest shine, and the gloomiest be glad-or of
shadow suffusing a sombre air over all-the joy of the proprietor of a large library who feels that Nebuchadnezzar
watching great Babylon, or Napoleon reviewing his legions,
will not stand comparison with himself seated amid the
broad maps, and rich prints, and numerous volumes which
his wealth has enabled him to collect and his wisdom entitled
him to enjoy-all such hieroglyphics of interest and meaning has Foster included and interpreted in one gloomy but
noble meditation, and his introduction to Doddridge is the
true "Poem on the Library."
In Crabbe's descriptions the great want is of selection.
HIe writes inventories.  He describes all that his eye sees
with cold, stern, lingering accuracy-he marks down all the
items of wretchedness, poverty, and vulgar sin-counts the
rags of the mendicant-and, as Hazlitt has it, describes a
cottage like one who has entered it to distrain for rent.
His copies, consequently, would be as displeasing as their
originals, were it not that imagination is so much less vivid
than eyesight, that we can enIdure in picture what we cannot
in reality, and that our own minds, while reading, can cast
that softening and ideal veil over disgusting objects which
the poet himself has not sought, or has failed to do. Just
as, in viewing even the actual scene, we might have seen it
through the medium  of imaginative illusion, so the same
medium will more probably invest, and beautify its transcript
in the pages of the poet.




68                   GEOPRGE CRABBE.'
As a moral poet and sketcher of meln, Crabbe is charac
terized by a similar choice of subject and the same stern
fidelity.  The mingled yarn of man's every-day life-the
plain homely virtues, or the robust and burly vices of Englishmen-the quiet tears which fall on humble beds-the
passions which flame up in lowly bosoms —the ctzc'ri aliquid, the deep and permanent bitterness which lies at the
heart of the down-trodden English poor-the comedies and
tragedies of the fireside-the lovers' cquarrels —the unhappy
marriages-the vicissitudes of common fortunes-the early
deaths-the odd characters-the lingering superstitionsall the elements, in short. which make up the simple annals
of lowly or middling society, are the materials of this poet's
song.  Had he been a Scottish clergyman we should have
said that he had versified his Session-book; and certainly
many curious chapters of human life might be derived from
such a document, and much light cast upon the devious
windings and desperate wickedness of the heart, as well as
upon that inextinguishable instinct of good which resides in
it.  Crabbe, perhaps, has confined himself too exclusively
to this circle of common things which he found lying around
him.  He has seldom burst its confines, and touched the loftier themes, and snatched the higher laurels which were also
within his reach.  He has contented himself with being a
Lillo (with occasional touches of Shakspeare) instead of something far greater.  He has, however, in spite of this self-injustice; effected much.  He has proved that a poet, who looks
resolutely around him-who stays at home-who draws the
realities which are near him, instead of the phantoms that
are afar-who feels and records the passion and poetry of
his daily life-may found a firm and enduring reputation.
With the dubious exception of Cowper, no one has made out
this point so effectually as Crabbe.
And in his mode of treating such themes, what strikes
us first is his perfect coolness. Few poets have reached that
caln of his which reminds us of Nature's own great quiet
eye, looking down upon her monstrous births, her strange
anomalies, and her more ungainly forms.  Thus Crabbe sees
the loathsome, and does not loathe-handles the horrible,
and shudders not-feels with firm finger the palpitating
pulse of the infanticide or the murderer-and snuffs a cer



GEORGE CRABBE.                   69
tain sweet odor in the evil savors of putrefying misery
and crime.  This delight, however, is not an inhuman, but
entirely an artistic delight-perhaps, indeed, springing from
the very strength and width of his sympathies.  We admire
as well as wonder at that almost asbestos quality of his mind,
through which he retains his composure and critical circumspection so cool amicd the conflagrations of passionate subjects, which might have burned others to ashes. Few, indeed, can walk through such fiersuch  fiery furnaces unscathed.  But
Crabbe-what an admirable physician had he made to a lunatic asylum! How severely would he have sifted out every
grain of poetry from those tumultuous exposures of the human mind! What clean breasts had he forced the patients
to make! What tales had he wrung out from them, to which
Lewis's tales of terror were feeble and trite! How he would
have commanded them, by his mild, steady, and piercing
eye! And yet how calm would his brain have remained,
when others, even of a more prosaic mould, were reeling in
sylnpathy with the surrounding delirium! It were, indeed,
worth while inquiring how much of this coolness resulted
from Crabbe's early practice as a surgeon.  That combination of warm inward sympathy and outward phlegm —of impulsive benevolence and mechanical activity-of heart all
fire and manner all ice-which distinguishes his poetry, is
very characteristic of the medical profession.
In correspondence with this, Crabbe generally leans to
the darker side of things.  This, perhaps, accounts for his
favor in the sight of Byron, who saw his own eagle-eyed
fury at malan corroborated by Crabbe's stern and near-sighted
vision. And it was accounted for partly by Crabbe's early profession, partly by his early circumstances, and partly by the
clerical ofice he assumed. Nothing so tends to sour us with
mankind as a general refusal on their part to give us bread.
How can a man love a race which seems combined to starve
himn? This misanthropical influence Crabbe did not entirely
escape. As a medical man, too, he had to come in contact
with little else than human miseries and diseases; and as a
clergyman, he had occasion to see much sin and sorrow: and
these, combining with the melancholy incidental to the poetic
temperament, materially discolored his view of life.  He became a searcher of dark —of the darkest bosoms; and we




70                   GEORGE CRABBE.
see him sitting in the gloom of the hearts of thieves, mui
derers, and  maniacs, and watching the remorse, rancor,
fury, dull disgust, ungratified appetite, and ferocious or stupefied despair, which are their inmates.  And even when he
pictures livelier scenes and happier characters, there steals
over them a shade of sadness, reflected from his favorite
subjects, as a dark, sinister countenance in a room will throw
a gloom over many happy and beautiful faces beside it.
In his pictures of life, we find an unfrequent but true pathos.
This is not often, however, of the profoundest or most heartrending kind.  The grief he paints is not that which refuses
to be comforted-whose  expressions, like Agamemnon's
face, must be veiled-which dilates almost to despair, and
complains almost to blasphemy —and which when it looks to
heaven, it is
" With that frantic air,
Which seems to ask if a God be there."
Crabbe's, as exhibited in "- Phoebe Dawson,' and other of his
tales, is gentle, submissive; and its pathetic effects are produced by the simple recital of circumstances which might
and often have occurred. It reminds us of the pathos of
" Rosamund Gray," that beautiful story of Lamb's, of which
we once, we regret to say, presumptuously pronounced an
unfavorable opinion, but which has since commended itself
to our heart of hearts, and compelled that tribute in tears
which we had denied it in words.  Hazlitt is totally wrong
when he says that Crabbe carves a tear to the life in marble.
as if his pathos were hard and cold.  Be it the statuary of
woe -has it, consequently, no truth or power?  Have the
chiselled tears of the Niobe never awakened other tears,
fresh and burning, from their fountain?  Horace's vis mze
fiere, &c., is not always a true principle.  As the wit, who
laughs not himself, often excites most laughter in others, so the
calm recital of an affecting narrative acts as the meek rod of
Moses applied to the rock, and is answered in gushing torrents. You close Crabbe's tale of grief, almost ashamed that
you have left so quiet a thing pointed and starred with tears.
His pages, while sometimes wet with pathos, are never moist
with humor. His satire is often pointed with wit, and sometimes irritates into invective; but of that glad, genial, and
bright-eyed thing we call humor (how well nam.ed, in its oily




GEORFE CRtABE.                   71
softness and gentle glitter!) he has little or none.  Compare,
in order to see this, his " Borough " with the " Annals of
the Parish."  How dry, though powerful, the one; how sappy the other i How profound the one; how pawky the other! 
Crabbe goes through his Borough, like a scavenger with a
rough, stark, and stiff besom, sweeping up all the filth: Galt,
like a knowing watchman of the old school —a cannLy Charlie-keeping a sharp look-out, but not averse to a sly joke,
and having an eye to the humors as well as misdemeanors
of the streets.  Even his wit is not of the finest grain.  It
deals too much in verbal quibbles, puns, and antitheses with
their points broken off.  His puns are neither good nor bad
-the most fatal and anti-ideal description of a pun that can
be given. His quibbles are good enough to have excited the
laugh of his curate, or gardener; but he forgets that the
public is not so indulgent.  And though often treading in
Pope's track, he wants entirely those touches of satire, at
once the lightest and the most withering, as if dropped from
the fingers of a malignant fairy-those faint whispers of poetic
perdition-those drops of concentrated bitterness-those fatal bodkin-stabs-and those invectives, glittering all over
with the polish of profound malignity-which are Pope's
glory as a writer, and his shame as a man.
We have repeatedly expressed our opinion, that in
Crabbe there lay a higher power than he often exerted.
We find evidence of this in his " Hall of Justice " and his
"Eustace Grey.;"  In these he is fairly in earnest.  No
longer dozing by his parlor fire over the "'Newspaper," or
napping in a corner of his " Library," or peeping in through
the windows of the " Workhouse,') or recording the select
scandal of the " Borough," he is away out into the wide and
open fields of highest passion and imagination. VWhat a tale
that " Hall of Justice " hears-to be paralleled only in the
" Thousand and One Nights of the Halls of Eblis!"-a tale
of misery, rape, murder, and furious despair; told, too, in
language of such lurid fire as has been seen to shine o'er the
graves of the dead! But, in " Eustace Grey," our author's
genius reaches its climax.  Never was madness-in its misery-its remorse-the dark companions. " the ill-favored
ones," who cling to it in its wild way and will not let it go,
although it curse them  with the eloquence of hell-the




72                   GEORGE CRABBE.
visions it sees —the scenery it creates and carries about with
it in dreadful keeping-and the language it uses, high, aspiring, but broken, as the wing of a struck eagle-so strongly
and meltingly revealed.  And, yet, around the dismal tale
there hangs the breath of beauty, and, like poor Lear, Sir
Eustace goes about crowned with flowers —the flowers of
earthly poetry —and of a hope which is not of the earth.
And, at the close, we feel to the author all that strange gratitude which our souls are constituted to entertain to those
who have most powerfully wrung and tortured them.
Would that Crabbe had given us a century of such things.
WVe would have preferred to the " Tales of the IHall," "' Tales
of Greyling Hall," or more tidings from the "Hall of Justice."  It had been a darker Decameron, and brought out
more effectually-what the " Village Poorhouse," and the
sketches of Elliott have since done-the passions, miseries,
crushed aspirations, and latent poetry, which dwell in the
hearts of the plundered poor; as well as the wretchedness
which, more punctually than their veriest menial, waits
often behind the chairs, and hands the silver dishes of the
great.
5We will not dilate on his other works individually.  In
glancing back upon them as a whole, we will endeavor to answer the following questions: 1st, lWhat was Crabbe's object
as a moral poet?  2clly, How far is he original as an artist?
3dly, WVhat. is his relative position to his great contemporaries? Andcl, 4thly, what is likely to be his fate with posterity?
1st, His object.-The great distinction between man and
man, and author and author, is purpose.  It is the edge and
point of character; it is the stamp on the subscription of
genius; it is the direction on the letter of talent. Character
without it is blunt and torpid.  Talent without it is a letter,
which, undirected, goes no whither.  Genius without it is
bullion, sluggish, splendid, uncirculating.  Purpose yearns
after and secures artistic culture. It gathers, as by a strong
suction, all things which it needs into itself.  Crabbe's artistic object is tolerably clear, and has been already indicated.
HTis moral purpose is not quite so apparent.  Is it to satirize, or is it to reform  vice?  Is it pity, or is it contempt,
that actuates his song?  What are his plans for elevating
the lower classes in the scale of society? HIas he any, or




GEORGE CRaABE.                   73
does he believe in the possibility of their permanent elevation?  Such questions are more easily asked than answered.
WVe must say that we have failed to find in him any one
overmastering and earnest object, subjugating every thing
to itself, and producing that unity in all his works which
the trunk of a tree gives to its smallest, its remotest, to
even its withered leaves.  And yet, without apparent intention, Crabbe has done good moral service.  He has shed
much light upon the condition of the poor. IHe has spoken
in the name and stead of the poor dumb mouths that could
not tell their. own sorrows or sufferings to the world.  He
has opened the mine, which Ebenezer Elliot and others,
going to work with a firmer and more resolute purpose, have
dug to its depths.
2dly, His originality.- This has been questioned by some
critics. He has been called a version, in coarser paper and
print, of Goldsmith, Pope, and Cowper.  HIis pathos comes
from  Goldsmith —his wit and satire ftom  Pope-and his
minute and literal description from Cowper. If this were
true, it were as complimentary to him as his warmest admirer could wish. To combine the characteristic excellences
of three true poets is no easy matter. But Crabbe has not
combined them.  His pathos wants altogether the naivete
of sentiment and cztrioscafelicitcas of expression which distinguish Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." He has something
of Pope's terseness, but little of his subtlety, finish, or brilliant malice.  And the motion of Cowper's mind and style
in description differs as much from Crabbe's as the playful
leaps and gambols of a kitten from the measured, downright,
and indomitable pace of a hound-the one is the easiest, the
other the severest, of describers.  Resemblances, indeed, of
a minor kind are to be found; but still Crabbe is as distinct
from Goldsmith, Cowper, and Pope, as Byron from  Scott,
Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
Originality consists of two kinds —one, the power of inventing new materials; and the other, of dealing with old
materials in a new way. WVe do not decide whether the first
of these implies an act of absolute creation; it implies all
we can conceive in an act of creative power; from elements
bearing to the result the relation which the Alphabet does
to the " Iliad "-genius brings forth its bright progeny, and
4




;74                 GEORGE CRABBE.
we feel it to be new. In this case you can no more anticipate the effect from  the elements than you can, from the
knowledge of the letters, anticipate the words which are to
be compounded out of them.  In the other kind of originality, the materials bear a larger proportion to the resultthey form an appreciable quantity in our calculations of what
it is to be. They are found for the poet, and all he has to
do is, with skill and energy, to construct them.  Take, for
instance, Shakspeare's " Tempest," and Coleridge's "Anciente Marinere "7-of what more creative act can we conceive
than is exemplified in these?  Of course, we have all had
beforehand ideas similar to a storm, a desert island, a witch,
a magician, a mariner, a hermit, a wedding-guest; but these
are only the Alphabet to the spirits of Shakspeare and
Coleridge. As the sun, from the invisible air, draws up in an
instant all pomps of cloudy forms —paradises brighter than
Eden, mirrored in waters, which blush and tremble as their
reflection falls wooingly upon themn-mountains which seem
to bury their snowy or rosy summits in the very heaven of
heavens-throne-shaped splendors, worthy of angels to sit on
them, flushing and fading in the west-seas of aerial blood
and  fire-momentary cloud-crowns and  golden avenues,
stretching away into the azure infinite beyond them — so
firom such stuff as dreams are made of, fromu the mere empty
air, do those wondrous magicians build-up their new worlds,
where the laws of nature are repealed-where all things are
changed without any being confused —where sound becomes
dumb and silence eloquent-where the earth is empty, and the
sky is peopled-where material beings are invisible, and where
spiritual beings become gross and palpable to sense —where
the skies are opening to show riches-where the isle is full
of noises-where beings proper to this sphere of dream are
met so often that you cease to fear them, however odd or
monstrous-where magic has power to shut now the eyes of
kings and now the great bright eye of ocean-where, at the
bidding of the poet, new, complete, beautiful mythologies at
one time sweep across the sea, and anon dance down from
the purple and mystic sky-where all things have a charmed
life, the listening ground, the populous air, the still or the
vexed sea, the human or the imaginary beings —and where,
as in deep dreams, the most marvellous incidents are most




GEOPRGE CRABBE.                 75
easily credited, slide on most softly, and seem mlost native
to the place, the circumstances, and the time.  "This is
creation," we exclaim; nor did Ferdinand seem to Miranda
a fresher and braver creature than does to us each strange
settler, whom genius has planted Upon its own favorite isle.
Critics may, indeed, take these imaginary beings-such as
Caliban and Ariel-and analyze them into their constituent
parts; but there will be some one element which escapes
them-laughing, as it leaps away, at their baffled sagacity,
and proclaiming the original power of its Creator: as in the
chemical analysis of an aerolite, amid the mere earthy constituents, there is something which declares its unearthly
origin.  Take creation as meaning, not so much Deity bringing something out of nothing, as filling the void  ith his
Sp'irit, and genius will seem a lower form of the same
power.
The other kind of originality is, we think, that of Crabbe.
It is magic at second-hand.  He takes, not makes, his materials. He finds a good foundation-wood and stone in plenty
— and he begins laboriously, successfully, and after a plan
of his own, to build. If in any of his works he approaches
to the higher property, it is in " Eustace Grey," who moves
here and there, on his wild wanderings, as if to the rubbing
of Aladdin's lamp.
This prepares us for -coming to the third question, What
is Crabbe's relative position to his great contemporary poets?  He belongs to the second class.  He is not a philosophic poet, like Wordsworth.  He is not, like Shelley, a
Vates, moving upon the uncertain but perpetual and furious
wind of his inspiration.  He is not, like Byron, a demoniac
exceeding fierce, and dwelling among the tombs. He is not,
like Keats, a sweet and melancholy voice, a tune bodiless,
bloodless-dying away upon the waste air, but for ever to be
remembered as men remember a melody they have heard in
youth.  He is not, like Coleridge, all these almost by turns,
and besides, a psalmist, singing at times strains so sublime and
holy, that they might seem snatches of the song of Eden's
cherubim, or caught in trance from the song of Moses and
the Lamb.  To this mystic brotherhood Crabbe must not be
added.  He ranks with a lower but still lofty band-with
Scott (as a poet), and Moore, and Hunt, and Campbell, and




76                  GEORGE CRABBE.
Rogers, and Bowles, and James Montgomery, and Southey;
and surely they nor he need be ashamed of each other, as
they shine in one soft and peaceful cluster.
We are often tempted to pity poor posterity on this
score.  How is it to manage with the immense number of
excellent works which this age has bequeathed, and is bequeathing it   How is it to economize its time so as to
read a tithe of them? And should it in mere self-defence
proceed to decimate, with what principle shall the process
be carried on, and who shall be appointed to preside over
it? Critics of the twenty-second century, be merciful as
well as just.  Pity the disjecta nzembra of those we thought
mighty poets.  Respect and fulfil our prophecies of immortality.  If ye must carp and cavil, do not, at least, in
mercy, abridge. Spare us the prospect of this last insult,
an abridged copy of the'" Pleasures of Hope," or " Don Juan," a new abridgment.  If ye must operate in this way,
be it on " Madoc," or the " Course of Time."  Generously
leave room for " O'Connor's Child "in the poet's corner of a
journal, or for " Eustace Grey" in the space of a crown
piece.  Surely, living in the Millennium, and resting under
your vines and fig-trees, you will have more time to read
than we, in this bustling age, who move, live, eat, drink, sleep,
andzc die, at railway speed. If not, we fear the case of many
of our poets is hopeless, and that others, besides the author
of s" Silent Love," would be wise to enjoy their present laurels, for verily there are none else for them.
Seriously, we hope that much of Crabbe's writing will
every year become less and less readable, and less and less
easily understood; till, in the milder day, men shall have
difficulty in believing that such physical, mental, and moral
degradation, as he describes, ever existed in Britain; and
till, in future Encyclopmedias, his name may be found recorded
as a powerful but barbarous writer, writing in a barbarous
age.  The like may be the case with many who have
busied themselves more in recalling the past or picturing
the present, than in anticipating the future. But there are,
or have been among us, a few ewho h.ave plunged beyond
their own period, nay, beyond " all ages "-who have seen
and shown us the coming eras:




GEORGE CRABBE.                   77'As in a cradled Hercules you trace
The lines of empire in his infant face "and whose voice must go down, in tones becoming more
authoritative as they last, and in volume becoming vaster
as they roll, like mighty thunderings and many waters~
through the minster of all future time; in lower key,
concerting with those more awful voices fi-om within the
veil which have already shaken earth, and which, uttered'once more," shall shake not earth only, but also heaven.
High, destiny! but not his whose portrait we have now
drawn.
We have tried to draw his mental, but not his physical
likeness. And yet it has all along been blended with our
thoughts, like the figure of one known from childhood, like
the figure of our own beloved and long-lost father. We
see the venerable old man, newly returned from a botanical excursion, laden with flowers and weeds (for no one
knew better than he that every weed is a flower —it is
the secret of his poetry)) with his high narrow forehead,
his gray locks, his glancing shoe-buckles, his clean dress
somewhat ruffled in the woods, his mild countenance, his
simple abstracted air. We, too, become abstracted as we
gaze, following in thought the outline of his history —his
early struggles-his love-his adventures in London-his
journal, where, on the brink of starvation, he wrote the
affecting words, " O S'ally, for you "-his rescue by Burkehis taking orders-his return to his native place-his mounting tihe pulpit stairs, not caring what his old enemies thought
of him or his sermon -his marriage-the entry, more melancholy by far than the other, made years after in reference to
it, "yet hayppiness was denied "-the publication of his different works-the various charges he occupied-his child-like
surprise at getting so much money for the " Tales of the
Hall "-his visit to Scotland-his mistaking the Highland
chiefs for foreigners, and bespeaking them in bad French —
his figure as he went. dogged by the caddie through the lanes
of the auld town of Edinburgh, which he preferred infinitely
to the new-the " aul' fule " he made of himself in pursuit
of a second wife, &e., &c.; sjo absent do we become in thinking over all this, that it disturbs his abstraction; he starts,




78                   JOHN FOSTER.
stares, asks us into his parsonage, and we are about to accept
the offer, when we awake, and, lo! it is a dream.
JOHN FOSTER.
THERE are two classes of character of whzem the biography
is likely to be peculiarly interesting. One includes those
whose lives have been passed in the glare of publicity-who
have bulked largely in public estimation, and who have
mingled much with the leading characters of the age. The
life of such includes in it, in fact, a multitude of lives, and
turns out to be, not a solitary picture, but an entire gallery
of interesting portraits. The other class comprises those of
whom the world knows little, but is eager to know much —
who, passing their lives in severe seclusion, have, nevertheless, given such assurance of their manhood as to excite in
the public mind an intense curiosity to know more of their
habits, feelings, and history. Such a one was John Foster.
While his works were widely circulated, and produced a profound impression upon the thinking minds of the country,
himself was to the majority only a name. Few could tell
what he was, or where he lived-what were the particulars
of his outward history, or what had been the course of his
mental training.  He published little, he seldom appeared
at public meetings, his name was never in the newspaperswhen he wrote, it was generally in periodicals of limited circulation and sectarian character, and when he preached, it
was to small audiences and in obscure villages. There thus
hung about him a certain shade of mystery, shaping itself
to the colossal estimate of his genius, which prevailed. He
appeared a great man under hiding; and while some of his
ardent admirers found or forced their way into his grisly
den, and ascertained the prominent features of his character
and facts in his life, more were left in the darkness of mystification and conjecture. For twenty years, for instance,
we ourselves have been enthusiasts in reference to thnis




JOHN FOSTER.                   79
writer's genius, and yet, till recently, we never so much as
saw his portrait.
The veil has at length been removed. In the interesting
volumes before us we find, and principally in his own words,
a full and faithful register of the leading events in his life,
and of the more interesting movements in his spiritual history. The book is arranged on a plan somewhat similar to
that adopted in Carlyle's work on Cromwell. The biography
constitutes an intermitting chain between the numerous letters, and is.executed in a modest and intelligent manner.
Besides his correspondence, there are large and valuable excerpts from-his journals, and to the whole are appended interesting though slight notices of his character, from the pen
of 3ir. Sheppard.
Throughout the whole of these volumes we have been
impressed with the idea of a mind imperfectly reconciled
and indifferently adjusted to the state of society of which it
was a part-to the creed to which it had declared its adherence-to the very system of things which surrounded it.
This is true of many independent and powerful spirits; but
in Foster's mind the antagonism has this peculiarity —it is
united to deep reverence and to sincere belief.  It is not the
fruit of any captious or malignant disposition-it does
not spring from  any sinister motive.  The guilty wish is
never, with him, the parent of the gloomy thought. The
tremendous doubts which oppress him have forced themselves into the sphere of his soul, and hang there as if sustainedl by the power of some dark enchantment.  You see
his mind laboring under an eclipse which will not pass
away. In contemplation of the mysteries of earth and
timer he stands helpless. Indeed, such gloomy cogitations
formed so large a part of his mental scenery, and had so
long riveted his gaze, that you can almost conceive him
disappointed had they suddenly disappeared.  Like the
prisoner of Chillon, who, habituated to the gloom  of his
dungeon, and having made friends with his dismal companions, at last " regained his freedom with a sigh," Foster
would have stared strangely, and almost unhappily, though
it had been at the apparition of the "new heavens and the
new earth' arising in room of the present, which his melancholy fancy had so dreadfully discolored.  The causes of this




80                     JO-IN FOSTER.
habitual gloom  seem  to have been complex.  In the first
place, he was naturally a man of a morbid disposition.  His
mind fastened and clung to the dark side of every question
— to the more rugged horn of each great dilemma —to the
shadows, a1nd not to the lights, of every picture.  To do this
was with him *an instinct, which instead of repressing, he
nursed into a savage luxury.  Secondly, he was for a large
portion of his life a solitary, struggling, and disappointed
man-preaching to people who did  not understand  him,
struggling with straitened circumstances, and unsustained,
till middle-age, by the sympathy of any female friend.  H-Iad
a man of his temperament met sooner with the breeze of
general and generous appreciation; and, above all, had he
found in youth such a kindred and congenial spirit as afterwards, in his accomplished and gifted wife, he had lived a
much happier and more useful existence, and taken a kindlier,
and, we trust, a truer view of the world and of mankind.
Thirdly, as an eloquent writer elsewhere observes, Foster
never gave himself a real scientific education, and although
possessed of keenest sagacity, never rose into the sphere of a
great and a trained philosopher.  He was to this what a
brave bandit is to a regular soldier. Scientific culture is sure
to beget scientific calm. Tilhe philosopher is taught to take
a wide, comprehensive, dispassionate, and rounded view of
things, which never frets his heart, if it often fails to satisfy
his intellect.  Foster's glimpses of truth, on the contrary,
are intense and vivid, but comparatively narrow, and are tantalizing in exact proportion to their vividness and intensity.
Hie sees his points in a light so brilliant that it deepens the
surrounding darkness.  His minute mode of insight. too,
contributed to his melancholy.  He looks at objects so narrowly that, as to a microscope, they present nothing but
naked and enlarged ugliness.  His eye strips away all those
fine illusions of distance which are after all, as real as the
nearer and narrower view.  This is the curse which blasts
him-to see too clearly, and the lens through whicua  he
looks becomes truly a G" terrible crystal."   Like Cassal:ldra,
he might well wail for his fatal gift. It is a dowry she
got in wrath, and has faithfully transmitted to many beides
Foster, who may with her exclaim



JOHN FOSTER.                    81
0  ill to me the lot awarded,
Thou evil Pythian god."
From man, thus too utterly bare before him, he turns
away, with a deep pensive joy, to Nature, feeling that she is
true, were all else untrue-that she is beautiful, were all else
deformed —that she stands innocent and erect, though her
tenant has fallen-and, like a child in her mother's arms,
does he repose, regaining old illusiqns, and recalling longdeparted dreams of joy.  There is something to us peculiarly
tender and pathetic in Foster's love of nature.  It is not so
much an adniiration as it is a passionate and perpetual longing.  It is not a worship, but a love.  He throws his being
into nature.  It is as if he felt his heart budding in the
spring trees, his pulse beating' high in the midnight tempest and in the ocean billow, his soul shooting up, like
living fire, into' Snowdon, as he gazes upon it; or we
might almost imagine him the divorced spirit of some
lovely scene, yearning and panting after renewed communion,
"gazing himself away" into the bosom  of nature again,
while the murmuring of streams, and the song of breezes,
and the waving of pines, were singinging of these strange
nuptials, the soft epithalamium.   He engages in mystic
converse with the creation.  He seeks for meanings in her
mighty countenance, which are not always revealed to
him.   He  asks her awful and  unanswered  questions.
He seems to cry out to the river "What meanest thou,
thou eloquent babbler; wilt thou never speak plain, wilt thou
nerer shape me any distinct utterance, from the vague and
soft tumults of thine everlasting song?"-to the rocks and
mountains, " Will ye never reveal those secrets of an elder
day, which are.piled up in your massive walls; to your
solemn hieroglyphics shall there never arrive the key?" but
to add, in stern resignation, I"Be it so, then; retain your
tremendous 5ilence, or utter on your inarticulate sounds;
better these than the jargon, the:laughter, and the blasphemies of the reptile and miscreant race of man; to you, my
dumb kindred, I am nearer and dearer than to those that so
speak."
In forming, however, such a view of man and of life,
Foster has committed, we think, an enormous error-the
great mistake of his history.  He has failed to see the
4,




82                   - JOIIN FOSTER.
beauty of life, its hopeful tendencies, the dignity of that dis
cipline which is ripening man for a nobler destiny, the sour
of goodness which underlies even the evils, the abuses, and
the mistakes of the world, and the glory which springs from
human suffering, and shines through human tears. In all
this, he sees little else than unmitigated and unredeemed
misery and guilt, and flies to the prospect of death for relief.
as the opium-eater to his drug, or the drunkard to his drambottle.  " I have yet," he says, toward the close of his life,
" one luminary, the visage of death."  And in the rising of
that pale luminary, that ghostly sun, he expects a reply to
all his questionings, and a rest to all the wanderings of his
spirit. Surely he expected far too much from such a source.
For, in the first place, since the tale of the universe is infinite, can it be told all at once to a finite being? It is beyond
even the might of Death to give to a mind infinite illumination, to which it has failed to give infinite capacity. It may,
it must, greatly extend the view, and brighten the medium;
but to suppose that it instantly makes all mysteries plain,
were to leave little to do for the vast eternity beyond it.
Besides, may not mystery continue to be an atmosphere fit
for rearing certain future, as it is for rearing certain present,
conditions of spiritual being. The caterpillar and the butterfly respire the same air.  Certain plants, and those of a
strong and hardy kind, grow best in the shade. To suppose
that Death should explain every enigma is, in fact, to enthrone it in the room of Omnipotence. Thirdly, unless first
we be reconciled to life, unless we learn to interpret its sublime hieroglyphics, to feel its divine beauty, to read its
"' open secret," to adore while we wonder at its darkest dispensations, what can death do for us?  The man who, loathing, despising, reviling life, finding only desolation and barrenness in all its borders, turns away from under the vine
and the fig-tree, sits with lonely Jonah under his withered
gourd, saying, " I do well to be angry, even unto death," is
guilty of cowardice, if not of essential suicide: he may be a
gifted, but is hardly a heroic man.  " It is," says Schiller,
" a serious thing to die-it is a more serious thing to live."
So it is a great and glorious thing to die; it is a thing
greater, more glorious, god-like, to live a resigned, active,
and " blessed," if not happy life.  To use the language of




JOHIN I'OSTER.                  83
Sartor Resartus, Foster has been in the everlasting no; he
has been in the centre of indifference, but he has not reached
the everlasting yea; he has not heard, or not received, its
sweet and solemn evangel-he has tarried too long in the
valley of the shadow of death, and spent many needless
hours in the dungeon of the giant Despair; and worse, has
dreamed, that to come forth from its threshold was to reach
the Celestial City by a single step!
Before proceeding to speak of Foster's merits, we have,
in corroboration of these remarks, to advance against him
one or two serious charges, made more in sorrow than in
anger.  We charge him, in the first place, with a sort of
moral cowardice, which it is painful to observe in a man
of such gigantic proportions.  In his views of moral evil
there is more of the fascinated fear of the planet-struck
than of the strong courage of the combatant.  ife looks
at it rather than seeks to strike it down.  Knowing that
Omnipotence alone can prostrate it in its entireness that
Omniscience alone can explain its existence-he is not sufficiently alive to the facts that it is reducible, that every
one may, in some degree, reduce it, that each smallest reduction- proves that it is not infinite, and that the farther
you reduce evil, the nearer you reach the solution of the
great problems-why it is, and whence it rose.  He seems
sometimes to regard the efforts of men to remove or mitigate, moral, or even physical, evil, with as much contempt
as he would the efforts of barbarians, with their cries and
kettle-drums, to drive away an eclipse from off the face of
the sun.  His owno attempts to abate evil are thus paralyzed.  He keeps, indeed, his post- he maintains the contest-but it is languidly, and with frequent looks cast behind, toward a great reserve of force which he expects to be
brought, but which is slow to come, into action. It is the
old story of the wagoner and Hercules.  The road is
miry, the rain is heavy, he is weary, how easy it were for the
god to come down and perform the task! And because he
will not yet, Foster becomes sullen, disappointed, and all
but desperate.  Let no one say that we are not fair judges
of a mind so peculiar as his, that we know not what doubts
and difficulties oppressed him, or how they affected his spirit.  Every thinking mind is haunted, more or less, by pre



84                     JOHIN FOSTER.
cisely those questions which Foster felt himself unable to
solve.  Luther felt them  in the  WAVarteburg, but bated
on account of them  not one jot of heart or hope.  Evil
there was in the world; he was sent to make it less; that
was all he knew, and that was quite suficient for his resolute
and robust spirit. HI-oward felt them in his " Circumnavigation. of Charity," but instead of speculating as to wlhy prisons were needed at all, he went on and made them better.
Every missionary to the heathen feels such difficulties meeting them in their very darkest shape, and yet perseveres in
his holy work, and if he can smite away but a finger from
the black colossal statue of evil which stands up before him,
is content.  Should any deem that we misrepresent Foster's
feelings and sentiments on this subject, we refer them to his
journals and letters, and particularly to that most withering
and unhappy letter addressed to the Rev. John Harris, author of the " GCreat Teacher," &c.'We find not less distinct evidence of the same disease
in his contributions to the "Eclectic," particularly in his
review  of  ~Chalmer's Astronomical Discourses`-in our
opinion a very forced, clumsy, and unsatisfactory critique.
There, at the supposition of snow existing in some of the
other planets, he startles in terror, seeing in it a sign that
evil has found its way there as well as here.  He is so
frightened at this little speck, as almost to back out from
the discoveries of modern astronomy altogether.  Now, we
think this a cowardice unworthy, yet characteristic, of Foster; for, in the first place, what is there so terrific in snow
the pure, innocent, beautiful meteor, falling from heaven like
the shed feathers of the celestial dove, or lying, a many millioned mirror to the moonbeams?  Should not, on the contrary; that far gleali be welcomed as a proof of unity anmong
the heavenly bodies, as attesting the omnipresence of certain
general laws, shall we say?-as a white signal from that
stranger land, to tell us that a race of beings, not altogether
unallied to us, are there, it maay be, engaged in similar struggles, and destined to similar triumphs with ourselves? But,
secondly, is snow necessarily the sign of a curse, or a certain
indication of the existence of sin?  This, we think, springs
fronm a theory universally held at one time by a certain school
of theologians, which the researches of geology have explod



JOIIH FOSTER.                    85
ed, and which Foster's powerful intellect ought, apart froI
these to have taught him  to reject, that every species of
physical evil is the product of moral, that every slight inconvenience, as well as formidable mischief, may be traced
to the same root.  Such an absurd theory teaches its votaries to cower under the falling snow as under the curse of
the Eternal-to find a new testimony to the existence of evil
in the icicles-glorious ear-rings!-which each morning hang
under the eaves; and in every sound, from the earthquake
to the sneeze to overhear the voice of Sin.  No; this will
never do.  Step forth, John Foster, like a brave man, into
that strange snow of IMars, and peradventure tho-.  mayest
find a braver Evan Dihu, kicking away a luxurious snowball
from  under the head of his retainer, or a gallant footman
offering himself up to the wolves in his master's stead, or a
noble little band of explorers cutting their perilous.passage
to the summit of some wilder Wetterhorn-finer spectacles,
be sure, than wert thou to see ever so many perfect, and
perfectly insipid ladies and gentlemen, reclining in some lazy
lubberland of perpetual sunshine. Step forth, bathe in the
bracing cold of the clime, confront its stern winds, consider
its laws of austere and awful progress, and come back a
healthier, happier, and better man.
HIad this speculation on snow been only a passing reverie,
it had been unworthy any serious notice. But, like the snow
on the dusky and dark-red brow of Mars, it lies significant
-a still settled index of much behind and beyond it. It
involves in it all the elements of Foster's quarrel with the
system  of things; for, as assuredly as in Byron's case, it
was a quarrel; nor were their grounds so dissimilar as might
have been at first supposed. Neither knew the real meaning
of that grand old fble of Prometheus, as shadowing forth
the history of man, nay, forming a dim but colossal type of
that higher mystery-the mystery of godliness —bearing to
it such a resemblance as does a battlement of evening clouds
to the mountains over which it stands, and whose shapes it
mutely mimics-the glory of suffering, the beauty of sorrow,
as teachers, friends, guides, were to them in a great measure
veiled.  Unphilosophically confounding physical and moral
evil, of which the one seemed to them the monstrous body,
the other the malignant soul, of some portentous and un



86                    JOIIN FOSTER.
earthly shape, they both bow before it-to the one it becomea
a god, his only god, detested and adored; to the other an
object of melancholy wonder and powerless hatred. Indeed, so similar are the feelings of Foster to those entertained and expressed by the Byron school of skeptics, that,
as a profound thinker recently remarked to us, the change
of a single word will serve to identify them.  The Byronling says, since so and so is the case, the Deity must be this
and that; Foster, and his foster-baiTrts say, if it were this
and that, the Deity were so and so.
But, secondly, we charge Foster with taking up an attitude of view and observation which rendered any just con..
ception of the universe or its Author impossible, and which
ca prioi throws discredit upon any theory of explanation
propounded by himself. His attitude is that of one who
confounds the shade over his own mind with the universe
which it discolors, in whose eye (as in the well-known fable)
the monster-fly swallows up the sun, and who, because he is
capable of asking the infinite question, imagines that, therefore, he is able, or entitled to receive, the infinite reply.
Nothing but such an infinite answer could appease such inquiries as Foster asks at the earth and the heavens. And
because the earth spins round, and the skies shine on in
silence, and no such reply as he craves will ascend from
their deepest caverns, or come down from  their loftiest
summits, Foster is disappointed, the more in proportion to
his love, just as the more you love any individual, the more
you are chagrined if he will not answer you some curious
question,' but remains obstinately.cl dumb.  And though, as
we have said, he is fond of questioning nature, and loves,
her old and solemn harmonies, he is no "' Fine ear "' to catch
that subtler speech, that fairy music, that " language within
language," that angelic strain, which some few purged and
prepared spirits, who can the " bird language fully tell, and
that which roses say so well," hear, or seem to hear, in the
rustle of the leaves awakened at midnight from their dreams
of God —in the great psalm of the autumn blasts-in the
sweet self-talk of the love-sick summer waves-in the blue
smile of the sky-nay, in the hush of evening, and the
stammering sparkle of the stars.  To these low and silvery
whispers, piercing the clash of all common and terrific




JOHN FOSTE..                     87
sounds, like the calm  "No" of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, heard amidst the idolatrous symphonies and
cymbals on the plain of Dura, Foster's ear is deaf as
Byron's.  He is aware of their existence, indeed; he listens
to hear them, but they will not speak to him their profoundest tidings; he hears only a great tumult, but knows not
what it is-a tumult of grandeur, terror-sweet, and despairing tones, endlessly intermingled-and dies, believing that
God is love, but not feeling, with Tennyson, that
"Every cloud that spreads above
And veileth love itself is Love."
What Foster demands is precisely that which cannot here,
perhaps never, be granted: it is a logical demonstration of
the goodness and wisdom  of God: such a demonstration
seems impossible: it supposes the possibility of a just doubt
on such a subject; and yet if this doubt do once enter the
mind, no mere argument can ever expel it. It represents
the question as to the character of Deity in the light of a
dreadful game, which may possibly go against him.  It
proves, after all, no more than this-that there is a very
high probability that God is not a demon.  On such bladders do some men try to swim on the ocean of the infinite
mind.  Far better to plunge into it at once, trusting implicitly and fearlessly to those voices within the soul-to
those whispers in nature-to those smiles on earth below
and heaven above-to those indefinite but profound impressions, not to speak of those distinct declarations of God's
Word, which do not demonstrate, but intuitively and irresistibly communicate, the tidings that " All is well!"
"After all, we are in good hands," was the simple conclusive reply of a well-conditioned gentleman of our acquaintance to one who had, in a strain of morbid eloquence, taken the darker side conclusive, because it expressed what is the natural feeling of all untainted and
unsophisticated  minds, as well as the mature and ultimate
result of the highest order of philosophic thinkers.  But it
is altogether impossible to reach this conclusion, through
that faithless process which John Foster employs; as impossible, as by digging down through the darkness of earth
to reach the sun and stars of the antipodes. It is otherwise




88                   - JOHN FOS.EP".
that Sartor comes out at last, into his clear, stern azure.  It
is otherwise that Goethe meant, it is understood, to lead
Faust up into his Mount of Vision and temple of worship.
Our final charge, again, is that he takes too'dark, morbid, and monkish a view of man and of society.:From this
indeed, seem  to spring his other errors.  He who doubts
of man can hardly fail to doubt of God.  To believe in
man is an indispensable requisite to a proper conception
of Deity.  Of course we do not mean to deny the doctrine
of human depravity; but we do think that Foster's views
of man's nature, whether as exhibited in individual character or in collective society, are far too stern and harsh.
We would as soon judge of an assembly of living men and
women from a book of anatomical sketches, as of the true
character of the world from Foster's pictures.  Earth is
not the combination of hell and chaos which lie represents
it to be.  Men are not the -pigmy fiends, Lilliputians in
intellect, Brobdignagians in crime, from  whose society he
shrinks in loathing, and the tie connecting himself with
whom he would cut in sunder if he could.  The past history of society is not that dance of death, that hideous procession of misery and guilt toward destruction, which paints
itself on the gloomy retina of his eye.  We protest, in the
name of our fallen but human perishing, but princely family,
against such libels as Gulliver's Travels and Foster's entire
works.  Were such statements true, we see no help for it
but an act of universal, simultaneous suicide, and a giving
up of God's creation, on the part of Adam's sons, as a bad
job. What a fierce, impotent scowl, he continually casts
upon even the innocent amusements of the race-such as
children's balls, social parties-begrudging, it would seem,
even to doomed and predestinated criminals, such consolations as their case would admit of. More cruel than the
ancient crucifiers, he would grant no stupefying nor cheering draught to the expiring malefactor.  How reluctant, too,
he is to admit any moral merit (intellectual merit he is always ready to concede) to those who differ from him in creed,
not, perhaps, more widely than he is found. after all, to differ
from the rest' of the Christian world! How he prowls, like
a hyena, round the bedsides of dying skeptics, though repeatedlly owning himself so far a skeptic, to drink in their




JOHN FOSTER.                     89
last groans, and insult whether the calm  or the horror of
their closing hours;  staking thus in a measure, the holy
cause of religion upon a wretched computation of dying beds,
upon the prIos and conzs of the expressions of disease, deliriunm, and despair-a task fit enough for a contributor to the
" Methodist Magazine," but unworthy of a spirit like Foster's.  And how slow to admit any degree of interest, or of
poetry, or of grandeur, in those colossal faiths which have
ruled for ages the great majority of mankind! —an absurdity as great as though one were to go about to deny tha
lustre of the serpent's eyes, because his breath was poison,
or the beauty of the tiger's skin, because his drink was blood.
And, then, by what a safety-valve he does escape from the
consequences of his fatalism, by supposing a general jail-delivery of criminals, who, by his own showing, are no more
guilty than the avalanche which destroys the Alpine traveller, or the sandy column which whelms the wanderer in the
desert! 
After all this, it may seem paradoxical to assert that we
think Foster an. amiable man.  He was so, undoubtedly, if
universal testimony can be credited; but he was a slave,
in the first place, to unsettled doubts, and, ultimately, to a
partial and inconsistent system, as well as, throughout all
his life, to a gloomy temperament which clouded his native
disposition.  His genius reminds us of the moon, but of the
moon turned into blood, forced, against her nature, into a
lowering, portentous aspect-no longer the still, calm mistress of the night, but a meteor of wrath and fear, emitting
at best a gloomy smile, and furnishing a light, fit only to guide
the footsteps of murderers, and preside at the assignation of
ghosts.  We turn, now, gladly from  these objections to remark some interesting peculiarities in Foster's character and
intellect, as evinced in his " I emoirs,"   Correspondence,"
and articles in the " Eclectic Review."  WVe notice, first, his
generosity and width as a critic.  Narrow as a moral judge,
he is, as a critic of authors and books, entirely the reverse.
Hle sympathizes with all genuine excellence.  This alone
proves. we think, his superiority to Hall.  Hall, we fear, had
little admiration for other writers beyond a very few, either
inferior to, or cognate with himself.  His treatment of Coleridge, for instance, would be insufferably insolent, were it not




90                    JOHN FOSTER.
ludicrously absurd. Having never taken the trouble to master so much as the laczgu'atge in which Coleridge thoughzt, his
verdict on him is as worthless as a plain English scholar's
were upon the mletres of Pindar.  To modern poetry, too,
and all its miracles, he was notoriously indifferent. Byron he
never read, an omission as contemptible as though he had not
gone forth to see a comret which had made itself visible at
noonday. Wordsworth and Southey he habitually maligned,
Now all this may seem very great to such fawning parasites
as the late Dr. Balmer, who has carefully recorded it in a bit of
Boswellism he contributed to his remains, but seems superlatively' unworthy of such a man as Hall.  Foster, on the
other hand, is a genial and a generous praiser, of much beneath, much on a level, and much above his own mark.  He
has a kind word to say for poor Cottle and his Fall of Cambria.  He is enthusiastic in his admiration of Hall, Chalmers, Fox, Grattan, Curran, Tooke, &c.  Coleridge is the
god of his idolatry, and bitterly does he deplore his miserable
habits.  Of a transcendent dramatic work (could it be Cain
or the Cenci?) he says, " I was never so fiercely carried off
by Pegasus before-the fellow neighecd as he ascended."
All works he seems to have judged, not by an arbitrary
canon of his own or of others' establishment, but by the impulse given to his own mind, the stir of respondent strength,
whether in contradiction or consent, awakened within him,
and the joy which they had the power to spread over his
melancholy spirit, like sunshine surprising a sullen tarn into
smiles.
We notice in these volumes numerous evidences of Foster's romantic tendencies. He was a lover of solitary and
moonlight walks.  " In Chichester there is still a chapel,
where the well-worn bricks of the aisles exhibit the traces of
his solitary pacings to and fro by moonlight."  In all beautiful and majestic scenes he invariably lost himself, as men
do in the mazes of a wood. Reverie was his principal luxury,
and became his darling sin. In combating the romantic tendency in one of his essays, he is, in reality, fighting with
himself; just as, strange to tell, the objections he confutes
in his famous sermon on missions re-appear, from his own
pen, in a letter to Harris, written years afterwards. Formerly
we said, " Foster fighting with a fatalist, reminds us of the




JOHIN FOSTER.                   91
whole ocean into tempest tossed, to waft a feather, or to
drown a fly. " Alas, we now find that Foster and the fatalist
were forms of the same mind, and that the fatalist remains
last upon the field. So, having shrived himself of his original
romance by writing an essay against it, the old nature returned
with double force than formerly, and was in him to his dying
day.  In connection with this, we notice the abundance and
beauty of his natural imagery. No one has turned to more
account, in his writings, the charmis of nature, and particularly the evanescent and ghostly glories of the night, the
tints of moonlit flowers, the colors of midnight fields, the
shadows of woods, the shapes of mountains resting against
the stars, all the fine gradations of the coming on of evening,
all the wandering voices of the darkness, speaking what in
tile day they seem to dare not do, and all those " solemn
meditations," as peculiar to night as its celestial fires, were
well known and inexpressibly dear to the soul of this lonely
man. In his use of such images we observe this peculiarity.
Some men surround their minds with them  unconzsciozsly,
they go out to the fields without one thought of collecting
images or illustrations, and yet come home laden with them,
as with burs or other herbage, which we unwittingly gather
in the woods. Foster goes out on express purpose to find
them, as if he were a-nutting; looks at every object with
this question, How can I employ you in the expression of
truth? and returns triumphant with a thousand analogies.
This, we think, has somewhat affected the naturalness and
freedom of his imagery.  We should prefer had he allowed
the beauties of nature to slide into his soul, and to blend
with his thoughts" Like some sweet beguiling melody;
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it."
Another phase of this romantic tendency was his extreme attachment to the society of cultivated females, and
the conception he formed of the married life as the panacea
of his ills.  In such company he laid aside the monk, and
became all gentleness and good humor. It acted like a
spell upon him, to soothe his most unquiet feelings, and to
lay for a season his darkest doubts. It roused, too, the faculties of his mind, and he never was half so eloquent, neither




92                    JOHN FOSTER.
in his writing, nor in the pulpit, nor in the company of his
co-mates in intellect, Anderson and Hall, as when, the evening shadows, or the first moonbeams, stealing into the room.
he discoursed to "fascinating females," who could understand as well as listen, and feel as well as understand, of the
"feelings and value of genius," or of topics dearer and nobler still, while it seemed, in his own beautiful words, "as if
the soul of Eloisa pervaded all the air."  Such moments he
relished with the intensest gratification; they seemed to him
foretastes of Paradise, and of the society of angels, and he
might well say that they should never be " forgotten."  Out
of those " fascinating females " he selected one almost a duplicate of himself-equally intellectual, equally well-informed,
equally pious, and equally oppressed with the tremendous
darkness of this dark economy. It was like the marriage of
two moonlit clouds in the silent sky! To this lady (Miss
Maria Snooke-Phoebus, what a name!) he addressed his
first celebrated essays.  From her society he expected much
happiness.  On the eve of the marriage, he met, he tells us,
"' the snow-drops and other signs and approaches of the spring,
with a degree of interest which has never accompanied any
former vernal equinox."  And his expectations seem to have
been abundantly fulfilled. After many happy years of intercourse, and latterly, on her part, much severe suffering,
she died, leaving him less to regret her loss than to grieve
that their spirits had not entered together within that mighty
veil which had so long tantalized and saddened both.
" The living are not envied of the dead." But how often
are the dead envied by the living! And no one ever felt
this solemn envy more than Foster.  We can conceive him
kneeling in charnel-houses, and praying their ashes to break
silence and speak out.  We can conceive him  crying aloud
amid the midnight hills for some wandering spirit of the departed to render up the secret; and as friend after friend
dropped away into the silent land, this impatient eargerness
strengthened, and almost amounted to a feeling that those
he loved were bound to come back and relieve his harrowing
anxieties.  And it shook him with the very agony of desire
when the wife of his bosom and of his soul-his shadow in the
other sex, whose doubts, and fears, and desires on this subject
were the counterpart of his own-departed first within the




JOHN FOSTER.                   93
veil. We can image him on his widowed pillow praying for
and straining his eyes for her re-appearance-less to see her
beloved face once more than to hear some authentic tidings
of the shadowy world.  But she, too, was silent.  She, too,
had taken the dread oath of secrecy which all the dead must
take; and he had to recur, in his disappointed loneliness,
to the prospect of speedily joining her in that strange company, and of becoming, in his turn, as intelligent and as uncommunicative as she.
This supposition is the less extravagant, as we find from
these memoirs that Foster was a firm believer in apparitions,
and in all the otherF departments of what tlhs enlightened
age-which has discovered that the soul of man is a secietion of the brain, and that the snail is growing up by slow
stages to the Shakspeare (and we suppose the Shakspeare to
the Supreme God!)-calls exploded superstitions. He grasped
at every line, however frail, which linked him to the spiritual
world., If he saw not visions, he dreamed dreams, felt presentiments, shuddered as he almost called up to his imagination the form of a ghost.  This " folly of the wise," if a
folly it be, he shared with many of the greatest minds of
the age-with Napoleon, Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, who
all felt that there were some things in heaven and earth
more than are dreamt of in our philosophies. In Foster these
feelings did not amount to fears.  They were rather strong
yet shuddering desires to know the best or the worst which
spiritual beings could tell, or intimate about that future state
of existence of which he felt that Revelation had told him
little, and Nature nothing at all.  From  the company of
real solid sorrows, and of men whom he deemed " earthly, sensual, devilish," he turned eagerly, yet pensively, to seek communion with th e spirits of the departed; but even these sad
companions were shy to him-they met him not in his solitary walks, and in all his wanderings he was "alone with
the night."
And yet, in spite of all these melancholy musings and
romantic tendencies, Foster was a keen, stern, and sarcastic
observer of men and manners-of society and political progress.  In politics he was a " Radical and something more'
-an independent thinker, despising all ties of party, and
standing on every question like a fourth estate-one who




94                    301-IN FOSTER.
could sit upon the ground and tell strange stories of the
deaths of kings, and who never in one instance sacrificed an
atom of the right to an acre of the expedient. It is worth
while reading in this work his musings, as of a separate
spirit, upon the public transactions of his day. In society,
too, he sat an insulated being, whose silence was often more
formidable than his words. His face, even when he spoke
not, shone a quiet mirror to the " thoughts and intents of the
hearts" of those around him, and he came away with their
past as well as present history silently inscribed upon his
mind.  His conversational sarcasm was tremendous.  "W as
not the Emperor Alexander a very pious man?"  "Very
pious," he answered; "I believe he said grace ere he swallowed Poland."  We could quote, if we durst, unpublished
specimens still racier.  Hall himself is said to have felt
somewhat nervous in his presence when in this mood; and
there is a floating rumor of a meeting between him and Lord
Broughaml on some educational question, in which his lordship came off, and shabbily, second best.
Foster's indolence has been often, but, we think, unjustly,
condemned. It ought rather to be deplored. Unfurnished
with a regular training, yet furnished with an exquisitely
sensitive taste, early "damned to the mines" of hopeless
professional toil, transferred thence to the drudgery of
writing for bread-never gifted with a fluent language nor
a rapid pen-what wonder that he found composition an ungracious task, or that he shrank from it with a growing and
deepening disgust?  Our surprise is that he wrote so much,
and nod that he wrote so little. Latterly, but for an overwhelming sense of duty, he would not have written at all.
If we saw a giant, whose arms had been cut off, moving in
impotent strength his bleeding fragments, who would not
weep at the spectacle?  In such mutilated might sat Foster
at his desk.
His "1 Journal and Correspondence " contain much attractive and interesting matter.  His letters, without ease, have
great sincerity, calm discernment, disturbed by bursts of
misanthropical power, as when he calls for a tempest of fire
and brimstone upon the Russians, on their invasion of Poland, and a perpetual stream of sarcasm, adds a tart tinge
to the whole. His " Journal,'" on the other hand, is rich in




JOHN FOSTER.                     95
those thoughts which procreate thought in others-in descriptions of natural objects which he encountered-in quiet
sidelong glances into human character —in the expression of
gloomy and desolate feelings, and in sudden, momentary,
and timorous glimpses into'the deeper abysses of thought
than those where his spirit usually dwells. How grand this,
for instance: —  Argumnent fromn miracles for the truth of
the Christian doctrines.  Surely it is fair to believe that
those who received from heaven superhuman power received
likewise superhuman wisdom.  H-aving rung the great bell
of the universe, the sermon to follow must be extraordinary.'
Hear, again, this criticism on Burke: —" Burke's sentences
are pointed at the end-instinct with pungent sense to the
last syllable; they are like a charioteer's whip, which not
only has a long and effective lash, but cracks and inflicts a
still smarter sensation at the end.  They are like some serpents, whose life is said to be fiercest in the tail."  The
whole " Journal," indeed, is a repository of such things.
How much of Foster's originality lay in his thoughts, or
how much in his images, or how much of it resulted from
his early isolation from  suitable books and kindred minds,
we stay not to inquire.  As it is, we have in his works
the collected thoughts of a powerful mind that has lived
"collaterally or aside" to the world —that never flattered
a popular prejudice-that never bent to a popular idolthat never deserted in the darkest hour the cause of liberty-that never swore to the Shibboleth of a party, or,
at least, never kept its vow-and that now stands up before us alone, massive  and conspicuous, a mighty and
mysterious fragment, the Stonehenge of modern moralists.
Shall we inscribe immnortality upon the shapeless yet sublime structure?  He who reared it seems, from the elevation he has now reached, to answer, No; what is the thing
you call immortality to me, who have cleft that deep shadow  and entered on this greater and brighter state of
being?
We dare not say, with a writer formerly quoted, that
to " Foster the cloud has now become the sun."  But certainly we may say that to him, "behold the darkness is
past, and the true light now shineth," if not in its noonday
effulgence, yet at least in its mild and twilight softness.




~966                 THOMAS HOOD.
In the night he dwelt, and although the visage of death
may not have been to him  the glorious luminary he expected, yet is it not much that the night is gone, and gone
for ever? We take our leave of him  in his own words"'Paid the debt of nature.' No'; it is not paying a debt,
it is rather like bringing a note to a bank to obtain solid
gold in exchange for it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body, which is nothing worth, and which you could
not wish to retain long; you lay it down and receive for
it, from  the eternal treasures, liberty, victory, knowledge,
rapture.:'
THOMAS HOOD.
IT iS the lot of some men of genius to be born as if in
the blank space between Milton's L'Allegro and Penseroso
— their proximity to both originally equal, and their adhesion to the one or the other depending upon casual circumstances. While some pendulate perpetually between the
grave and the gay, others are carried off bodily, as it happens, by the conmic or the tragic muse. A few there are, who
seem to say, of their own deliberate option, "Mirth, with
thee we mean to live;" deeming it better to go to the house
of feasting than to that of mourning-while the storm of
adversity drives others to pursue sad and dreary paths, not
at first congenial to their natures.  Such men as Shakspeare, Burns, and Byron, continue, all their lives long, to
pass, in rapid and perpetual change, from the one province
to the other; and this, indeed, is the main source of their
boundless ascendlency over the general mind. In Young,
of the " Night Thoughts,"' the laughter never very joyous,
is converted, through the effect of gloomy casualties, into
the ghostly grin of the skeleton Death-the pointed satire
is exchanged for the solemn sermon. In Cowper, the fine
schoolboy glee which inspirits his humor goes down at last,
and is quenched like a spark in the wild abyss of his madness —" John Gilpin" merges in the  " Castaway."  Hoodl, on
the other hand, with his strongest tendencies originally to




TIHOMAS HOOD.                   97
the pathetic and the fantastic-serious, shrinks in timidity
from the face of the inner sun of his nature-shies the stoop
of the descending Pythonic power-and, feeling that if he
wept at all it were floods of burning and terrible tears,
laughs, and does little else but laugh instead,
We look upon this writer as a quaint masker-as wearing above a manly and profound nature, a fantastic and
deliberate disguise of folly.  He reminds us of Brutus,
cloaking under pretended idiocy, a stern and serious design,
which burns his breast, but which he chooses in this way
only to disclose.  Or, he is like Hamlet —able to form  a
magnificent purpose, but, from constitutional weakness, not
able to incarnate it in effective action. A deep message has
come to him from the heights of his nature, but, like the
ancient prophet, he is forced to cry out, " I cannot speakI am a child!"
Certainly there was, at the foundation of Hood's soul, a
seriousness, which all his puns and mummeries could but
indifferently conceal.  Jacques, in the forest of Arden,
mused not with a profounder pathos, or in quainter language,
upon the sad pageant of humanity, than does he; and yet,
like him, his " lungs" are ever ready to " crow like chanticleer" at the sight of its grotesquer absurdities. Verily, the
goddess of melancholy owes a deep grudge to the mirthful
magician, who carried off such a promising votary. It is not
every'day that one who might have been a great serious poet
will condescend to sink into a punster and editor of comic
annuals.  And, were it not that his original tendencies continued to be manifested to the last, and that he turned his
drollery to important account, we would be tempted to be
angry, as well as to regret, that he chose to play the fool
rather than King Lear in the play.
As a poet, Hood belongs to the school of John Keats
and Leigh HIunt, with qualities of his own, and an all but
entire freedom from their peculiarities of manner and style.
What strikes us, in the first place, about him, is his great
variety of subject and mode of treatment.  His works are
in two small duodecimo volumes; and yet we find in them
five or six distinct styles attempted —and attempted with
success.  There is the classical-there is the fanciful, or, as
we might almost call it, the " Midsummer Night"-there is
5




98                    THOMAS HOOD,
the homely tragic narrative-there is the wildly grotesquethere is the light-and there is the grave and patheticlyric. And, besides, there is a style, which we despair of describing by any one single or compound epithet, of which his
"' Elm Tree" and "Haunted House" are specimens-resembling Tennyson's " Talking Oak"-and the secret and power
of which, perhaps, lie in the feeling of mystic correspondence
between man and inanimate nature-in the start of momentary consciousness, with which we sometimes feel that in
nature's company we are not alone, that nature's silence is
not-that of death; and are aware, in the highest and grandest sense, that we are " made of dust," and that the dust
from which we were once taken is still divine. We know
few volumes of poetry where we find, in the same compass,
so little mannerism, so little self-repetition, such a varied
concert, along with such unique harmony of sound.
Through these varied numerous styles, we find two or
three main elements distinctly traceable  in all Hood's
poems.  One is a singular subtlety in the perception of
minute analogies. The weakness; as well as.the strength
of his poetry, is derived from  this source.  His serious
verse, as well as his witty prose, is laden and encumbered with thick comingfancies.  Hence, some of his finest
pieces are tedious, without being long.  Little more than
ballads in -size, they are books in the reader's feeling.
Every one knows how  resistance -adds to the idea of
extension, and how  roughness impedes progress.  Some
of Hood's poems, such as " Lycus," are rough as the
Centaur's hide; and, having difficulty in passing along,
you  are tempted  to  pass them  by  altogether.  And
though a few, feeling that there is around them the
power and spell of genius, generously cry, there's true
metal here, when we have leisure, we must return to this
-yet they never do.  In fact, Hood has not been able to
infuse human interest into his fairy or mythological creations.  He has conceived them in a happy hour; surely
on one of those days when the soul and nature are onewhen one calm bond of peace seems to unite all thingswhen the " very cattle in the fields appear to have great and
tranquil thoughts "-when the sun seems to slumber, and the
slky to smile-when the air becomes a wide balm, and the




THOMAS HOOD.                   99
low wind, as it wanders over flowers, seems telling some
happy tidings in each gorgeous ear, till the rose blushes a
deep crimson, and the tulip lifts up a more towering head,
and the violet shrinks more modestly away as at lovers' whispers; in such a favored hour-when the first strain of music
might have arisen, or the first stroke of painting been drawn,
or the chisel of the first sculptor been heard, or the first
verse of poetry been chanted, or man himself, a nobler harmony than lute ever sounded, a finer line than painter ever
drew, a statelier structure and a diviner song, arisen from
the dust-did the beautiful idea of the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies" dawn upon this poet's mind: he has conceived his fairies in a happy hour, he has framed them with
exquisite skill and a fine eye to poetic proportion, but he has
not made them alive, he has not made them objects of love;
and you care less for his centaurs and his fairies than you do
for the moonbeams or the shed leaves of the forest. How
different with the Oberon and the Titania of Shakspeare!
They are true to the fairy ideal, and yet they are humantheir hearts warm with human passions, as fond of gossip,
flattery, intrigue, and quarrel, as men or women can be-and
you sigh with or smile at them, precisely as you do at
Theseus and Hippolyta.  Indeed, we cannot but admire how
Shakspeare, like the arc of humanity, always bends in all his
characters into the one centre of man-how his villains
ghosts, demons, witches, fairies, fools, harlots, heroes, clowns,
saints, sensualists, women, and even his kcinzgs, are all human,
disguises, or half-lengths, or miniatures, never caricatures
nor apologies for mankind.  How full the cup of manhood
out of which he could baptize-now an Iago, and nox an
Ague-cheek-now a Bottom, and now a Macbeth-now a
Dogberry, and now a Caliban-now an Ariel, and now a
Timon-into the one communion of the one family —nay,
have a drop or two to spare for Messrs. Cobweb and Mustardseed, who are allowed to creep in too among the number, and
who attract a share of the tenderness of their benign father.
As in Swift, his misanthropy sees the hated object in every
thing, blown out in the Brobdignagian, shrunk up in the
Lilliputian, flapping in the Laputan, and yelling with the
Yahoo-nay, throws it out into those loathsome reflections,
that he may intensify and multiply his hatred; so in the




I OU                 THOMAS HOOD.
same way operates the opposite feeling in Shakspeare.  His
love to the race is so great that he would colonize with man,
all space, fairy-land, the grave, hell, and heaven. And not
only does he give to superhuman beings a human interest
and nature, but he accomplishes what Hood has not attempted, and what few else have attempted with success; he
adjusts the human to the superhuman actors-they never
jostle, you never wonder at finding them on the same stage,
they meet without a start, ther part without a shiver, they
obey one magic; and you feel that not only does one touch
of nature make the whole world kin, but that it can link the
~uqvverse in one brotherhood, for the secret of this adjustment lies entirely in the humanity which is diffused through
every part of the drama. In it, as in one soft ether, float,
or swim, or play, or dive, or fly, all his characters.
In connection with the foregoing defect, we find in Hood's
more elaborate poetical pieces no effective story, none that
can bear the weight of his subtle and beautiful imagery.
The rich blossoms and pods of the peaflower-tree are there,
but the strong distinct stick of support is wanting. This
defect is fatal not only to long poems but to all save the
shortest; it reduces them instantly to the rank of rhymed
essays; and a rhymed essay, with most people, is the same
thing with a rhapsody. Even dreams require a nexus, a
nisus, a nodus, a point, a purpose. Death is but a tame
shadow without the scythe. The want of a purpose in any
clear, definite, impressive form has neutralized the effect of
many poems beside Hood's-some of Tennyson's, and one
entire class of Shelley's-whose "Triumph of Life" and
"Witch of Atlas" rank with " Lycus" and the "Midnight
Fairies " —being, like them, beautiful, diffuse, vague, and, like
them, perpetually promising to bring forth. solid fruit, but
yielding at length leaves and blossoms only.
Subtle fancy, lively wit, copious language, and mellow
versifieation, are the undoubted qualities of Hood as a poet.
But, besides, there are two or three moral peculiarities about
him as delightful as his intellectual; and they are visible in
his serious as well as lighter productions. One is his constant lightsomeness of spirit and tone.  His verse is not a
chant but a carol. Deep as may be his internal melancholy,
it expresses itself in, and yields to, song. The heavy thun



THOMAS HOOD.                   101
der-cloud of woe comes down in the shape of sparkling,
sounding, sunny drops, and thus dissolves.  He casts his
melancholy into shapes so fantastic, that they lure first himself, and then his readers, to laughter. If he cannot get rid
of the grim  gigantic shadow of himself, which walks ever
before him, as before all men, he can, at least, make mouths
and cut antics behind its back.  This conduct is, in one
sense, wise as well as witty; but will, we fear, be imitated
by few. Some will continue to follow the unbaptized terror,
in tame and helpless submission; others will pay it vain
homage; others will make to it resistance equally vain; and
many will seek to drown in pleasure, or forget in business,
their impression, that it walks on before them —silent, perpetual, pausing with their rest, running with their speed,
growing with their growth, strengthening with their strength,
forming itself a ghastly rainbow on the fumes of their bowl
of festival, lying down with them at night, starting up with
every start that disturbs their slumbers, rising with them
in the morning, rushing before them like a rival dealer into
the market-place, and appearing to beckon them on behind
it, from the death-bed into the land of shadows, as into its
own domain.  If from  this dreadful forerunner we cannot
escape, is it not well done in Hood, and would it not be well
done in others, to laugh at, as we pursued its inevitable
steps? It is, after all, perhaps only the future greatness of
man that throws back this gloom upon his infant being,
casting upon him confusion and despair, instead of exciting
hihn to gladness and to hope.'  In escaping from  this
shadow, we should be pawning the prospects of our immortality.
How cheerily rings Hood's lark-like note of poetry among
the various voices of the age's song —its eagle screams, its
raven croakings, its plaintive nightingale strains! And yet
that lark, too, in her lowly nest, had her sorrows, and, perhaps,
her heart had bled in secret all night long.  But now the
" morn is up again, the dewy morn," and the sky is clear, and
the wind is still, and the sunshine is bright, and the blue
depths seem to sigh for her coming; and up rises she to heaven's
* This thought we copy from Carlyle, who has copied it from the
Germans, or our own John Howe.




102                    THOMAS HOOD.
gate, as aforetihne; and as she soars and sings she remlemlbers her misery no more; nay, hers seems the chosen voice
by which Nature would convey the full gladness of her own
heart, in that favorite and festal hour.
No one stops to question the songstress in the sky as to
her theory of the universe-" Under which creed, Bezonian! speak or die!" So, it were idle to inquire of Hood's
poetry, any more than of Keats's, what in confidence was
its opinion df the origin of evil, or the pedobaptist controversy. }His poetry is fuller of humanity and of real piety
that it does not protrude any peculiarities of personal belief;
and that no more than the sun or the book of Esther has it
the name of God written on it, although it has the essence
and the image. There are writers who, like secret, impassioned lovers, speak most seldom of those objects which they
most frequently think of and most fervently admire.  And
there are others whose ascriptions of praise to God, whose
encomiums on religion, and whose introduction of sacred
names, sound like affidavits, or self-signed certificates of
Christianity —they are so frequent, and so forced. It is upon
this principle that we would defend Wordsworth from those
who deny him the name of a sacred poet. True, all his poems
are not hymns; but his life has been a long hymn, rising,
like incense, from a mountain altar to God.  Surely, since
Milton, no purer, severer, living melody has mounted on
high.  Yet who can deny.that the religion of the " Ode to
Sound," and of the " Excursion," is that of the 1" Paradise
Lost," the " Task,' and the " Night Thoughts 2"  And without classing Hood in this or any respect with Wordsworth,
we dare as little rank him with things common and unclean
HIear himself on this point:"Thrice blessed is the man with whom
The gracious prodigality of natureThe balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom,
The bounteous providence in every featureRecall the good Creator to his creature';
Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome!
Each cloud-capped mountain is a holy altar;
An organ breathes in every grove;
And the full heart's a psalter,
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love."




TI-OMAS HOOD.                  103
And amid all the mirthful details of the long warfare
which he waged with Cant (from his "lProgress of Cant,"
downwards), we are not aware of any real despite done to
that spirit of Christianity, to which Cant, in fact, is the most
formidable foe.  To the ntCask of religion his motto is, spare
no arrows; but when the real, radiant, sorrowful, yet happy
face appears, he too has a knee to kneel and heart to worship.
But best of all in Hood is that warm humanity which
beats in all his writings.  His is no ostentatious or systematic philanthropy; it is a mild, cheerful, irrepressible feeling, as innocent and tender as the embrace of a child. It
cannot found soup-kitchens; it can only slide in a few rhymes
and sonnets to make its species a little happier.  Hospitals
it is unable to erect, or subscriptions to give, silver and gold
it has none; but in the orisons of its genius it never fails to
remember the cause of the poor; and if it cannot, any more
than the kindred  spirit of Burns, make for its country
" some usefa' plan or book," it can "sing a sang at least."
Hood's poetry is often a pleading for those who cannot plead
for themselves, or who plead only like the beggar, who, reproached for his silence, showed his sores, and replied, "' Isn't
it begging I am with a hundred tongues 2" This advocacy
of his has not been thrown utterly away; it has been heard
on earth, and it has been heard in heaven.
The genial kind-heartedness which distinguished Thomas
Hood did not stop with himself.  He silently and insensibly drew around him  a little cluster of kindred spirits,
who, without the name, have obtained the character and
influence of a school, which may be called the Latter Cockney School.  Who the parent of this school, properly speaking, was, whether Leigh Hunt or Hoodl, we will not stop to
inquire.  Perhaps we may rather compare its members
to a cluster of bees settling and singing together, without thought of precedence or feeling of inferiority, upon
one flower.   Leigh Hunt and Hood, indeed, have far
higher qualities of imagination than the others, but they
possess some properties in common with them.  All this
school have warm  sympathies, both with man as an individual, and with the ongoings of society at large.  All have a
quiet but burning sense of the evil, the cant, the injustice,
the ineonsistency, the oppression, and the falsehood, that are




104                  THOMA S 1OOD.
in the world.- All are aware that fierce invective, furious re,
calcitration, and howling despair, can never heal nor mitigate these calamities. All are believers in their future and
permanent mitigation; and are convinced that literatureprosecuted in a proper spirit, and combined with political
and moral progress-will marvellously tend to this result.
All have had, or have, too much real or solid sorrow to make
of it a matter of parade, or to find or seek in it a frequent
source of inspiration.  All, finally, would rather laugh than
weep men out of their follies, and ministries out of their
mistakes; and in an age which has seen the steam of a teakettle applied to change the physical aspect of the earth, all
have unbounded faith in the mightier miracles of moral and
political revolution which the miri-tha of an Enzglish fireside
is yet to effect when properly condensed and pointed.  lye
rather honor the motives than share in the anticipations of
this witty and brilliant band.  Much good they have done
and are doing; but the full case, we fear, is beyond them.
it is in mechanism  after all, not in magic, that they trust.
We, on the other hand, think that our help lies in the doubledivine charmz which Genius and Religion, fully wedded together, are yet to wield; when, in a high sense, the words of
the poet shall be accomplished" Love and song, song and love, entertwined evermore,
Weary earth to the suns of its youth shall restore."
Mirth like that of " Punch " and Hood can relieve many
a fog upon individual minds, but is powerless to remove the
great clouds which hang over the general history of humanity; and around even political abuses it often plays harmless as the summer evening's lightning, or, at most, only
loosens without smiting them down. Voltaire's smile showed
the Bastile in a ludicrous light, as it fantastically fell upon
it; but Rousseau's earnestness struck its pinnacle and Mirabeau's eloquence overturned it from its base.  There is a
call in our case for a holier earnestness, and for a purer, nobler oratory.  From the variety of styles which Hood has
attempted in his poems, we select the two in which we think
him most successful-the homely tragic. narrative, and the
grave pathetic lyric. We find a specimen of the former in
his " Eugene Aram's Dream."  This may be called a tale of




THOMAS HOOD.                   105
the Confessional; but how much new interest does it acquire from the circumstances, the scene, and the person to
whom the confession is made.  Eugene Aram  tells his story
under the similitude of a dream, in the interval of the
school toil, in a shady nook of the play-ground, and to a
little boy. What a ghastly contrast do all these peaceful
images present to the tale he tells, in its mixture of homely
horror and shadowy dread! What an ear this in which to
inject the fell revelation! In what a plain yet powerful
setting is the awful picture thus inserted! And how perfect at once the keeping and the contrast between youthful
innocence and guilt, gray-haired before its time!-between
the eager, unsuspecting curiosity of the listener, and the
slow and difficult throes, by which the narrator relieves himself of his burden of years!-between the sympathetic, halfpleasant, half-painful shudder of the boy, and the strong
convulsion of the man! The Giaour, emptying his polluted
soul in the gloom of the convent aisle, and to the father
trembling instead of his penitent, as the broken and frightful tale gasps on, is not equal in interest nor awe to Eugene
Aram recounting his dream to the child; till you as well as
he wish, and are tempted to shriek out, that he may awake,
and find it indeed a dream.  Eugene Aram is not like Bulwer's hero-a sublime demon in love; he is a mere man in
misery, and the poet seeks you to think, and you can think,
of nothing about him, no more than himself can, except the
one fatal stain which has made him what he is, and which he
long has identified with himself. Hood, with the instinct
and art of a great painter, seizes on that moment in Aram's
history which formed the hinge of its interest-not the moment of the murder-not the long, silent, devouring remorse
that followed-not the hour of the defence, nor of the execution-but that when the dark secret leapt into light and
punishment; this thrilling, curdling instant, predicted from
the past, and pregnant with the future, is here seized, and
startlingly shown.  All that went before Was merely horrible, all that followed is horrible and vulgar: the poetic moment in the story is intense. And how inferior the labored
power and pathos of the last volume of Bulwer's novel to
these lines!5*




106                   THOMAS HOOD.
"That very night, while gentle sleep
The urchin eyelids kiss'd,
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn
Through the cold and heavy mist;
And Eugene Aram walk'd between
With gyves upon his wrist."
And here, how much of the horror is breathed upon us from
the calm bed of the sleeping boy!
The two best of his grave, pathetic lyrics are the " Song
of the Shirt " and the " Bridge of Sighs."  The first was certainly Hood's great hit, although we were as much ashamed
as rejoiced at its success. We blushed when we thought that
at that stage of his life he needed such an introduction to
the public, and that thousands and tens of thousands were
now, for the first time, induced to ask,' Who's Thomas
Hood?" The majority of even the readers of the age had
never heardof his name till they saw it in "Punch," and conne6ted with a song-first-rate, certainly, but not better than
many of his former poems! It cast, to us, a strange light
upon the chance medleys of fame, and on the lines of Shakspeare" There is. a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
Alas! in Hood's instance, to fortune it did not lead, and the
fame was brief lightning before darkness.
And what is the song which made Hood awake one morning and find himself famous?   Its great merit is its truth.
Hood sits down beside the poor seamstress as beside a sister, counts her tears, her stitches, her bones-too transparent
by far through the sallow skin-sees that though degraded
she is a woman still; and rising up, swears by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that he will make her wrongs and
wretchedness known to the limits of the country and of the
race. And hark! bow, to that cracked, tuneless voice, trembling under its burden of sorrow, now shrunk down into the
whispers of weakness, and now shuddering up into the laughter of despair, all Britain listens for a moment-and for no
longer-listens, meets, talks, and does little or nothing. It
was much that one shrill shriek should rise and reverberate
above that world of wild confused wailings, which are the




THOIMAS HOOD.                   107
true "' cries of London;" but, alas f that it has gone down
again into the abyss, and that we are now employed in criticising its artistic quality instead of recording its moral effect.  Not altogether in vain, indeed, has it sounded, if it
have comforted one lonely heart, if it have beclewed with
tears one arid eye, and saved to even one sufferer a pang of
a kind which Shakspeare only saw in part, when he spoke of
the 1" proud mZCa's contumely " —the contumely of a proud,
imperious, fashionable, hard-hearted tvoman — " one that was
a woman, but, rest her soul, she's dead."
Not the least striking or impressive thing in this;" Song
of the Shirt" is its half-jesting tone, and light, easy gallop.
What sound in the streets so lamentable as the laughter of a
lost female! It is more melancholy than even the deathcough shrieking up through her shattered frame, for it speaks
of rest, death, the grave, forgetfulness, perhaps forgiveness.
So Hood into the centre of this true tragedy has, with a
skilful and sparing hand, dropt a pun or two, a conceit or
two; and these quibbles are precisely what make you quake.
"Every tear hinders needle and thread," remind us distantly of these words, occurring in the very centre of the Lear
agony, " Nuncle, it is a naughty night to swim in."  Hood,
as well as Shakspeare, knew that, to deepen the deepest woe
of humanity, it is the best way to show it in the lurid light
of mirth; that there is a sorrow too deep for tears, too deep
for sighs, but none too deep for smiles; and that the aside
and the laughter of an idiot might accompany and serve to
aggravate the anguish of a god.  And what tragedy in that
swallow's back which " twits with the spring " this captive
without crime, this suicide without intention, this martyr
without the prospect of a fiery chariot!
The " Bridge of Sighs" breathes a deeper breath of the
same spirit. The poet is arrested by a crowd in the street:
he pauses, and finds that it is a female suicide whom they
have plucked dead from the waters. His heart holds its
own coroner's inquest upon her, and the poem is the verdict.
Such verdicts are not common in the courts of clay.  It
sounds like a voice from a loftier climate, like the cry which
closes the Faust, " She is pardoned."  He knows not-what
the jury will know in an hour-the cause of her crime.  He
wishes not to know it.  He cannot determine what propor.




i 08                  THOMAS HOOD.
tions of guilt, misery, and madness have mingled -with her
" mutiny."  He knows only she was miserable, and she is
dead —dead, and therefore away to a higher tribunal.  He
knows only that, whate'er her guilt, he never ceased to be a
woman, to be a sister, and that death, for him hushing all
questions, hiding all faults, has left on her: only the beautiful."   What can he do?  He forgives her in the name or
humanity;  every heart says amen, and his verdict, thus repeated and confirmed, may go down to eternity.
Here, too, as in the " Song of the Shirt," the effect is
trebled by the outward levity of the strain. Light and gay
the masquerade his grieved heart puts on; but its every
flower, feather, and fringe shakes in the internal anguish as
in a tempest.  This one stanza (coldly praised by a recent
writer in the " Edinburgh Review,' whose heart and intellect seem  to be dead, but to us how unspeakably dear!)
might perpetuate the name of Hood:
"The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver,
But not the dark arch,
Nor the black flowing river;
Mad from life's historyGlad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurl'd,
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!"
After all this, we have not the heart, as Lord Jeffrey
would say, to turn to his " Whims and Oddities," &c. at
large.  " Here lies one who spat more blood and made more
puns than any man living," was his self-proposed epitaph,
Whether punning was natural to him or not, we cannot tell.
We fear that with him, as with most people, it was a bad
habit, cherished into a necessity and a disease. Nothing
could be more easily acquired than the power of punning, if,
as Dr. Johnson was wont to say, one's mind were but to
abancdonz itself to it.  What poor creatures you meet continually, from whom puns come as easily as perspiration.  If
this was a disease in Hood, he turned it into a " commodity."  His innumerable puns, like the minikin multitudes
of Lilliput, supplying the wants of the Man Mountain, fed.
clothed, and paid his rent.  This was more than Araml




TIIOIAz HIOOD.                 109
Dreams or Shirt Songs could have done, had he written
them  in scores.  Some, we know, will, on the other hand,
contend that his facility in punning was the outer form
of his inner faculty of minute  analogical perceptionthat it was the same power at play-that the eye which,
when earnestly and piercingly directed, can perceive delicate  resemblances in things, has only to be opened to
see like words dancing into each other's embrace; and that
this, and not tile perverted taste of the age, accounts for
Shakspeare's puns; punning being but the game of football,
by which he brought a great day's labor to a close. Be
this as it may, Hood punned to live, and made many suspect that he lived to pun.  This, however, was a mistake.
For, apart from his serious pretensions as a poet, his puns
swam in a sea of humor, farce, drollery, fun of every kind.
Parody, caricature, quiz, innocent clouble entendre, nmad exaggeration, laughter holding both his sides, sense turned
awry, and downright, staring, slavering nonsense, were all
to be found in his writings. Indeed, every species of wit
and humor abounded, with, perhaps, two exceptions; —the
quiet, deep, ironical smile of Addison, and the misanthropic
grin of Swift (forming a stronger antithesis to a laugh than
the blackest of frowns) were not in Hood. Each was peculiar to the single man whose face bore it, and shall probably
re-appear no more.  For Addison's matchless smile we may
look and long in vain; and forbid that such a horrible distortion of the " human face divine" as Swift's grin (disowned
for ever by the fine, chubby, kindly family of mirth!) should
be witnessed again on earth!
" Alas! poor Yorick.  Where now thy squibs?-thy
quiddities?-thy flashes that wont to set the table in a roar?
Quite chopfallen 2" The death of a man of mirth has to us
a drearier significance than that of a more sombre spirit.
Hie passes into the other world as into a region where his
heart had been translated long before. To death, as to a
nobler birth, had he looked forward; and when it comes, his
spirit readily and cheerfully yields to it, as one great thought
in the soul submits to be displaced and darkened by a greater. To him death had lost his terrors, at the same time that
life had lost its charms.  But " can a ghost laugh or shake
his gaunt sides" —is there wit any more than wisdom in the




110                 THOMAS MACAULAY.
grave? —do puns there crackle? —or do Comic Annuals there
mark the still procession of the years? The death of a hui
morist, as the first serious epoch in his history, is a very sad
event.  In Hood's case, however, we have this consolation:
a mere humorist he was not, but, a sincere lover of his racea hearty friend to their freedom and welfare —a deep sympathizer with their sufferings and sorrows; and if he did not
to the full consecrate his high faculties to their service, surely his circumstances as much as himself were to blame.
Writing, as we are, in Dundee, where he spent some of his
early days, and which never ceased to possess associations
of interest to his mind; and owing, as we do to him, a debt
of much pleasure, and of some feelings higher still, we can-not but take leave of his writings with every sentiment of
good-humor and gratitude.
THOMAS MACAULAY.
To attempt a new appraisement of the intellectual character
of Thomas Macaulay, we are impelled by various motives.
Our former notice of him* was short, hurried, and imperfect.  Since it was written, too, we hlave had an opportunity
of seeing and hearing the man, which, as often happens in
such cases, has given a more distinct and tangible shape to
our views, as well as considerably modified them. Above
all, the public attention has of late, owing to circumstances,
been so strongly turned upon him, that we are tolerably sure
of carrying it along with us in our present discussion.
The two most popular British authors are, at present,
Charles Dickens and Thomas Macaulay.  The supremacy of
the former is verily one of the signs of the times.  Ie has
no massive or profound intellect-no lore superior to a
schoolboy's-no vast or creative imagination-little philosophic insight, little power of serious writing, and little
sympathy with either the subtler or profounder parts of
* In our first "Gallery of Portraits."




THOMAS MACAULAY.                  1 i
man, or with the grander features of nature; (witness his
description of Niagara-he would have painted the next
pump better!) and yet, through his simplicity and sincerity, his boundless bon hoinnmie, his fantastic humor, his
sympathy with every-day life, and his absolute and unique
dominion over every region of the Odd, he has obtained a
popularity which Shakspeare nor hardly Scott in their lifetime enjoyed. He is ruling over us like a Fairy King or
Prince Prettyman-strong men as well as weak yielding
to the glamour of his tiny rod.  Louis XIV. walked so
erect, and was so perfect in the management of his person,
that people mistook his very size, and it was not discovered
till after his death that he was a little and not a large man.
So many of the admirers of Dickens have been so dazzled
by the elegance of his proportions, the fairy beauty of his
features, the minute grace of his motions, and the small
sweet smile which plays about his mouth, that they have
imagined him to be a Scott, or even a Shakspeare. To
do him justice, he himself has seldom fallen into such an
egregious mistake. He has seldom, if ever, sought to alter by
one octave, the note Nature gave him, and which is not that
of an eagle nor of a nightingale, nor of a lark, but of a
happy, homely, gleesome;" Cricket on the Hearth."  Small
almost as his own Tiny Tim, dressed in as dandyfied a style
as his own Lord Frederick Verisoft, he is as full of the
milk of human kindness as his own Brother Cheeryble;
and we cannot but love the man who has first loved all
human beings, who can own Newman Noggs as a brother,
and can find something to respect in Bob Sawyers, and
something to pity in a Ralph Nickleby. Never was a
monarch of popular literature less envied or more loved;
and while rather wondering at the length of his reign over
such a capricious domain as that of letters, and while fearlessly expressing our doubts as to his greatness or permanent dominion, we own that his sway has been that of gentleness-of a wide-minded and kindly man; and take this
opportunity of wishing long life and prosperity to "Bonnie
Prince Charlie."
In a different region, and on a higher and haughtier
seat, is Thomas Macaulay exalted.  In general literature,
as Dickens in fiction, is he held to be facilepriznceps.  He




112               TI-IOMAS M15ACAULAY.
is, besides, esteemed a rhetorician of a high class —a states
man of no ordinary calibre-a lyrical poet of much mark
and likelihood-a scholar ripe and good-and, mounted on
this high pedestal, he "has purposed in his heart to take
another step," and to snatch from the hand of the Historic
Muse one of her richest laurels.  To one so gifted in the
prodigality of Heaven, can we approach in any other attitude than that of prostration? or dare we hope for sympathy, while we proceed to make him the subject of free and
fearless criticism?
Before proceeding to consider his separate claims upon
public admiration, we will sum up, in a few sentences, our
impressions of his general character.  He is a gifted but
not a great man. He is a rhetorician without being an
orator. He is endowed with great powers of perception
and acquisition, but with no power of origination.  He has
deep sympathies with genius, without possessing genius of
the highest order itself.  He is strong and broad, but not
subtle or profound. He is not more destitute of original
genius than he is of high principle and purpose. He has
all common faculties developed in a large measure, and
cultivated to an intense degree.  W~hat he wants is the gift
that cannot be given-the power that cannot be counter
feited-the wind that bloweth where it listeth-the vision:
the joy and the sorrow, with which no stranger inter
meddleth-the "the light which never was on sea or shore
the consecration and the poet's dream."
To such gifts, indeed, he does not pretend, and never has
pretended. To roll the raptures.of poetry, without emulating
its sl9eciosa 9ziracul -to write worthily of heroes, without
aspiring to the heroic-to write history without enacting
it-to furnish to the utmost degree his own mind, without
leading the minds of others one point farther than to the
admiration of himself and of his idols, seems, after all, to
have been the main object of his ambition, and has already
been nearly satisfied. He has played the finite game of
talent, and not the infinite game of genius. His goal has
been the top of the mountain, and not the blue profound
beyond; and on the point he has sought he may speedily be
seen, relieved against the heights which he cannot reach-a
marble fixture, exalted and motionless. Talent stretching




TIT1OMAS MIACAULAY.               113
itself out to attain the attitudes and exaltation of genius is
a pitiable and painful position, but it is not that of tlacaulay.
With piercing sagacity he has, from  the first, discerned
his proper intellectual powers, and sought, with his whole
heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, to cultivate them.
" Nacaulay the Lucky "7 he has been called; he ought rather
to have been called Macaulay the Wise.
With a rare combination of the arts of age and the fire
of youth, the sagacity of the worldling and the enthusiasm
of the scholar, he has sought self-development as his principal, if not only end.
He is a gifted but not a great man.  He possesses all
those ornaments, accomplishments, and even natural endowments, which the great nian requires for the full emphasis
and effect of his power (and which the greatest alone can
entirely dispense with), but the power does not fill, possess,
and shake the drapery.  The lamps are lit in gorgeous
effulgence; the shrine is modestly, yet magnificently, adorned; there is every thing to tempt a god to descend; but
the god descends not-or if he does, it is only Maia's
son, the Eloquent, and not Jupiter, the Thunderer.  The
distinction between the merely gifted and the great is, we
think, this-the gifted adore greatness and the great; the
great worship the infinite, the eternal, and the godlike.
The gifted gaze at the moon-like reflections of the Divinethe great, with open face, look at its naked sun, and each look
is the principle and prophecy of an action.
He has profound sympathies with genius, without possessing genius of the highest order itself. Genius, indeed,
is his intellectual god. It is (contrary to a common opinion)
not genius that Thomas Carlyle worships. The word genius
he seldom uses, in writing or in conversation, except in
derision.  We can conceive a savage cachinnation. at the
question, if he thought Cromwell or Danton a great genius.
It is energy that he so much admires.  W~ith genius, as
existing ahnlmost undiluted in the person of. such men as
Keats, he cannot away.  It seems to himn only a long swoon
or St. Vitus's dance. It is otherwise with Macaulay. If we
trace him throughout all his writings, we will find him watching for genius with as much care and fondness as a lovei
uses in following the footsteps of his mistress.  This, like a




114                 THOMAS MACAULAY.
golden fay, has conducted him across all the wastes and wil.
dernesses of history. It has brightened to his eye each musty
page and worm-eaten volumle.  Each morning has he risen
exulting to renew  the search: and he is never half so
eloquent as when dwelling on the achievements of genius,
as sincerely and rapturously as if he were reciting his own.
His sympathies as are as wide as they are keen.  Genius,
whether thundering with Chatham *in the House of Lords,
or mending kettles and dreaming dreams with Bunyan in
Elstowe-whether reclining in the saloons of Holland House
with De Stael and Byron, or driven from men as on a new
Nebuchadnezzar whirlwind, in the person of poor wandering
Shelley-whether in Coleridge,
", With soul as strong as a mountain river,
Pouring out praise to the Ahnighty giver;"
or in Voltaire shedding its withering smile across the universe, like the grin of death-whether singing in Milton's
verse, or glittering upon Cromwell's sword-is the only magnet which can draw forth all the riches of his mind, and the
presence of inspiration alone makes him inspired.
But this sympathy with genius does not amount to
genius itself; it is too catholic and too prostrate.  The man
of the highest order of genius, after the enthusiasm of youth
is spent, is rarely its worshipper, even as it exists in himself.
He worships rather the object which genius contemplates,
and the ideal at which it aims. He is rapt up to a higher
region, and hears a mightier voice.  Listening to the mielodies of Nature, to the march of the eternal hours, to the
severe music of continuous thought, to the rush of his own
advancing soul, he cannot so complacently bend an ear to
the minstrelsies, however sweet, of men, however gifted. He
passes, like the true painter, from  the admiration of copies,
which he miay admire to error and extravagance, to that
great original which, without blame, excites an infinite and
endless devotion.  He becomes a personification of art,
standing on tip-toe in contemplation of mightier Nature, and
drawing from her features with trembling pencil and a joyful awe.  Macaulay has not this direct and personal communication with the truth and the glory of things He sees the
universe not in its own rich and divine radiance, but in the




THOIMAS MACAULAT.                 115
reflected light which poets have shed upon it.  There are
in his writings no oracular deliverances, no pregnant hints,
no bits of intense meaning-broken, but broken off from
some supernal circle of thought-no momentary splendors,
like flashes of midnight lightning, revealing how much-no
thoughts beckoning us away with silent finger, like ghosts,
into dim and viewless regions-and he never even nears: that
divine darkness which ever edges the widest and loftiest
excursions of imagination and of reason. His style and manner may be compared to crystal, but not to the " terrible
crystal" of the prophets and apostles of literature.  There
is the sea of glass, but it is not mingled with fire, or at least
the fire has not been heated seven times, nor has it descended from the seventh heaven.
Consequently, he has no power of origination.  We despise the charge of plagiarism, in its low and base sense,
which has sometimes been advanced against him.  He never
commits conscious theft, though sometimes he gives all a
father's welcome to thoughts to which he has not a father's
claim. But the rose which he appropriates is seldom more
than worthy of the breast which it is to adorn; thus, in borrowing from  Hall the antithesis applied by the one to the
men of the French Revolution, and by the other to the restored royalists in the time of Charles. II., " dwarfish virtues
and gigantic crimes," he has taken what he might have lent,
and, in its application, has changed it from a party calumny
into a striking truth.  The men of the Revolution were not
men of dwarfish virtues and gigantic.  ices; both were stupendous when either were possessed: it was otherwise with
the minions of Charles.  When our hero lights his torch it
is not at the chariot of the sun; he ascends seldom higher
than Hazlitt or Iall —Coleridge, Schiller, and Goethe are
untouched.  But without re-arguing the question of originality, that quality is manifestly not his. It were as true
that he originated Milton, Dryden, Bacon, or Byron, as that
he originated the views which his articles develop of their
lives or genius.  A search after originality is never successful.  Novelty is even shyer than truth, for if you search after the true, you will often, if not always, find the new; but
if you search after the new, you will, in all probability,
find neither the new nor the true. In seeking for para



116                THOMAS lAACAULAY.
doxes, Macaulay sometimes stumbles on, but more fre
quently stumbles over, truth.  His essays are masterlyt
treatises, written learnedly, carefully conned, and pronounced in a tone of perfect assurance; the Pythian pantings, the abrupt and stammering utterances of the seer, are
a wanting.
In connection with this defect, we find in him little metaphysical gift or tendency.  There is no "speculation in
his eye." If the mysterious regions of thought, which are
at present attracting so many thinkers, have ever possessed
any charm for him, that charm has long since passed away.
If the " weight, the burden, and the mystery of all this unintelligible world" have ever pressed him  to anguish, that
anguish seems now forgotten as' a nightmare of his youth.
The serpents which strangle other Laocoons, or else keep
them battling all their life before high heaven, have long ago
left, if indeed they had ever approached him.  His joys and
sorrows, sympathies and inquiries, are entirely of the " earth,
earthy," though it is an earth beautified by the smile of
genius, and by the midnight sun of the past. It may appear
presumptuous to criticise his creed, where not an article has
been by himself indicated, except perhaps the poetical first
principle that, " Beauty is truth and truth beauty;" but we
see about him neither the firm grasp of one who holds a
dogmatic certainty, nor the vast and vacant stretch of one
who has failed after much effort to find the object, and who
says, " I clasp-what is it that I clasp 2"  Toward the silent
and twilight lands of thought, where reside, half in glimmer
and half in gloom, the dread questions of the origin of evil,
the destiny of man, our relation to the lower animals and to
the spirit world, he never seems to have been powerfully or
for any length of time impelled. We might ask with much
more propriety at him the question which a reviewer asked
at Carlyle, " Can you tell us, quite in confidence, your private
opinion as to the place where wicked people go?"  And, besides, what think you of God? or of that most profound and
awful mystery of godliness?  Have you ever thought deeply
on such subjects at all?  Or if so, why does the language of
a cold conventionalism, or of an unmeaning fervor, distinguish all your allusions to them 2  It was not, indeed, youl
business to write on such themes, but it requires no more a




THOMAS MIACAULAY.                 117
wizard mo determine from your writings whether you have
adequately thozug-ht on them, than to tell from a man's eye
whether he is or is not looking at the sun.
We charge Macaulay, as well as Dickens, with a systematic shrinking from meeting in a manful style those dread
topics and relations at which we have hinted; and this,
whether it springs, as Humboldt says in his own case, from
a want of subjective understanding. or whether it springs
from a regard for, or fear of, popular opinion, or whether it
springs from moral indifference, argues, on the first supposition, a deep mental deficiency, on the second, a cowardice unworthy of their position, or, on the third, a state of spirit
which the age, in its professed teachers, will not much longer
endure. An earnest period, bent on basing its future progress upon fixed principles, fairly and irrevocably set down,
to solve the problem of its happiness and destiny, will not
long refrain from bestowing the name of brilliant trifler on
the man, however gifted and favored, who so slenderly sympathizes with it in this high though late and difficult calling.
It follows almost as a necessity from these remarks, that
Macaulay exhibits no high purpose.  Seldom have so much
energy and eloquence been more entirely divorced from a
great uniting and consecrating object; and in his forthcomning history we fear that this deficiency will be glaringly
manifest. History, without the presence of high purpose, is
but a series of dissolving views-as brilliant it may be, but
as disconnected, and not so impressive.  It is this, on the
contrary, that gives so profound an interest to the writings
of Arnold, and invests his very fragments with a certain
air of greatness; each sentence seems given in on oath.
It is this which glorifies even D'Aubigne's Romance of the
Reformation, for he seeks at least to show God in history,
like a golden thread, pervading, uniting, explaining, and
purifying it all. No such passion for truth as Arnold's, no
such steady vision of those great outshining laws of justice,
mercy, and retribution, which pervade all human story, as
D'Aubigne's, and in a far higher degree, as Carlyle's, do we
expect realized in Macaulay. His history, in all likelihood,
will be the splendid cenotaph of his party.  It will be brilliant in parts, tedious as a whole-curiously and minutely
learned-written now with elaborate pomp, and now with




1 8                 THOMAS MACAULAY.
elaborate negligence-heated by party spirit whenever the
fires of enthusiasm begin to pale-it will abound in striking
literary and personal sketches, and will easily rise to and
above the level of the scenes it describes, just because few of
those scenes, from the character of the period, are of the
highest moral interest or grandeur.  But a history forming
a transcript, as if in the short-hand of a superior being, of
the leading events of the age, solemn in spirit, subdued in
tone, grave and testamentary in language, profound in insight, judicial in impartiality, and final as a Median law in
effect, we might have perhaps expected from Mackintosh, but
not from Macaulay.''Broader and deeper," says Emerson, " must we write
our annals."  The true idea of history is only as yet dawning on the world; the old almanack form of history has been
generally renounced, but much of the old almnanack spirit
remains. The avowed partisan still presumes to write his
special pleading, and to call it a history.  The romance
writer still decorates his fancy-piece, and, for fear of mistake,
writes under it, " This is a history."'  The bald retailer of
the dry bones of history is not yet entirely banished from
our literature-nor is the hardy, but one-sided iconoclast,
who has a quarrel with all established reputation, and would
spring a mine against the sun if he could-nor is the sagacious philosophiste, who has access to the inner thoughts and
motives of men who have been dead for centuries, and often
imputes to deep deliberate purpose what was the result of
momentary impulse; fresh and sudden as the breeze, who accurately sums up and ably reasons on all. calculable principles, but omits the incalculable, such as inspiration and
frenzy.  We are waiting for the full avatar of the ideal historian, who, to the intellectual qualities of clear sight, sagacity,
picturesque power, and learning, shall add the far rarer qualities of a love for truth only equalled by a love for man-a
belief in and sympathy with progress, thorough independence
and impartiality, and an all-embracing charity-and after
"iMVacaulay's History of England' has seen the light, may
still be found waiting.
* This worlk has since appeared. How far it justifies our prophecy,
hts candid readers will judge.




THOMAS MACAULAY.                   119
The real purpose of a writer is perhaps best concluded
from  the effect he produces on the minds of his readers.
And what is the boon which MIacaulay's writings do actually
confer upon their millions of readers?  Much information,
doubtless-many ingenious views are given and developed,
but the main effect is pleasure-either a lulling, soothing
opiatic, or a rousing and stimulating gratification. But what
is their mental or moral influence? What new and great
truths do they throw like bomb-shells into nascent spirits,
disturbing for ever their repose?  What sense of the moral
sublime have they ever infused into the imagination, or what
thrilling and strange joy "beyond the name of pleasure"
have they ever circulated through the heart?  What long,
deep trains of thought have his thoughts ever started, and
to what melodies in other minds have his words struck the
key-note?  Some authors mentally "beget children-they
travail in birth with children;" thus from Coleridge sprang
Hazlitt; but who is 3Macaulay's eldest born?  Who dates
any great era in his history from the reading of his works,
or has received from him even the bright edge of any Apocalyptic revelation?   Pleasure, we repeat, is the principal
boon he has conferred on the age; and without under-estimating this (which, indeed, were ungrateful, for none have
derived more pleasure from him than ourselves), we inlust say
that it is comparatively a trivial gift-a fruiterer's or a confectioner's office-and, moreover, that the pleasure he gives,
like that arising from the use of wine, or from the practice
of novel-reading, requires to be imbibed in great moderation,
and needs a robust constitution to bear it.  Reading his
papers is employment but too delicious-the mind is too seldom irritated and provoked-the higher faculties are too seldom appealed to-the sense of the infinite is never giventhere is perpetual excitement, but it is that of a game of
tennis-ball, and not the Titanic' play of rocks and inountains-there is constant exercise, but it is rather the swing
of an easy chair than the grasp and tug of a strong rower
striving to keep time with one stronger than himself. Ought,
we ask, a grave and solid reputation, as extensive as that of
Shakspeare or Milton, to be entirely founded on what is essentially a course of light reading 
We do not venture on his merits as a politician or states



12z                THOMAS MACAULAY.
man; but, as a speaker, we humbly think he has been overrated. He is not a sublime orator, who fulminates, and
fiercely, and almost contemptuously, sways his audience; he
is not a subtle declaimer, who winds around and within
the sympathies of his hearers, till, like the damsel in the
" Castle of Indolence." they weaken as they warm, and are
at last sighingly but luxuriously lost; he is not a being
piercing a lonely way for his own mind through the thick
of his audience-wondered at, looked after, but not followed
-dwelling apart from them even while riveting them  to his
lips; still less is he an incarnation of moral dignity, whose
slightest sentence is true to the inmost soul of honor, and
whose plain blunt speech is as much better than oratory as
oratory is better than rhetoric. He is the primed mouth-piece
of an elaborate discharge, who presents, applies the linstock,
and fires off. He speaks rather before than to his audience.
We felt this strongly when hearing hl-im at the opening of the
New Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh; that appearance had on us the effect of disenchantment; our lofty idea
of Macaulay the orator-an idea founded on the perusal of all
sorts of fulsome penegyrics-sank like a dream.  Macaulay
the orator! Why had they not raved as well of Macaulay
the beauty?  He, is, indeed, a master of rhetorical display;
he aspires to be a philosopher; he is a brilliant litteratezur;
but, besides not speaking oratorically, he does not speak at
all, if speaking means free communication with the souls and
hearts of his hearers. If Demosthenes, Fox, and O'Connell
were orators, he is none. It was not merely that we were
disappointed with his personal appearance-that is sturdy
and manlike, if not graceful-it is, besides, hereditary, and
cannot be helped; but the speech was an elaborate and nngraceful accommodation to the presumed prejudices and tastes
of the hearers-a piece of literary electioneering-and the
manner, in its fluent monotony, showed a heart untouched
amid all the palaver. Here is one, we thought, whose very
tones prove that his success has been far too easy and exulting, and who has never known by experience the meaning of
the grand old words, "perfect through suffering."  Here is
one in public sight selling his birthright for a mess of pottage and worthless praise, and who may live bitterly to rue
the senseless bargain, for that applause is as certainly insin



THOMBAS MTACAULAY.                121
Cere as that birthright is high.  Here is one who, ingloriously sinking with compulsion and laborious flight, consciously confounds culture with mere knowledge-speaking
as if a boarding-school Miss, who had read Ewing's " Geography," were therein superior to Strabo. There, Thomas
Macaulay, we thought, thou art contradicting thy former and
better self, for we well remember thee speaking in an article
with withering contempt of those who prefer to that ".fine
old geography of Strabo" the pompous inanities of Pinkerton. And dost thou deem thyself, all accomplished as thou
art, nearer to the infinite mind than Pythagoras or Plato,
because thou knowest more?  And when he spoke again extempore, he sounded a still lower deep, and we began almost
to fancy that there must be some natural deficiency in a
mind so intensely cultivated, which could not shake as good,
or better speeches, than even his first, " out of his sleeve."
But the other proceedings and haranguings of that evening
were not certainly fitted to eclipse his brightness, though
they were calculated, in the opinion of many, to drive the
truly eloquent to the woods, to find in the old trees a more
congenial audience.
The House of Commons, we are told, hushes to hear
him, but this may arise from other reasons than the mere
power of his eloquence.  He has a name, and there is far too
much even in Parliament of that base parasitical element.
which, while denying ordinary courtesy to the untried, has
its knee delicately hinged to bend in supple homage to the
acknowledged.  He avoids, again, the utterance of all extreme opinions-never startles or  offends-never shoots
abroad forked flashes of truth; and, besides, his speaking is,
in its way, a very peculiar treat.  Like his articles, it generally gives pleasure; and who can deny themselves an opportunity of being pleased? Therefore the IHouse was silentits perpetual undersong subsided —even Roebuck's bristles
were wont to lower, and Joseph Hume's careful front to
relax-when the right honorable member for Edinburgh
was on his legs. But he is, in our idea, the orator who
fronts the storm and crushes it into silence-who snatches
the prejudices from three hundred frowning foreheads, and
binds it as a crown unto him-and who, not on some other
and less difficult arena, but on that very field, wins the
6




122                THORMAS MACAULAY.
laurels which he is to wear. Those are the eloquent sen.
tences which, though hardly heard above the tempest of oppo
sition, yet are heard, and felt as well as heard, and obeyed
as well as felt, which bespeak the surges at their loudest,
and immediately there is a great calln.
We are compelled, therefore, as our last general remark
on Macaulay, to call him rather a large and broad, than a
subtle, sincere, or profound spirit.  A simple child of Nature, trembling before the air played by some invisible musician behind him —what picture could be more exactly his
antithesis? But neither has he, in any high degree, either
the gift of philosophic analysis, or the subtle idealizing
power of the poet.  Clear, direct, uncircumspective thought
-vivid vision of the characters he describes-an eye to see,
rather than an imagination to combine-strong, but subdued enthusiasm-learning of a wide range, and information
still more wonderful in its minuteness and accuracy-a
style limited and circumscribed by mannerism, but having
all power and richness possible within its own range, full of
force, though void of freedom-and a tone of conscious mastery, in his treatment of every subject, are some of the qualities which build him up-a strong and thoroughly furnished
man, fit surely for more massive deeds than either a series
of sparkling essays, or what shall probably be a one-sided
history.
In passing from his general characteristics to his particular works, there is one circumstance in favor of the critic.
While many authors are much, their writings are little
known: but if ever any writings were published, it is Macaulay's. A glare of publicity, as wide almost as the sunshine of the globe, rests upon them; and it is always easier
to speak to men of what they know perfectly, than of what
they know in part. To this there is perhaps an exception
in his contributions to " Knight's Quarterly Magazine."
That periodical, some of our readers may be aware, was of
limited circulation and limited life.  "It sparkled, was exhaled, and went to --—;" yet Professor Wilson has been
known to say, that its four or five volumes are equal in
talent to any four or five in the compass of periodical literature.  To this opinion we must respectfully demur; at least
we found the reading of two or three of them rather a hard




THOMIAS MIACAULAY.                123
task, the sole relief being in the papers of Macaulay, and
would be disposed to prefer an equal number of " Blackwood," " Tait," or the old " London Magazine."
Macaulay's best contributions to this are a series of poems,
entitled "Lays of the Roundheads."  These, though less
known than his "Lays of the League," which also appeared
in (" Knight," are, we think, superior.  They are fine anticipations of the "Lays of Ancient Rome."  Like Scott,
vaulting between Claverhouse and Burley, and entering with
equal gusto into the souls of both, Macaulay sings with equal
spirit the song of the enthusiastic Cavalier and that of the
stern Roundhead.  He could have acted as poet-laureate to
Hannibal as well as to the Republic, and his " Lays of Carthage " would have been as sweet, as strong, and more pathetic than his " Lays of Rome." " How happy coulld he be
with either, were t'other dear charmer away." Not thus could
Carlyle pass from his " Life of Cromwell" to a panegyric on
the " Man of Blood," whose eyes " coulc benar to look on tortu;re, but durst Hzot look o0n  var'."  But Macaulay is the artist, sympathizing more with the poetry than with the principles of the great Puritanic contest.
" His " Roman Lays," though of a later date, fall naturally under the same category of consideration.  These,
when published, took the majority of the public by surprise,
who were nearly as astonished at this late flowering of poetry
in the celebrated critic, as were the Edinburgh people, more
recently, at the portentous tidings that Patrick Robertson,
also, was among the poets. The initiated, however, acquainted with his previous effusions, hailed the phenomenon
(not as in Patrick's case, with shouts of spurting laughter)
but with bursts of applause, which the general voice more
than confirmed.  The  day when the "Lays" appeared,
though deep in autumn, seemed a belated dog-day, so frantic
did their admirers become.  Homer, Scott, Wordsworth,
and Byron, were now to hide their diminished heads, for an
old friend under a new face had arisen to eclipse them all;
and, for martial spirit, we are free to confess the " Lays "
have never been surpassed, save by Homer, Scott, and by
Burns, whose one epithet,- "red wat shod," whose one de.
scription of the dying Scotch soldier in the " Earnest Cry,'
and whose one song, " Go fetch for me a pint of wine," are




124                TIIOMIAS tMACAULAY.
enough to stamp him among the foremost of martial poets.
Macaulay's ballads sound in parts like the thongs of Bellona.
Written, it is said, in the War-office, the Genius of Battle
might be figured bending over the author, sternly smiling on
her last poet, and shedding from her wings a ruddy light
upon its rapidly and furiously-filling page. But the poetry
of war is not of the highest order. Seldom, except when
the war is ennobled by some great cause, as when Deborah
uttered her unequalled thanksgiving, can the touch of the
sword extract the richest life's blood of poetry. Selfish is
the exultation over victory, selfish the wailing under defeat.
The song of the sword must soon give place to the song of
the bell; and the pastoral ditty pronounced over the reapinghook shall surpass all lyrical baptisms of the spear. As it
is, the gulf between the " Lays "-amazingly spirited though
they be-and intellectual, or moral poetry, is nearly as wide
as between " Chevy Chase " and "Laodamia."' Besides, the
" Lays " are in a great measure centos; the images are no
more original than the facts, and the poetic effect is produced
through the singular rapidity, energy and felicity of the narration, and the breathless rush of the verse, " which rings to
boot and saddle." One of the finest touches, for example, is
imitated.from Scott.
" The kites know well the long stern swell
That bids the Romans close "Macaulay has it.  In the 1" Lady of the Lake" it is:" The exulting eagle scream'd afar,
She knew the voice of Alpine's war."
Indeed, no part of the " Lays " rises higher than the better
passages of Scott. As a whole they are more imitative and
less rich in figure and language than his poetry; and we
have been unable to discover any powers revealed in them
which his prose works had not previously and amply disclosed, In fact, their excessive popularity arose in a great
measure from the new attitude in which they presented their
writer.  Long accustomed to speak to the public, he suddenly volunteered to sing, and his song was harmonious, and
between gratitude and surprise was vehemently encored. It
was as if Ellen Faucit were to commence to lecture, and
should lecture well; or as though Douglas Jerrold were to




THOMAS MACAULAY.                 125
announce a volume of sermons, and the sermons turn out to
be excellent. This, after all, would only prove versatility of
talent; it would not enlarge our conception of the real calibre of their powers. Nay, we hesitate not to assert that certain passages of Macaulay's prose rise higher than the finest
raptures of his poetry, and that the term eloquence will
measure the loftiest reaches of either.
This brings us to say a few words on his contributions to
the "Edinburgh Review." We confess, that had we been
called on while new from treading those productions, our verdict on them would have been much more enthusiastic.
Their immediate effect is absolutely intoxicating.  Ea th
reads like a new Waverley tale. "More-give us more-it
is divine!" we cry, like the Cyclops when he tasted of the
wine of Outis. As Pitt adjourned the court after Sheridan's
Begum speech, so, in order to judge fairly, we are compelled
to adjourn the criticism. Days even have to elapse ere the
stern question begins slowly, through the golden mist, to lift
up its head-" What have you gained?  Have you only
risen from a more refined' Noctes Ambrosianme?' Have you
only been conversing with an elegant artist? or has a prophet been detaining you in his terrible grasp? or has Apollo
been touching your trembling ears 2?" As we answer we almost blush, remembering our tame and sweet subjection;
and yet the moment that the enchantment again assails us,
it again is certain to prevail.
But what is the explanation of this power?  Is it altogether magical, or does it admit of analysis? Macaulay's
writings have one very peculiar and very popular quality.
They are eminently clear. They can by no possibility, at
any time, be nebulous. You can read them as you run.
Schoolboys devour them with as much zest as bearded men.
Thzis clearness is, we think, connected with deficiency in his
speculative and imaginative faculties; but it does not so
appear to the majority of readers.  Walking in an even
and distinct pathway, not one stumbling-stone or alley of
gloom in its whole course, no Hill of Difficulty rising, nor
Path of Danger diverging, greeted, too, by endless vistas
of interest and beauty, all are but too. glad, and too grateful, to get so trippingly along. Vanity, also, whispers to
the more ambitious: "What we can so easily understand




126                THOMAS MACAULAY.
we could easily equal;"' and thus are the readers kept on
happy terms both with the author and themselves.  IIis
writings have all the stimulus of oracular decision, without
one particle of oracular darkness. His papers, too, are
thickly studded with facts. This itself, in an age like ours
is enough to recommend them, especially'when these facts
are so carefully selected-when told now with emphasis so
striking, and now with negligence so graceful; and when
suspended around a theory at once dazzling and slightat once paradoxical and pleasing! The reader, beguiled,
believes himself reading something more agreeable than
history, and more veracious than fiction.  It is a very waltz
of facts that he witnesses; and yet how consoling to reflect
that they are facts after all! Again, Macaulay, as we have
repeatedly hinted, is given to paradoxes. But then these
paradoxes are so harmless, so respectable, so well-behavedhis originalities are so orthodox-and his mode of expressing them is at once so strong and so measured-that people
feel both the tickling sensation of novelty and a perfect
sense of safety, and are slow to admit that the author, instead of being a bold, is a timorous thinker, one of the literary as well as political j'uste-nilieu.  Again, his manner
and style are thoroughly English. As his sympathies are,
to a great degree, with English modes of thought and
habits of action, so his language is a stream of English undefiled.  All the territories which it has traversed have
enriched, without coloring, its waters.  Even the most
valuable of German refinements-such as that common one
of subjective and objective —are sternly shyed. That philosophic diction which has been from Germany so generally transplanted, is denied admittance into MIacaulay's
grounds, exciting a shrewd suspicion that he does not often
require it for philosophical purposes. Scarcely a phrase
or word is introduced which Swift would not have sanctioned. In anxiety to avoid a barbarous and Mosaic diction, he goes to the other extreme, and practises purisln
and elaborate simplicity. Perhaps under a weightier burden, like Charon's skiff, such a style might break down;
but, as it is, it floats on, and carries the reader with it, in
all safety, rapidity, and ease. Again, this writer hasapart from his clearness, his bridled paradox, and his




THOMAS MACAULAY.                  127
English style-a power of interesting his readers, which we
may call, for want of a more definite term, tact. This art
he has taught himself gradually; for in his earlier articles,
such as that on "'Milton," and the "Present Administration," there were a prodigality and a recklessness-a pro
digality of image, and a recklessness of statement-which
argued an impulsive nature, not likely so soon to subside
into a tactician.  Long ago, however, has he chang6d tout
cela. Now he can set his elaborate passages at proper distances from each other; he peppers his page'more sparingly with the condiments of metaphor and image; he interposes anecdotes to break the blaze of his splendor; he
consciously stands at ease, nay, condescends to nod, the
better to prepare his reader, and breathe himself for a
grand gallop; and although he has not the art to conceal
his art, yet he has the skill always to fix his reader-always
to write, as he himself says of Horace Walpole, "what
every body will like to read."  Still further, and finally, he
has a quality different from  and superior to all these-he
has genuine literary enthusiasm, which public life has not
yet been able to chill.  He is not an inspired child, but he
is still an ardent schoolboy; and what many count and
call his vice we count his salvation.  It is this unfeigned
love of letters and genius which (dexterously managed, indeed) is the animating and inspiring element of Macaulay's
better criticisms, and the redeeming point in his worse. It
is a love which many waters have been unable to destroy,
and which shall burn till death.  When he retires from public life, like Lord Grenville, he may say, " I return to Plato
and the' Iliad."'
We must be permitted, ere we close, a few remarks on
some of his leading papers.  " Milton" was his "Reubenhis first-born-the beginning of his strength," and thought
by many "the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of
power."  It was gorgeous as an eastern tale.  IHe threw
such a glare about Milton that at times you could not see
him.  The article came clashing down on the floor of our
literature like a gauntlet of defiance, and all wondered what
young Titan  could  have launched it.  Many inquired,
"Starting at such a rate, whither is he likely to go?" Meanwhile the wiser, while admiring, quietly smiled, and whis




128                TTI-iOIAS IACAULAY.
pered in reply, "A' t such a rate no man can or ought to ad
vance."  Ileanwhile, too, a tribute to Milton from across the
waters, less brilliant, but springing from  a more complete
and mellow sympathy with him, though at first overpowered,
began steadily and slowly to gain the superior suffrage of
the age, and from that pride of place has not yet receded.
On the contrary, Macaulay's paper he himself now treats as
the brilliant bastard of his mind.  Of such splencticla vitia
he need not be ashamed.  We linger as we remeniber the
wild delight with which we first read his picture of the
Puritans, ere it was hackneyed by quotation, and ere we
thought it a rhetorical bravura.  How burning his print of
Dante! The best frontispiece, to this paper on " Milton"
would be the figure of Robert Hall, at the age of sixty,
lying on his back, and learning Italian, in order to verify
Macaulay's -description of the " man that had been in hell."
In what a different light does the review of Croker's
"Boswell" exhibit our author! IHe sets out, likbe Shenstone,
by saying, "I will, I will be witty;" and, like him) the will
and the power are equal.  Macaulay's wit is always sarcasm
— sarcasm embittered by indignation, and yet performing
its minute dissections with judicial gravity. IHe're he catches
his Rhadamanthus of the Shades, in the upper air of literature, and'his vengeance is more ferocious than his wont.
He first flays, then kills, then tramples, and then hangs his
victim in chains. It is the onset of one whose time is short,
and who expects reprisals in another region. Nor will his
sarcastic vein, once awakened against Croker, sleep till it has
scorched poor Bozzy to ashes, and even singed the awful
wig of Johnson.  We cannot comprehend Macaulay's fury
at Boswell, whom he crushes with a most disproportionate
expenditure of power and anger.  Nor can we coincide with
his eloquent enforcement of the opinion, first propounded by
Burke, then seconded by Mackintosh, and which seems to
have become general, that Johnson is greater in Boswell's
book than in his own works.  To this we demur.  Boswell's
book gives little idea of Johnson's eloquence or power of
grappling with the highest subjects —" Rasselas " and the
Lives of the Poets;' do. Boswell's book does justice to Johnson's wit, readiness, and fertility; but if we could see the full
force of his fancy, the full energy of his invective, and his full




IIOMMI3AS  4T4CAULAY              129
sensibility to, and command over, the moral sublime, we
must consult such papers in the " Idler " as that wonderful
one on the Vultures, or in the "Rambler," as Anningate
and Ajut, his London, and his Vanity of Human Wishes.
Boswell, we venture to asert, has not saved one great sentence of his idol —such as we may find profusely scattered
in his own writings-nor has recorded fully any of those
conversations, in which, pitted against Parr or Burke, he
talked his best.  If Macaulay merely means that Boswell,
through what he has preserved, and through his own unceasing admiration, gives us a higher conception of Johnson's
every-day powers of mind than his writings supply, he is
right; but in expressly claiming the immortality for the " careless table-talk," which he denies to the works, and forgetting
that the works discover higher faculties in special display,
we deem him mistaken.
In attacking Johnson's style, Macaulay is) unconsciously,
a suicide; not that his style is modelled upon Johnson's,
or that he abounds in sesquipeclalia verba-he has never
needed large or new words, either to clpak up mere commonplace, or to express absolute originality-but many of
the faults he charges against Johnson belong to himself.
Uniformity of march-want of flexibility and ease-con
sequent difficulty in adopting itself to common subjectsperpetual and artfully balanced antithesis-were, at any
rate, once peculiarities of Macaulay's writing, as well as of
Johnson's, nor are they yet entirely relinquished. After all,
such faults are only the awkward steps of the elephant, which
only the monkey can deride; or we may compare them to
the unwieldly but sublime movements of a giant telescope,
which turns slowly and solemnly, as if in time and tune
with the stately steps of majesty with which the great
objects it contemplates are revolving.
The article on Byron, for light and spaikling brilliance,
is Macaulay's finest paper.  Perhaps it is not sufficiently
grave or profound for the subject. There are, we think, but
two modes of properly writing about Byron-the one is the
Monody, the other the Impeachment; this paper is neither
Mere criticism over such dread dust is impertinent; mere
panegyric impossible.  Either with condemnation melting
down in irrepressible tears, oyr with tears drying up in strong
6*




130                THOMAS MACAULAY.
censure, should we approach the memory of Byron, if, indeed
eternal silence were not better still.
Over one little paper we are apt to pause with a peculiar
fondness-the paper on " Bunyan."  As no one has greater
sympathy with the spirit of the Puritans, without having
much with their peculiar sentiments, than Carlyle, so no one
sympathizes more with the literature of that period, without
much else in common (unless we except Southey), than
3Macaulay. The' Pilgrim's Progress " is to him, as to many,
almost a craze. He cannot speak calmly about it. It continues to shine in the purple light of youth; and, amid, all
the paths he has traversed, he has never forgotten that
immortal path which Bunyan's genius has so boldly mapped
out, so variously peopled, and so richly adorned.  How can
it be forgotten, since it is at once the miniature of the
entire world, and a type of the progress of every earnest
soul. The City of Destruction, the Slough of Despond, the
Delectable Mountains, the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
Beulah, and the Black River, are still extant, unchangeable
realities, as long as man continues to be tried and to triumph.
But it is less in this typical aspect than as an interesting
tale that Macaulay seems to admire it.  Were we to look at
it in this light alone we should vastly prefer " Turpin's Ride
to York," or " Taml O'shanter's Progress to Alloway Kirk."
But as an unconscious mythic history of man's moral and
spiritual advance, its immortality is secure, though its merits
are as yet in this point little appreciated. Bunyan, indeed,
knew not what he did; but then he'spake inspired; his deep
heart prompted him to say that to which all deep hearts in
all ages should respond; and we may confidently predict
that never shall that road be shut up or deserted.  As soon
stop the current or change the course of the black and
bridgeless river.
We might have dwelt, partly in praise and partly in
blame, on some of his. other articles-might, for instance,
have combated his slump and summary condemnation, in
"Dryden," of Ossian's poems-poems which, striking, as
they did, all Europe to the soul, must have had some merit,
and which, laid for years to the burning heart of Napoleon,
must have had some corresponding fire.  That, said Coleridge, of Thomson's " Seasons," lying on the cottage win



THOMAS MACAUILAY.                  131
dow-sill, is true fame; but was there no true fame in the
fact that Napoleon, as he bridged the Alps, and made at
Lodi impossibility itself the slave of his genius, had these
poems in his travelling carriage?   Could the chosen companion of such a soul, in such moments, be altogether false
and worthless?   Ossian's Poems we regard as a ruder
" Robbers ";' -a real though clouded voice of poetry, rising
in a low age, prophesying and preparing the way for the
miracles which followed; and we doubt if Macaulay himself
has ever equalled some of the nobler flights of Macpherson.
Wie may search his writings long ere we find any thing so
sublire, though we may find many passages equally ambitious; as the "Address to the Sun."
He closes his collected articles with his "Warren ITastings," as with a grand finale.  This we read with the
more interest. as we fancy it a chapter extracted from his
forthcoming history.  As such it justifies our criticism  by
anticipation. Its personal and literary sketches are unequalled, garnished as they are with select scandal, and
surrounded with all the accompaniments of dramatic art.
Hasting's trial, is a picture to which that of Lord Erskine,
highly wrought though it be, is vague and forced, and
which, in its thick and crowded magnificence, reminds you
of the descriptions of Tacitus, or (singular connection!) of
the paintings of Hogarth. As in Hogarth, the variety of
figures and circumstances is prodigious, and each and all
bear upon the main object, to which they point like fingers;
so from every face, figure, aspect, and attitude, in the crowded
Hall of Westminster, light rushes on the brow of Hastings,
who seems a fallen god in the centre of the godlike radiance.
Even Fox's " sword " becomes significant, and seems to thirst
for the proconsul's destruction.  But Macaulay, though equal
to descriptions of men in all difficult and even sublime postures, never describes scenery well.  His landscapes are too
artificial and elaborate.  When, for example, he paints
" Paradise " in Byron, or " Pandemonium " in Dryden, it is
by parts and parcels, and you see him pausing and rubbing his
brows between each lovely or each terrible item.  The scene
reluctantly comes; or rather is pulled into view, in slow and
painful series. It does not rush over his eye, and require to
be detained in its giddy passage.  Hence his picture of India




132                THOMAS MACAULAY.
in " Hastings " is an admirable picture of an Indian village
but not of India, the country.  You have the " old oaks " —
the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head-the courier
shaking his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenasbut where the eternal bloom, the immemorial temples, the
vast blood-spangled mists of superstition, idolatry, and caste,
which brood over the sweltering land-the Scotlands of jungle, lighted up by the eyes of tigers as with infernal starsthe Ganges, the lazy deity of the land, creeping down reluctantly to the sea-the heat, encompassing the couniry like a
sullen, sleepy hell-the swift steps of tropical death, heard
amid the sulphury silence —the ancient monumental look
proclaiming that all things here continue as they were from
the foundation of the world, or seen in the hazy distance as
the girdle of the land-the highest peaks of earth soaring
up toward the sun, Sirius, the throne of God.  Macaulay too
much separates the material from the moral aspects of the
scene, instead of blending them together as exponents of the
one great fact, India.
But we must stop.  Ere closing, however, we are tempted
to add, as preachers do, a solid inference or two from our
previous remarks. First, we think we can indicate the field
on which Mir. Macaulay is likely yet to gain his truest and
permanent fame. It is in writing the literarny history of his
country.  Such a work is still a desideratum; and no living
writer is so well qualified by his learning and peculiar gifts
-by his powers and prejudices-by his strength and his
weakness, to supply it.  In this he is far more assured of
success than in any political or philosophical history. With
what confidence and delight would the public follow his
guidance, from the times of Chaucer to those of Cowper,
when our literature ceased to be entirely national, and even
a stage or two farther! Of such a "progress' we proclaim
him worthy to be the Great-heart! Secondly, we infer from
a retrospect of his whole career, the evils of a too easy and
a too early success. It is by an early Achillean baptism
alone that men can secure Achillean invulnerability, or confirm Achillean strength.  This was the redeeming point in
Byron's history.  Though a lord, he had to undergo a stern
training, which indurated and strengthened him to a pitch,
which all the after blandishments of society could not weaken.




DR. GEORiGE CEOLY.                133
Society did not —in spite of our author-spoil him by its
favor, though it infuriated him by its resentment. B3ut lie
has been the favored and petted child of good fortune.
There has been no " crook," till of late, either in his political
or literary " lot."  If he has not altogether inherited, he
has approached the verge of the curse,' Woe to you, when
all men shall speak well of you."  No storms have unbared
his mind to its depths.  It has been his uniformly to" Pursue the triumph and partake the gale."  Better all this
for his own peace than for his power, or for the permanent
effect of his writings.
Let us congratulate him, finally, on his temporary defeat
in Edinburgh. A few more such victories as he had formerly gained, and he had been undone. A few more such
defeats, and if he be, as we believe, essentially a man, he
may yet, in the " strength of the lonely," in the consciousness and terrible self-satisfaction of those who deem themselves injuriously assailed, perform such deeds of derringdo as shall abash his adversaries and astonish even himself.
DR. GEORGE CROLY.
NOT only is the literary divine not a disgrace to his profession, he is a positive honor. His pulpit becomes an eminence, commanding a view of both worlds. Hle is a witness
at the nuptials of truth and beauty, and the general cause of
Christianity is subserved by him in more ways than one;
for, first, the names of great men devoted at once to letters
and religion neutralize, and more than neutralize, those
which are often produced and..paraded on the other side;
again, they show that the theory of science sanctified, and
literature laid down before the Lord, has been proved and
incarnated by living examples, and does not therefore remain in the baseless regions of mere hypothesis; and, thirdly, they evince that even if religion be an imposture and a
delusion, it is one so plausible and powerful as to have subjugated very strong intellects, and that it will not therefore




134                DR. GEORGE CROLY.
do for every sciolist in the school of infidelity to pretend
contempt for those who confess that it has commanded and
convinced them.
Literary divines, next to religious laymen, are the chosen champions of Christianity.  We say next to laymen, for
when they come forth from their desks, their laboratories, or
observatories, and bear spontaneous testimony in behalf of
religion, it is as though the earth again should help the woman; and the thunder of a Bossuet, a Massillon, a I-Hall, or
a Chalmers breaking from the pulpit does not speak so loud
in behalf of our faith as the' still, small voice " issuing from
the studious chamber of an Addison, a Boyle, a Bowdler, an
Isaac Taylor, and a Cowper. [But men who might have taken foremost places in the walks of letters and science, and
yet have voluntarily devoted themselves to the Christian
cause, and yet continue amid all this devotion tremblingly
alive to all the graces, beauties, and powers of literature, are
surely standing evidences at least of the sincerity of their
own convictions, if not of the truth of that faith on which
these convictions centre. And when they openly give testimony to their belief, we listen as if we heard science and literature theplselves pronouncing the creed or swearing the
sacramental oath of Christianity.
Such an one is Dr. George Croly.  He might have risen
to distinction in any path he chose to pursue; he has attained wide eminence as a literary man; he has never lost
sight of the higher aims of his own profession; and he is
now in the ripe autumn of his powers, with redoubled energy
and hope, about to dive down in search of Ieww pearls in that
old deep which communicates with the onmiscience of God.
He is projecting at present, and has in part begun, to elaborate three treatises on the patriarchs, the prophets, and the
apostles, from which great issues may be expected. Melanwhile we propose rapidly running over the general outline
of his merits and works.
Dr. Croly is almost the last survivor of that school of
Irish eloquence which included the names of Burke, Sheridan, Grattan, Curran, and Flood. He has most of the
merits, and some of the faults of that school.  A singular
school it has been, when we consider the circumstances and
character of the country where it flourished.  The most mis.




DR. GEORGE CROLY.                  135
erable has been the most eloquent of countries.. The worst
cultivated country has borne the richest crop of flowers-of
speech. The barrenness of its bogs has been compensated
by the rank fertility of its brains.  Its groans have been set
to a wild and wondrous music-its oratory has been a safetyvalve to its otherwise intolerable wrongs. Yet, over all
Irish eloquence, and even Irish humor, there hovers a certain shade of sadness. In vain they struggle to smile or to
assume an air of cheerfulness. A sense of their country's
wretchedness-their Pariah position —the dark doom  that
seems suspended over every thing connected with the Irish
name, lowers over and behind them as they speak or write.
Amidst the loftiest flights of Burke's speculation, the gayest
bravuras of Sheridan's rhetoric, the fieriest bursts of Grattan's
or Curran's eloquence, this stamp of the branding-iron-this
downward drag of degradation —is never lost sight of or forgotten.
Ireland! art thou a living string of God's great lyre, the
earth; or art thou an instrument, thrown aside like a neglected harp, and only valuable for the chance notes of joy
or sorrow, mad mirth or despair, which the hands of passengers can discourse upon thee 2  Art thou only a wayward.
child of the mighty mother, or art thou altogether a monstrous and incurable birth.  Has nature taught thee thy
notes of riant mirth, or yet richer pathos, or have torture
and tyranny, like cruel arts of hell, awoke within thee those
slumbering energies which it were well for thee had slept
for ever? Well for thee it may be, but not for the world;
for thy loss has been our gain, and from thy long and living
death has flowed *forth that long, swelling, sinking, always
dying, yet never dead music, which now sounds thy requiem,
and may peradventure herald thy future resurrection.
Dr. Croly has not altogether escaped the pervasive gloom
of his country's literature.  This speaks in the choice of
his subjects, and in the lofty, ambitious tone of his manner.
He would spring up above the sphere of Ireland's dire attraction!  "'Farthest from her is best."  Irish subjects, therefore, are avoided, although from no want of sympathy with
Ireland.  Regions either enjoying a profounder calm or torn
by nobler agonies than those of Erin, are'the chosen fields
for his muse.  Of his country's wild, reckless humor, always




136                 DR. GEOIGE CROLY.
reminding us of the mirth of despairing criminals, singing
and dancing out the last dregs of their life, Croly is nearly
destitute. For this his genius is too stern and lofty. He
does not deal in sheet lightning, but in the forked flashes of
a withering and blasting invective.  But in richness of
figure, in strength of language, in vehemence of passion, and
in freedom and force of movement, he is eminently Irish.
Stripped, however, he is-partly by native taste, and partly
by the friction of long residence in this country —of the
more glaring faults of his country's style, its turbulence, exaggeration, fanfaronade, florid diffusion, and that ludicrous
pathos which so often, in lieu of tears of grief, elicits teartorrents of laughter.  To use the well-known witticism  of
Curran, he has so often wagged his tongue in England, that
he has at last caught its accent, and his brogue is the faintest in the world.  The heat of the Irish blood and its wild
poetical afflatus he has not sought, nor, if he had, would
have been able to relinquish.
Dr. Croly's principal power is that of gorgeous and eloquent description. There are five different species of the
describer. The first describes a scene or character as it appears to him, but as it really is not, he having, through
weakness of sight, or inaccuracy of observation, missed the
reality and substituted a vague something, more cognate to
himself than to his object. The second is the literal describer
-the bare, bald truth before him is barely and baldly caught
-a certain spirit that hovered over it, as if on wing to fly,
having amid the bustling details of the execution been disturbed and scared away. The third is the ideal describer,
who catches and arrests that volatile film, expressing the life
of life, the gloss of joy, the light of darkness, and the wild
sheen of death; in short, the fine or terrible something which
is really about the object, but which the eye of the gifted
alone can see, even as in certain atmospheres only the rays
of the sun are visible. The fourth is the historical describer,
who sees and paints objects in relation to their past and future history, who gets so far aitthiz the person or the thing
as to have glimpses behind and before about it, as if he belonged to it, like a memory or a conscience; and the fifth is
the universal describer, who sees the object set in the shining
sea of its total bearings, representing in it more or less fully




DR. GEORGE C(ROLY.                 137
the great whole of which it is one significant part.  Thus:
suppose the object a tree, one will slump up its character as
large or beautiful-words which really mean nothing; another will, with the accuracy of a botanist, analyze it into its
root, trunk, branches, and leaves; a third will make its rustle seem the rhythm of a poem; a fourth will see in it, as Cowper in Yardley Oak, its entire history, from the acorn to the
axe, or perchance from  the germ to the final conflagration;
and a fifth will look on it as a mouth and mirror of the Infinite-a slip of Igcdrasil.  Or is the object the ocean-one
will describe it as vast, or serene, or tremendous, epithets
which burden the air but do not exhaust the ocean; another
will regard it as a boundless solution of salt; a third will
be fascinated by its terrible beauty, as of a chained tiger; a
fourth, with a far look into the dim records of its experience,
will call it (how different from the foregoing appellations i) the
",nelazczholy main;" and the fifth will see in it the reflector
of man's history, the shadow and mad sister of earth-the
type of eternity!
These last three orders, if not one, at least slide often
into each other, and Dr. Croly appears to us a combination
of the third and the fourth. His descriptions are rather those
of the poet than of the seer. They are rapid, but always
clear, vivid, strong, and eloquent, and over each movement
of his pen, an invisible pencil seems to hang and to keep
time.
Searching somewhat more accurately for a classification
of mzinds, they seem  to us to include five orders-the prophet, the artist, the analyst, the copiast, and the combination
in part of all the four.  There is, first, the prophet, who receives immediately and gives out unresistingly the torrent
of the breath and power of his own soul, which has become
touched by a high and holy influence from behind him. This
is no MECHANICAL offiCe; the fact that he is chosen to be such
an instrument, itself proclaims his breadth, elevation, power,
and patency. There is next the artist, who receives the
same influence in a less measure, and who, instead of implicitly obeying the current, tries to adjust, control, and get it
to move in certain bounded and modulated streams.  There
is, thirdly, the analyst, who, in proportion to the faintness in
which the breath of inspiration reaches him, is the more de.




138                DR. GEORGE CROLY.
sirous to turn rozund upon  it, to reduce it to its elements
and to trace it to its source. There is, fourthly, the copiast
-we coin a term, as he would like to form the far-off sigh of
the aboriginal thought, which alone reaches him, into a new
and powerful spoken word-but in vain. And there is, lastly, the combination of the wholefour-the clever, nay, gifted
mimie, whose light energy enables him to circulate between,
and to be sometimes mistaken for, them all together.
Dr. Croly is the artist, and in general an accomplished and
powerful artist he is. There is sometimes a little of the slapdash in his manner, as of one who is in haste to be done with
his subject.  His style sometimes sounds like the horseshoes of the belated traveller,' spurring apace to gain the
timely inn."  I-He generally, indeed, goes off at a gallop, and
continues at this generous, breakneck pace to the close. He
consequently has too few pauses and rests.  He and you
rush up panting, and arrive breathless at the summit.  And
yet there is never any thing erratic or ungraceful about the
motion of the thought or style. If there be not classical
repose there is classical rapture.  It is no vulgar intoxication —it is a debauch of nectar; it is not a Newmarket, but
a Nemean race.
Dr. Croly's intellectual distinction is less philosophic subtlety, than strong, nervous, and manly sense. This, believed with perfect assurance, inflamed with passion, surrounded with the rays of imagination, and pronounced with
a dogmatic force and dignity peculiarly his own, constitutes
the circle of his literary character —a circle which also includes large and liberal knowledge, but which has been somewhat narrowed by the influence of views, in our judgment,
far too close and conservative. Especially, as we have elsewhere said, whenever he nears the French Revolution he
loses temper, and speaks of it in a tone of truculence, as if it
were a virulent ulcer and not a salutary blood-letting to the
social system-the stir of a dunghill and not the explosion
of a volcano-a few earthworms crawling out of their lair,
and producing a transient agitation in their native mud, and
not a vast Vesuvius moved by internal torments to cast out
the central demon and with open mouth to appeal to Heaven.
To Croly this revolution seems more a ray from hell, shooting athwart our system, than a mysterious part of it through




DR. GEORGE CROLY.                 139
which earth must roll as certainly as through its own shadow-night; more a retribution of unmitigated wrath than a
sharp and sudden surgical application, severe and salutary as
cautery itself. Now that we have before us a trinity of such
revolutions, we have better ground for believing that they are
no anomalous convulsions, but the periodical fits of a singular
subject, whom it were far better to watch carefully and treat
kindly than to stigmatize or assault.  Bishop Butler, walking an his garden with his chaplain, after a long fit of silent
thought, suddenly turned round and asked him, if he did not
think that nations might get mad as well as individuals.
What answer the worthy chaplain made to this question we
are not informed, but we suspect that few now would coincide with the opinion of the bishop. Nations are never mad,
though often mistaken and often diseased; or if mad, it is
a fine and terrible frenzy, partaking of the character of inspiration, and telling, through all its blasphemy and blood,
some great truth otherwise a word unutterable to the nations.
What said, through its throat of thunder, that first revolution of France?  It said that men are men, that " God hath
made of one blood all nations who dwell upon the face of
the earth," and it proved it, alas! by ningliang together in
one tide the blood of captains and of kings, of rich and poor,
of bond and free: it shattered for ever the notion of men
being ninepins for the pleasure of power, and showed them
at the least to be gunpowder, a substance always dangerous,
and always, if trode on, to be trode on warily.  What said
the three days of July, 1830?  They said, that if austere
unlimited tyranny exceed in guilt, diluted and dotard despotism excels in folly, and that the contempt of a people is
as effectual as its anger in subverting a throne.  And what
is the voice with which the world is yet vibrating, as if the
sun had been struck audibly and stunned upon his mid-day
throne? It is that, as a governing agent, the days of expediency are numbered, and that henceforth not power, not
cunning, not conventional morality, not talent, but truth has
been crowned monarch of France, and, if the great experimnent succeed, of the world.*
It is of Dr. Croly as a prose writer principally that we
* Alas! alas! This was too evidently written in 1848.




140                Dr. GEORGE CROLY.
mean to speak.  His poetry, though  distinguished, and
nearly to the same extent, by the qualities of his prose, has
failed in making the same impression.  The causes of this
are various. In the first place, it appeared at a time when
the age was teeming to very riot with poetry. Scott, indeed,
had betaken himself to prose novels; Southey to histories
and articles; Coleridge to metaphysics; Lamb to "Elia;"
and Wordwsorth to his " Recluse," like the alchemist to his
secret furnace.  But still with each new wound in Byron's
heart, a new gush of poetry was flowing, and all eyes watching this martyr of the many sorrows, with the interest of
those who are waiting silent or weeping for a last breath;
and at the same time a perfect crowd of true poets were finding audience, "fit though few."  Wilson, Barry, Cornwall,
Hogg, Hood, Clare, Cunninghame, Milman, Maturin,Bowles,
Crabbe, Montgomery, are some of the now familiar names.
which were then identified almost entirely with poetical aspirations. Amid such competitors Dr. Croly first raised his
voice, and only shared with many of them the fate of being
much praised, considerably abused, and little read, Secondly, more than most of his contemporaries, he was subjected
to the disadvantage which in a measure pressed on all. All
were stars seeking to shine ere yet the sun (that woful bloodspattered sun of " Childo Harold ") had fairly set.  Dr. Croly suffered more from this than others, just because he bore
in some points a strong resemblance to Byron, a resemblance
which drew forth, both for him and Milman, a coarse and witless assault in " Don Juan."  And, thirdly, Dr. Croly's poems
were chargeable, more than his prose writings, with the want
of continuous interest. They consisted of splendid passages,
which rather stood for themselves than combined to form a
whole. The rich "bugle blooms " were trailed rather than
trained about a stick scarce worthy of supporting them, and
this, with the monotony inevitable to rhyme, rendered it
a somewhat tedious task to climb to the reward which never
failed to be met with at last.  "Paris in 1815," however, was
very popular at first; and "' Cataline" copes worthily, particularly in the closing scene of the play, with the character of
the gigantic conspirator, whose name even yet rings terribly,
as it sounds down from the dark concave of the past.
His prose writings may be divided into three classes; his




DR. GEORGE CROLY.               141
fictions, his articles in periodicals, and his theological works.
We have not read his " Tales of the Great St. Bernard," but
understand them to be powerful though unequal.  His " Colonna, the painter," appeared in " Blackwood," and, as a tale
shadowed by the deadly lustre of revenge, yet shining in the
beauty of Italian light and landscape, may be called an unrhymed "Lara."  His'"Marston, or Memoirs of a Statesman,".is chiefly remarkable for the sketches of distinguished
characters, here and in France, which are sprinkled through
it: somewhat in the manner of Bulwer's "'Devereux," but
drawn with a stronger pencil and in a less capricious light.
To Danton, alone, we think he has not done justice. On the
principle of ex pede Herculem, from the power and savage
truth of those calossal splinters of expression, which are all
his remains, we had many years ago formed our unalterable
opinion, that he was the greatest and by no means the worst
man, who mingled in the melee of the Revolution —the Satan, if Dr. Croly will, and not the Moloch of the Paris Pandemoniunn-than Robespierre abler —than Marat, that squalid,
screeching, out-of-elbows demon, more merciful-than the
Girondin champions more energetic-than even Mirabeau
stronger and less convulsive; and are glad to find that Lord
Brougham has recently been led, by personal examination,
to the same opinion. The Danton of Dr. Croly is a hideous
compound of dandyism, diabolism, and power-a kind of
coxcomb butcher, who with equal coolness arranges his moustaches and his murders, and who, when bearded in the Jacobin Club, proves himself a bully and a coward.  The real.Danton, so broad and calm in repose, so dilated and Titanic
in excitement, who, rising to the exigency of the hour, seemed like Satan, starting from Ithuriel's spear, to grow into
anzmolr, into power and the weapons of power —now uttering
words which were " half battles," and now walking silent, and
unconscious alike of his vast energies and coming doom, by
the banks of his native stream-now pelting his judges with
paper bullets, and now laying his head on the block proudly,
as if that head were the globe-was long since pointed
out by Scott as one of the fittest subjects for artistic treatment, either in iction or the drama, " worthy," says he, "of
Schiller or Shakspeare themselves."
Dr. Croly's highest effort in fiction is unquestionably




142                DR. GEORGE, CROLY.
"Salathiel."  And it is verily a disgrace to an age, which
devours with avidity whatever silly or putrid trash popular
authors may be pleased to issue-such inane commonplace
as " Now and Then," where the only refreshing things are
the "glasses of wine" which are poured out at the close
of every third page to the actors (alas, why not to the
readers!), naturally thirsty amid such dry work, or the
coarse greasy horrors which abound in the all-detestable
"Lucretia" —that "Salathiel" has not yet, we fear, more
than reached a second edition. It has not, however, gone
without its reward. By the ordinary fry of circulating
library readers neglected, it was read by a better class, and
by none of those who read it forgotten. None but a " literary divine" could have written it. Its style is steeped in
Scripture.
But Croly does more than snatch "live coals from  off
the altar" to strew upon his style; his spirit as well as his
language is oriental. You feel yourselves in Palestine, the
air is that through which the words of prophets have vibrated and the wings of angels descended-the ground is
scarcely yet calm from the earthquake of the crucifixionthe awe of the world's sacrifice, and of the prodigies which
attended it, still lowers over the land-still gapes unmended the ghastly rent in the vail-and still are crowds
daily convening to examine the fissure in the rocks, when
one lonely man, separated by his proper crime to his proper and unending woe, is seen speeding, as if on the wings
of frenzy, toward the mountains of Napthali. It is Salathiel, the hero of this story-the Wandering Jew-the
heir of thb-  curse of a dying Saviour, "Tarry thou till I
come. "
As an artistic conception, we cannot profess much to
admire what the Germans call the "Everlasting Jew."
The interest is exhausted to some extent by the very title.
The subject predicts an eternity of sameness, from which
we shrink, and are tempted to call him an everlasting
bore. Besides, we cannot well realize the condition of the
wanderer as very melancholy, after all.  What a fine
opportunity must the fellow have of seeing the world, and
the glory and the great men thereof! Could one but get
up behind him, what " pencillings" could one perpetrate by




DIR. G-EORGE CROLY.              143
the " way!"  What a triumph, too, has he over the baffled
skeleton, death! What a new fortune each century, by
selling to advantage his rich " reminiscences!" What a short
period at most to wander-a few thousand years, while
yonder, the true wanderers, the stars, can hope for no rest!
And what a jubilee dinner might he not expect, ere the
close, as the I"oldest inhabitant,'" with perhaps Christopher
North in the chair, and De Quincy (whom some people
suspect, however, of being the said personage himself) acting as croupier! Altogether, we can hardly, without ludricous emotions, conceive of such a character, and are astonished at the grave face which Shelley, Wordsworth, Mrs.
Norton (whose " Undying One"' by the way, is dead long
ago, in spite of a review, also dead, in the " Edinburgh"),
Captain Medwyn (would he too had died ere he murdered
the memory of poor Shelley!), Lord John Russell (who in
his " Essays by a Gentleman who had left his Lodgings, has
taken a very, very faint sketch of the unfortunate Ahashuerus), and Dr. Croly put on while they talk of his adventures.
The interest of "Salathiel," beyond the first splendid
burst of immortal anguish with which it opens, is almost
entirely irrespective of the character of the Wandering Jew.
It is chiefly valuable for its pictures of Oriental scenery,
for the glimpses it gives of the cradled Hercules of Christianity, and for the gorgeous imagery and unmitigated vigor
of its writing.  Plot necessarily there is none; the characters, though vividly depicted, hurry past, like the rocks in
the "Walpurgis Night"'-are seen intensely for a moment,
and then drop into darkness; and the crowding adventures,
while all interesting individually, do not gather a deepening interest as they grow to a climax. It is a book which
you cannot read quickly, or with equal gusto at all times,
but which, like "'Thomson's Seasons,"  "Young's  Night
Thoughts," anid other works of rich massiveness, yield intense pleasure, when read at intervals, and in moments of
poetic enthusiasm.
Dr. Croly's contributions to periodicals are, as might
have been expected, of various merit.  We recollect most
vividly his papers on Burke (since collected into a volume),
on Pitt, and a most masterly and eloquent outline of the




i44                DR. GEORGE CROLY.
career of Napoleon. This is as rapid, as brief almost and
eloquent, as one of Bonaparte's own bulletins, and much
more true.  It constitutes a rough, red, vigorous chart of his
fiery career, without professing to complete philosophically
the analysis of his character.  This task Emerson lately, in
our hearing, accomplished with much ingenuity,  Htis lecture
was the portable essence of Napoleon.  He indicated his
points with the ease and precision of a lion-showman.  Napoleon, to Emerson, apart from his splendid genius, is the
representative of the faults and the virtues of the gziddle
class of the age.  WVe heard some of his auditors contend
that he had drawn two portraits instead of one; but in fact
Napoleon was two, if not more men.  Indeed, if you draw
first the bright and then the black side of any character, you
have two beings, which the skin and brain of the one actual
man can alone fully reconcile. The experience of every one
demonstrates at the least a dualism, and who might not
almost any day sit down and write a letter, objurgatory, or
condoling, or congratulatory, to " my dear yesterday's self?"
Each man, as well as Napoleon, forms a sort of Siamese
twins-although, in his case, it was matter of thankfulness
that the cord could not be cut. Two Napoleons at large had
been too much.
Of Dr. Croly's book on the c; Revelation " we have spoken
formerly.  Under the shadow of that inscrutable pyramid it
stands, one of the loftiest attempts to scale its summit and
explain its construction; but to us all such seem as yet ineffectual.  A more favorable specimen of his thelogical writing
is to be found in his volume of " Sermons " recently published.
The public has reason to congratulate itself on the little
squabble which led to their publication.  Some conceited persons, it seems, had thought proper to accuse Dr. Croly of
preaching sermons above the heads of his audience, and suggested greater simplicity; and, after a careful perusal of
them, we would suggest, even without a public phrenological
examination of those auditors' heads, that, whatever be their
situation in life, they are, if unable to understand these discourses, incapable of their duties, are endangering the public, and should be remanded to school. Clearer. more nervous, and in the true sense of the term, simpler discourses,
have not appeared for many years. Their style is in general




Da. GEORGE CROLY.                  145
pure Saxon-their matter strong, manly, and his own —their
figures always forcible, and  never forced-their theology
sound and scriptural —and would to God such sermons were
being preached in every church and chapel throughout
Britain! They might recall the many wanderers, who, with
weary heart and foot, are seeking rest elsewhere in vain, and
might counteract that current which is drawing away from
the sanctuaries so much of the talent, the virtue, and the
honesty of the land.
Dr. Croly, as a preacher, in his best manner, is faithfully represented in those discourses, particularly in his sermons on " Stephen," the " Theory of MIartyrdom," and the
" Productiveness of the Globe." We admire, in contrast with
some modern and ancient monstrous absurdities to the contrary, his idea of God's purpose in lmaking his universe-not
merely to display his own glory, which, when interpreted,
means just, like the stated purpose of Cmesar, to extend his
own namne, but to circulate his essence and image-to proclaim himself merciful, even through punishment-and even
in hell-flames to write himself down Love, is surely, as Dr.
Croly proclaims it, " the chief end "' of God! His sermon on
Stephen is a noble picture-we had almost said a daguerreotype —of that first martyrdom.  His'" Productiveness of the
Globe " is richer than it is original.  His  "Theory of Religion " is new, and strikingly illustrated.  His notion is, that
God, in three different dispensations —the Patriarchal, the
Mosaic, and  the Christian- has developed three grand
thoughts: first, the being of God; secondly, in shadow, the
doctrine of atonement; and thirdly, that of immortality.
With this arrangement we are not entirely satisfied, but reserve our objections till the " conclusion of the whole matter," in the shape of three successive volumes on each of
these periods, and the idea of each, has appeared, as we trust
it speedily shall.
We depicted, some time since, in a periodical, our visit
to Dr. Croly's.chapel, and the impression made by his appearance, and the part of his discourse we heard. It seemed
to us a shame to see the most accomplished clergyman in
London preaching to so thin an audience; but perhaps it is
accounted for partly by the strictness of his Conservative
7




146           SIlt EDWARD BULWEtR LYTTON.
principles, and partly by the stupid prejudice which exists
against all literary divines.
WVe are sorry we cannot, ere we conclude, supply any
particulars about his history.  Of its details we are altoge.
ther ignorant.  In conversation, he is described as powerful
and commanding. Hogg. the Ettrick Shepherd, we remember, describes him as rather disposed to take the lead, but
so exceedingly intelligent that you entirely forgive him. He
has been, as a literary man, rather solitary and self-asserting
-has never properly belonged to any clique or coterieand seems to  possess an austere and somewhat exclusive
standard of taste.
It is to us, and must be. to the Christian world, a delightful thought, to find such a man devoting the maturity
of his mind to labors peculiarly professional; and every one
who has the cause of religion at heart must wish him God
speed in his present researches. Religion has in its abyss
treasures yet unsounded and unsunned, though strong must
be the hand, and true the eye, and retentive the breath, and
daring yet reverent the spirit of their successful explorerand such we believe to be qualities possessed by Dr. Croly.
SIR EDWARD BULWEIR LYTTON.
PERHAPS the leading authors of the age may be divided into
three classes. 1st, Those who have written avowedly and entirely for the few. 2ndly, Those who have written principally for the many.  And, 3dly, Those who have sought
their audience in both classes, and have succeeded in forming, to some extent, at once an exoteric and an esoteric
school of admirers.  Of the first class, Coleridge and
Wordsworth are the most distinguished specimens.  Scott
and Dickens stand at the head of the second; and Byron and Bulwer are facile principes of the third.  Both
these last named writers commenced their career by appealing to the sympathies of the multitude; but by and
by, either satiated by their too easy success, or driven




SIR EDWARPD BULWER LYTTON.           147
onward by the rapid and gigantic progress of their own
minds, they aimed at higher things, and sought, nor sought
in vain, a more select audience. Byron's mind, in itself essentially unspeculative, was forced upwards upon those rugged and dangerous tracts of thought, where he has gathered
the rarest of his beauties, by intimacy with Shelley, by envious emulation of his Lake contemporaries, and, above all,
by the pale hand of his misery, unveiling to him heights
and depths in his nature and genius, which were previously
unknown and unsuspected, and beckoning him onward
through their grim and shadowy regions. He grew, at once,
and equally, in guilt, misery, and power. An intruder, too,
on domains where some other thinkers had long fixed their
calm and permanent dwelling, his appearance was the more
startling. Here was a dandy discussing the great questions
of natural and moral evil; a r'ouW in silk stockings meditating
suicide and mouthing blasphemy on an Alpine rock; a brilliant and popular wit and poet, setting Spinoza to music, and
satirizing the principalities and powers of heaven, as bitterly
as he had done the bards and reviewers of earth. Into those
giddy and terrible heights where Milton had entered a permitted guest, in "privilege of virtue;" where Goethe had
walked in like a passionless and prying cherub, forgetting
to worship in his absorbing desire to know; and on which
Shelley was wrecked and stranded, in the storm of his fanatical unbelief; Byron is upborne by the presumption and
the despair of his mental misery. Unable to see through
the high walls which bound and beset our limited faculties
and little life, he can at least dash his head against them.
HIence, in "Manfred," "Cain," "Heaven and Earth," and
" The Vision of Judgment," we have him calling upon the
higher minds of his age to be as miserable as he was, just as
he had in his first poems addressed the same sad message,
less energetically, and less earnestly, to the community at
large.  And were it not unspeakably painful to contemplate
a noble mind engaged in this profitless " apostleship of affliction," this thankless gospel of proclamation to men, that because they are miserable, it is their duty to become more so;
that because they are bad, they are bound to be worse; we
might be moved to laughter by its striking resemblance to
the old story of the fox who had lost his tail.




148           SIR EDWARD BULWVER LYTTON.
In the career of Bulwer, we find a faint yet traceable
resemblance to that of Byron.  Like him he began with wit,
satire, and persiflage.  Like him, he affected, for a season, a
melodramatic earnestness.  Like him, he was at last stung
into genuine sincerity, and shot upwards into a higher sphere
of thought and feeling. The three periods in Byron's history are distinctly marked by the three works, "English
Bards,"  "Childe Harold,"  and " Cain."  So "Pelham,"
"Eugene Aram," and " Zanoni," accurately mete out the stages
in Bulwer's progress.  Minor points of resemblance might
be noted between the pair.  Both sprung from  the aristocracy; and one, at least, was prouder of what he deduced
from Norman blood, than from nature.  Bulwer, like Byron,
is a distinguished dandy.  Like him, too, he has been separated from his wife; like him, he is liberal in his politics.
And while Byron, by way of doing penance, threw his jaded
system  into the Greek war, Bulwer has with better result
leaped into a tub of cold water!
Point and brilliance are at once perceived to be the
leading qualities of Bulwer's writing.  His style is vicious
from  excess of virtue, weak from  repletion of strength.
Every word is a point, every clause a beauty, the close of
every sentence a climax. IHe is as sedulous of his every
stroke, as if the effect of the whole depended upon it.  His
pages are all sparkling with minute and insulated splendors;
not suffused with a uniform and sober glow, nor shown in
the reflected light of a few solitary and surpassing beauties.
Some writers peril their reputation upon one long difficult
leap, and, it accomplished, walk on at their leisure. With
others, writing is a succession of hops, steps, and jumps.
This in general is productive of a feeling of tedium. It
teases and fatigues the mind of the reader. It is like crying
perpetually upon a hearer, who is attending with all his
might, to attend more carefully. It at once wearies and provokes, insults the reader, and betrays a certain weakness on
the part of the author.  If in Bulwer's writings we weary
less than in others, it is owing to the artistic skill with which
he intermingles his points of humor with those of sententious
reflection or vivid narrative. All is point: but the point
perpetually varies "from gay to grave, from lively to severe;" including in it raillery and reasoning, light dialogue




SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON               149
and earnest discussion, bursts of political feeling and raptures of poetical description; here a sarcasm, almost worthy
of Voltaire, and there a passage of pensive grandeur, which
Rousseau might have written in his tears,''o keep up this
perpetual play of varied excellence, required at once great
vigor and great versatility of talents: for Bulwer never walks
through his part, never proses, is never tame, and seldom
indeed substitutes sound for sense, or mere fiummery for
force and fire. Hle generally writes his best; and our great
quarrel, indeed, with him is, that he is too uniformly erect
in the stirrups, too conscious of himself, of his exquisite management, of his complete equipment, of the speed with which
he devours the dust; and seldom exhibits the careless grandeur of one who is riding at the pace of the whirlwind, with
perfect self-oblivion, and with perfect security.
Bulwer reminds us less of an Englishman Frenchified,
than of a Frenchman partially Anglicized.  The original
powers and tendencies of his mlind, his eloquence, wit, sentiments, and feelings, his talents and his opinions, his taste
and style, are those of a modern Frenchman. But these, long
subjected to English influences, and long trained to be candidates for an English popularity, have been modified and altered from their native bent. In all his writings, however,
you breathe a foreign atmosphere, and find very slight sympathy with the habits, manners, or tastes of his native country.  Not Zanoni alone, of his heroes, is cut off from country, as by a chasm, or if held to it, held only by ties, which
might with equal strength bind him to other planets; all his
leading characters, whatever their own pretensions, or whatever their creator may assert of them, are in reality citizens
of the world, and have no more genuine -relation to the land
whence they spring, than have the winds, which linger not
over its loveliest landscapes, and hurry past its most endeared
and consecrated spots. Eugene Aram is not an Englishman; Rienzi is hardly an Italian.  Bulwer is perhaps the
first instance of a great novelist obtaining popularity without
a particle of nationality in his spirit, or in his writings.
We do not question his attachment to his own principles
or-his native country; but of that tide of national prejudice
which, Burns says, "shall boil on in his breast till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest," he betrays not one drop.




150           SIR EDWNrARD BULWVER LYTTON.
His novels might all have appeared as translations from a
foreign language, and have lost but little of their interest or
verisimilitude.  This is the more remarkable, as his reign
exactly divides the space between that of two others, who
have obtained boundless fame, greatly in consequence of the
very quality, in varied forms, which Bulwer lacks.  Scott's
knowledge and love of Scotland, Dickens' knowledge and love
of London, stand in curious antithesis to Bulwer's intense
cosmopolitanism and ideal indifference.
Akin to this, and connected either as cause or as effect
with it, is a certain dignified independence of thought and
feeling, inseparable from the notion of Bulwer's mind.  He
is not a great original thinker; on no one subject can he
be called profound, but on all, he thinks and speaks for
himself. He belongs to no school either in literature or in
politics, and he has created no school.  He is too proud
for a Radical, and too wide-minded for a Tory.  He is too
definite and decisive to belong to the mystic school of letters; too impetuous and impulsive to cling to the classical;
too liberal to be blind to the beauties of either. I-Ie has
attained, thus, an insulated and original position, and may
be viewed as a separate, nor yet a small estate, in our intellectual realm.  He may take up for motto,' lVullius
ju>trare acclictns inz verba mnagistri;"' he may emblazon on his
shield " Desdichado." Some are torn, by violence from the
sympathies and attachments of their native soil, without
seeking to take root elsewhere; others are early transplanted,
in heart and intellect, to other countries; a few, again, seem
born, rooted up, and remain so for ever.  To this last class
we conceive Bulwer to belong.  In the present day, the
demand for earnestness, in its leading minds, has become
incessant and imperative. Men speak of it as if it had been
lately erected into a new test of admission into the privileges
alike of St. Stephen's and of Parnassus. A large and formidable jury, with Thomas Carlyle for foreman, are diligently
occupied in trying each new aspirant, as well as back-speirir,g
the old, on this question: " Earnest or a sham?  Heroic zsr
hearsay?  Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die."
Concerning this cry for earnestness, we can only say, eln
passant, that it is not, strictly speaking, new, but old; as
old, surely, as that great question of Deborah's to recreant




SILt EDWRAPD BULWER LYTTON.           151
Reuben, —" Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds to hear
the bleating of the flocks 2" or that more awful query of
the Tishbite's,- " fHow long halt ye between two opinions?"
that it is, in' theory, a robust truth; and sometimes, in
application, an exaggeration and a fallacy; and that, unless
preceded by the words " enlightened" and " virtuous," earnestness is a quality no more. intrinsically admirable, nay, as
blind and brutal, as the rush of a bull upon his foeman, or
as the foaming fury of a madman. Bulwer is not, we fear,
in the full sense of the term, an earnest man: nay we ha'e
heard of the great modern prophet of the quality, pronouncing him the most thoroughly false man of the age; and
another of the same school, christens him " a double-distilled
scent-bottle of cant."  In spite of this, however, we deem
him to possess, along with much that is affected, much, also,
that is true, and much that is deeply sympathetic with sincerity, although no devouring fire of purpose has hitherto
filled his being, or been seen to glare in his eye. Andcl, as we
hinted before, his later writings exhibit sometimes, in mournful and melancholy forms, a growing depth and truth of
feeling. Few, indeed, can even sportively wear, for a long
time, the yoke of genius, without its iron entering into the
soul, and eliciting that cry which becomes immortal.
Bulwer, as a novelist, has, from a compound of conflicting and imported materials, reared to himself an independent structure. HI-e has united many of the qualities of the
fashionable novel, of the Godwin philosophical novel, and
of the Waverley tale.  Hle las the levity and thoroughbred
air of the first; much of the mental anatomy and philosophical thought which often overpower the narrative in the
second; and a portion of the dramatic liveliness, the historical interest, and the elaborate costume of the third.
If, on the other hand, he is destitute of the long, solemn,
overwhelming swell of Godwin's style of writing, and of
the variety, the sweet, natural, and healthy tone of Scott's,
he has some qualities peculiar to himself-point, polishat times a classical elegance-at times a barbaric brilliance
and a perpetual mint of short sententious reflections-comnpact, rounded, and shining as new-made sovereigns.  We
know no novelist from whose writings we could extract so
many striking sentences containing fine thoughts, chased




1 52           SIr EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.
in imagery, "' applcs of gold in pictures of silver."   The
wisdom of Scott's sage reflections is homely but commonplace; Godwin beats his gold thin, and you gather his
philosophical acumen rather from  the whole conduct and
tone of the story, and his commentary upon it, than front
single and separate thoughts.  Dickens, whenever he moralizes, in his own person, becomes insufferably tame and feeble.  But it is Bulwer's beauty that he abounds in fine,
though not far gleams of insight; and it is his fault that
sometimes, while watching these, he allows the story to stand
still, or to drag heavily, and sinks the character of novelist in
that of brilliant essay-writer, or inditer of smart moral and
political apophthegms. In fact his works are too varied and versatile.  They are not novels or romances so much as compounds of the newspaper article, the essay, the political squib,
the gay and rapid dissertation; which, along with the necessary ingredients of fiction, combine to fornm  a junction,
without constituting a true artistic whole.
Reserving a few remarks upon one or two other of his
works till afterwards, we recur to the three which seem to
typify the stages of his progress; "'Pelham," "Eugene Aram,"
and "Zanoni."  " Pelham" like'-Anastasius,;  begins with
a prodigious affectation of wit. For several pages the reading is as gay and as wearisome as a jest-book.  You sigh for
a simple sentence, and would willingly dig even for dulness
as for hid treasure.  The wit, too, is not an irrepressible and
involuntary issue, like that from the teeming brain of Hood;
it is an artificial and forced flow; and the author and his
reader are equally relieved, when the clear path of the tale
at length breaks away from the luxuriant shrubbery in which
it is at first buried, and strikes into more open and elevated
ground.  It is the same with "' Anastasius;" but " Pelhamln"
we must admit, does not reach those heights of tenderness,
of nervous description, and of solemni moralizing, which have
rendered the other the prose " Don Juan," and something
better.  It is, at most, a series, or rather string, of clever,
dashing, disconnected sketches; and the moral problem  it
works out seems to be no more than this, that, under the
corsets of a dandy, there sometimes beats a heart.
In " Eugene Aram," Bulwer evidently aims at a higher
mark; and, in his own opinion, with considerable success.




SIR EDWVARD BULWER LYTTON.             153
We gather his estimate of this work from the fact that he
inscribes a labored and glowing panegyric on Scott with
the words, "The Author of Eugene Aram."   Vbwv, probably,
he would exchange this for " The Author of Zanoni."  Nor
should we, at least, nor, we think, the public, object to the
alteration.  "Eugene Aram" seems, to us, as lamentable
-a perversion of talent as the literature of the age has exhibited.  It is one of those works in which an unfortunate
choice of subject neutralizes eloquence, genius, and even
interest.  It is with it as with the' "Monk" and the
"Cenci," where the mnore splendid the decorations which
surround the disgusting object, the more disgusting it becomes.  It is, at best, deformity jewelled and enthroned.
Not content with the native difficulties of the subject-the
triteness of the story-its recent date-its dead level of
certainty-the author has, in a sort of daring perversity,
created new difficulties for himself to cope withal. He has
not bid the real pallid murderer to sit to his pencil, and
trusted for success to the severe accuracy of the portraiture.
Him he has spirited away, and has substituted the most
fantastic of all human fiends, resembling the more hideous
of heraldic devices, or the more unearthly of fossil remains.
Call him rather a graft from  Godwin's Falkland, upon the
rough reality of the actual (' Eugene Aram;" for the worst
of the matter is, that, after fabricating a being entirely
new, he is compelled, at last, to clash him with the old
pettifogging murderer, till the compound monstrosity is
complete and intolerable.  The philosopher, the poet, the
lover, the sublime victim  fighting with mnore " devils than
vast hell can hold,;' sinks, in the trial scene, where precisely he should have risen up like a " pyramid of fire," into
a sophister so mean and shallow, that you are reminded
of the toad into which the lost archangel dwindled his
stature.  The morality, -too, of the tale, seems to us detestable. The feelings with which you rise from its perusal,
or, at least, with which the author seems to wish you to rise,
are of regret and indignation, that, for the sin of an hour,
such a noble being should perish, as if lie would insinuate
the wisdom  of quarrel (how vain!) with those austere and
awful laws, by which moments of crime expand into centuries
of punishment! It is not wonderful that, in the struggle
7`




1.54          SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.
with such self-made difficulties, Bulwer has been defeated.
The wonder is, that he has been able to cover his retreat
amid such a cloud of beauties; and to attach an interest,
almost human, and even profound, to a being whom we cannot, in our wildest dreams, identify with mankind.  The
whole tale is one of those hazardous experiments which have
become so common of late years, in which a scanty success
is sought. at an infinite peril; like a wild-flower, of no great
worth, snatched, by a hardy wanderer, from the jaws of danger and death.  We notice in it, however, with pleasure, the
absence of that early levity which marked his writing, the
shooting germ of a nobler purpose, and an air of sincerity
fast becoming more than an air.
In saying that " Zanoni" is our chief favorite among
Bulwer's writings, we consciously expose ourselves to the
charge of paradox.  If we err, however, on this matter, we
err in company with the author himself; and, we believe,
with all Germany, and with many enlightened enthusiasts at
home. We refer, too, in our approbation,.more to the spirit
than to the execution of the work. As a whole, as a broad
and brilliant picture of a period and its hero, "IRienzi" is
perhaps his greatest work, and " that shield he may hold up
against all his enemies."  "The Last Days of Pompeii," on
the other hand, is calculated to enchant classical sholars, and
the book glows like a cinder from Vesuvius, and most gorgeously are the reelings of that fiery drunkard depicted.
The " Last of the Barons," again, as a cautious yet skilful filling up of the vast skeleton of Shakspeare, is attractive to all
who relish English story. But we are mistaken,if in that class
who love to see the Unknown, the Invisible, and the Eternal,
looking in upon them, through the loops and windows of the
present; whose footsteps turn instinctively toward the thick
and the dark places of the "wilderness of this world;" or
who, by deep disappointment or solemn sorrow, have been
driven to take up their permanent mental abode upon the
perilous verge of the unseen world, if " Zanoni" do not, on
such, exert a mightier spell, and to their feelings be not more
sweetly attuned, than any other of this writer's books. It is
a book not to be read in the drawing-room, but in the fields
-not in the sunshine, but in the twilight shade-not in the
sunshine, unless indeed that sunshine has been saddened,




SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.              155
and sheathed by a recent sorrow.  Thien will its wild and
mystic measures, its pathos, and its grandeur, steal in like
music, and mingle with the soul's emotions, till, like music,
they seem a part of the soul itself.
No termr has been more frequently abused than that of
religious novel.  This, as commonly employed, describes an
equivocal birth, if not a monster, of which the worst and
most popular specimen is ". Celebs in Search of a Wife."' It
is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious
part of her book.  Iolding it with a half shudder, and at
arms-length, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in the
other and the other infusion of prose criticism, commonplace
moralizing, sage aphorism, &c., till it is fairly diluted down
to her standard of utility and safety. But a religious novel
in the high and true sense of the term, is a noble thought:
a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out
as it were in flowers: a principle old as Deity, wreathed
with beauty, dramatized in action, incarnated in life, purified by suffering and death.  And we confess, that to this
ideal we know no novel in this our country that approaches
so nearly as " Zanoni."  An intense spirituality, a yearning
earnestness, a deep religious feeling, lie like the " soft shadow of an angel's wing upon its every page. Its beauties are
not of the " earth earthy."  Its very faults, cloudy, colossal,
tower above our petty judgment-seats, towards somen higher
tribunal.
Best of all is that shade of mournful grandeur which
rests upon it. Granting all its blemishes, and the improbabilities of its story, the occasional extravagances of its language,
let it have its praise for its pictures of love and grief-of a
love leading its votary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and
reminding you of that which made angels resign their starry
thrones for. the "' daughters of men;" and of a grief too deep
for tears, too sacred for lamentation, the grief which he increaseth that increaseth knowledge, the grief which not
earthly immortality, which death only can cure. The tears
which the most beautiful and melting close of the tale wrings
from our eyes are not those which wet the last pages of ordinary novels: they come from  a deeper source; and as the
lovers are united in death, to part no more, triumph blends
with the tenderness with which we witness the sad yet glo



f56           SiZt EDWARD BULWERL    L YTTON.
rious union. Bulwer, in the last scene, has apparently in his
eye the conclusion of the "'Revolt of Islamn," where Laon
and Laone, springing in spirit from the funereal pile, are united in a happier region, in the " caln dwellings of the mlighty dead," where on a fairer landscape rests a "holier day,'
and where the lesson awaits them, that
"Virtue, though obscured on earth, no less
Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness."
Almid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other productions, we may mention one or two "dearer than the rest."
The "Student." from its disconnected plan, and the fact that
the majority of its papers appeared previously, has seemed
to many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless collection of its author's study-sweepings. This, however, is not a
fair or correct estimate of its merits.  It in reality contains
the cream of Bulwer's periodical writings.  And the'" New
Monthly Magazine," during his editorship, approached our
ideal of a perfect magazine; combining, as it did, impartiality, variety, and power.  His "( Conversations with an Ambitious Student in ill health," though hardly equal to the dialogues of Plato, contain many rich meditations and criticisms,
suspended round a simple and affecting story.  The word
"ambitious," however, is unfortunate; for what sttrdent is
not, and should not be, ambitious?  To study is to climlb
" higher still, and higher, like a cloud of fire."  Talk of an
ambitious chamois or of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an
ambitious student. The allegories in the "' Student " strike us
as eminn tly fine, with glimpses of a more creative imagination than we can find in any of his writings save " Zanoni."
We have often regretted that the serious allegory, once toe
much affected, is now almost obsolete. Why should it be so?
Shall truth no more have its mounts of transfiguration?
Must Mirza no more be overheard in his soliloquies?2  And
is the road to the "Den " lost for ever?2  yTe trust, we trow
not.  In the " Student," too, occurs his far-famed attack upon
the anonymous in periodical writing.  We do not coincide
with him in this.  We do not think that the use of the anonymous either could or should be relinquished.  It is, to be
sure, in some measure relinquished as it is. The tidings of
the authorship of any article of consequence, in a Review or




SIR EDWAtRD BULtWER LYTTON.            157
Magazine, often now pass with the speed of lightning through
the literary world, till it is as well known in the book-shop
of the country town, or the post-office of the country village,
as in Albermarle or George Street.
But; in the first place, the anonymous forms a very profitable exercise for the acuteness of our young critics, who
become, through it, masters in the science of internal evidence,
and learn to detect the fine Roman hand of this and the
other writer, even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots of
his i's. Besides, secondly, the anonymous forms for the
author an ideal character, fixes him  in an ideal position,
projects him out of himself; and hence many writers have
surpassed themselves, both in power and popularity, while
writing under its shelter. So with Swift, in his " Tale of
a Tub;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter
Scott; Addison, too, was never so good as when he put on
the short face of the " Spectator." Wilson is never so good,
as when he assumes the glorious alias of Christopher North.
And, thirdly, the anonymous, when preserved, piques the curiosity of the reader, mystifies him into interest; and, on the
other hand, sometimes allows a bold and honest writer, to shoot
folly, expose error, strip false pretension, and denounce
wrong, with greater safety and effect. A time may come
when the anonymous will require to be abandoned: but we
are very doubtful if that time has yet arrived.
In pursuing, at the commencement of this paper, a parallel
between Byron and Bulwer, we omitted to note a stage, the
last in the former's literary progress. Toward the close of
his career, his wild shrieking earnestness subsided into Epicurean derision. IHe became dissolved into one contemptuous
and unhappy sneer. Beginning with the satiric bitterness of
"' English Bards, he ended with the fiendish gayety of " Don
Juan."  He laughed at first that he " might not weep;" but
ultimately this miserable mirth drowned his enthusiasm, his
heart, and put out the few flickering embers of his natural
piety.  The deep tragedy dissolved in a "poor pickle herring," yet mournful farce. We trust that our novelist will
not complete his resemblance to the poet, by sinking into a
satirist.'Tis indeed a pitiful sight that, of one who has
passed the meridian of life and reputation, grinning back, in
helpless mockery and toothless laughter, upon the brilliant




158                RALPHI  WALDO EMERSON.
way which he has traversed, but to which he can return no
more.  We anticipate for Bulwer a better destiny.  He who
has mated with the mighty spirit, which had almost reared
again the fallen Titanic form  of republican Rome; whose
genius has travelled up the Rhine, like a breeze of music
"stealing and giving odor;" who, in "England  and  the
English," has cast a rapid  but vigorous glance upon the
tendencies of our wondrous age; who, in his verse, has so
admirably pictured the stages of romance in Milton's story;
who has gone down a " diver lean and strong," after Schiller,
into the "innermost main," lifting with. a fearless hand the
"veil that is woven with night and with terror;" and in
" Zanoni," has essayed to relume the mystic fires of the
Rosicrucians, and to reveal the dread secrets of the spiritual
world; must worthily close a career so illustrious.:
RALPH WALDO EMERISON.
ELSEWHEIEE we have spoken shortly, but sincerely, of Emerson, and even at the risk of egotism, we must say, that we
have been not a little amused at the treatment which our
remarks have met with from  the press of America.  So far
* Since the above was written, Bulwer has published three works of
consequence, all very different from each other: " Lucretia," a detestable
imita ion of a detestable school; "Harold," a fine historical romance;
and " The Caxtons," the sweetest, simplest, most genuine and natural of
all his productions. An ingenious friend in " Hogg " has charged us with
having painted an incongruous and inconsistent portrait of Bulwer, asserting that oar original feeling toward him was that of enthusiastic admiration, but had been modified upon the mere dictum of some eminent friend.
This is a total misapprehension.  Our feelings of admiration toward
Bulwer have rather grown than otherwise. In the year 1840 we wrote
rather slightingly of him in the " Dumfries Herald," but we had not then
read "Zanoni."  To piece together an old and new opinion, is, indeed,
an absurd attempt, and leads to an absurd result; but it is an attempt we
have never made, and let the public judge whether it be a result which we
have reached. We could retort upon our clever friend, by proving that
within one year he expressed two opinions of this very article.




RALP'IH WALDO EMERSON.              159
as we can judge from periodicals and newspapers, from Baltimore to Boston, a cry of universal reprobation has assailed
that article.  It has fallen between two stools-on the one
hand, Emerson's detractors are furious with us, for placing
him at the head of American literature, and so far they are
right-though a most national writer, to American literature
he does not belong.  He is among them, but not of them —
a separate state, which no Texas negotiation will ever be
able to annex to their territory. On the other hand, the
school of Transcendentalists contend that we do hinm less
than justice; that our lines are unable to measure or to hold
this leviathan; and the opinion of one American author to
this effect deeply humiliated us, till accidentally falling in
with her own criticisms, and finding that, among other judgments of the same kind, she preferred Southey, as a poet, to
Shelley, we were not a little comforted, and began to think
that, perhaps, we bad as good a right to think and speak
about Emerson as herself. "Verily, a prophet hath honor,
save in his own country, and among those of his own house"
— san expression containing much more truth in it than it at
first seems to imply; for, indeed, the honor given in one's
own country is often as worthless as the neglect or abuse;
and, notwithstanding the well-known French adage, the vilest
and commonest of hero-worship is that of valets and parasites, who measure their idol by the standard of his superiority to their own littleness.  Hero-worship, however, even
in its worst form, is preferable to that spirit of jealousy
whict. pervades much of the American press in reference to
Emerson, which, at the mention of his name, elicits in each
journal a long list of illustrious-obscure (like a shower of
bats'from the roof of a barn on the entrance of a light), in
its j.dgment superior to him-as though a Cockney, insulted
by a panegyric on Carlyle, as one of the principal literary
ornaments of London, were to produce and parade the names
of the subordinate scribblers in the "Satirist," " Literary
Gazette," &e, as the genuine galaxy of her mental firmament.  With occasional exceptions, the great general rule is
-how  does a name sound afar?-does it return upon us
fiom the horizon? —what impression does it make upon those
who, unprejudiced either for or against the author personally
-uncirculmscribed by clique or coterie —unaltered by ad



160              RALPH VWALDO EMERSON.
verse, unsoftenecl by favorable criticism, have fairly brought
his works to the test of their own true-feeling and true-telling
souls?
This has been eminently the case with Emerson. To
him Britain is beginning to requite the justice which America, to her honor, first awarded to Carlyle. Sincere spirits,
in every part of the country, who have, many of them, no
sympathy with Emerson's surmised opinions, delight, nevertheless, to do him  honor, as an earnest, honest, and gifted
man, caught, indeed, and struggling in a most alien element,
standing almost alone in a mechan:cal country, and teaching
spiritual truth to those to many of whom  Mammon —not
M'oses —has become the lawgiver, and' Cant —not Christthe God, but as yet faithful to the mission with which he
deems himself to be fraught.
Alike careless and fearless of the judgment which may
be passed by any man here or in America on our opinions,
we propose now to extend our former estimate of Emerson
— an  estimate which has at once been strengthened and
modified by the volh-me of poems he has recently issued.
And first of his little volume of poems.  They are not
wholes, but extracts, from the volume of his mind.  They
are, as he truly calls some of them, " Woodnotes," as beautiful, changeful, capricious, and unfathomable often as the
song of the birds.  On hearing such notes we sometimes
ask ourselves, 1" What says that song which has lapped us
in such delicious reverie, and made us almost forget the
music in the sweet thoughts which are suggested by it "
Vain the question, for is not the suggestion of sudh sweet
thoughts saying enough, saying all that it was needed to
say?  It is the bird that speaks-our own soul alone can
furnish the interpretation.  So with many of the poems of
Emerson.  They mean absolutely nothing-they are mere
n'onsense-verses-except to those who have learned their
cipher, and whose heart instinctively dances to their tune.
It is often a wordless music-a wild wailing rhythm —a
sound inexplicable, but no more absurd or meaningless than
the note of the flute or the thrill of the mountain bagpipe.
Who would, or who, though willing, could, translate into
eommon, into all language, that train of thought and emotion, long as the life of the soul, and wide as the firmament,




RALP-I WALDO EMERSON.               161
which one inarticulate melody can awaken in the mind?  So
some of Emerson's verses float us away, listening and lost, on
their stream of sound, and of dim suggestive meaning.  Led
himself, as he repeatedly says, " as far as the incommunicable,'" he leads us into the same mystic region, and we feel
that even in Nature there are things unutterable, which it is
not possible for the tongue of man to utter, and which yet
are real as the earth and the heavens. Coleridge remarks,.
that wherever you -find a sentence musically worded, of true
rhythm, and melody in the words, there is something deep
and good in the meaning too.  MIere no-meaning will not
wed with sweet sound.  We do not profess to be in the secret of some of the more mystic poems in this volume, such
as "E Uriel " and the " Sphynx." Nor can we think that there
is much 9'oom behind the mystic screen-where the poet
stands-between his song and the "Oversoul;" but we are
ready to apply the old Socratic rule in his behalf-what we
understand is excellent, what we do not understand is likely
to be excellent too.
A man is often better than his theory, however good and.
comparatively true that theory be; and this holds especially
true of a poet s creed, which, however dry, hard, and abstract,
flushes into beauty at his touch, even as the poet's cottage
has charms about it, which are concealed from  the vulgar
eye; and the poet's bride is often by him prodigally clothed
with beauties which niggard nature had denied her. What
Mr. Emerson's creed is, we honestly say we do not know —
that all we confidently assert concerning it is, that you cannot gather it like apples into baskets, nor grind it like corn
into provender, nor wind and unwind it like a hank of yarn,
nor even collect it like sunlight into a focus, and analyze it
into prismatic points, whether five or seven-nor inclose it
within all the vocabularies of all vernacular tongues; and
yet that it is not so bad or unholy, but that in his iincd
Beauty pitches her tents around its borders, and Wonder
looks up toward it with rapt eye, and Song tunes sweet melodies in its praise, and Love, like the arms of a child seeking
to span a giant oak, seeks to draw into her embrace its imnmeasurable vastness.  It is such a creed as a man lmight
form and subscribe in a dream, and when lie awoke receive
a gentle shrift from wise and gentle confessors.  Why criti



162              RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
cise or condemn the long nocturnal reverie of a poetic mind;
seeking to impose its soft fantasy upon the solid and stupendons universe! We will pass it by in silence, simply retorting the smile with which he regards our sterner theories, as
we watch him weaving his network of cobweb around the
limbs of the " Sphynx," and deeming that he has her fast.
This, indeed, is the great fault of Emerson.  He has a
penchant for framing brain-webs of all sorts and sizes; and
because they hang beautifully in the sunbeam, and wave
gracefully in the breeze, and are to his eye peopled with a
fairy race, he deems them worthy of all acceptation, and we
verily believe would mount the scaffold, if requisite, for the
wildest day-dream that ever crossed his soul among the
woods. It was for visions as palpable as the sun that the
ancient prophets sacrificed or periled their lives. It was for
facts of which their own eyes and ears were cognizant that
the apostles of the Lamb loved not their lives unto the death.
It was not till this age that " Cloudland," nay, dreamlanddimmer still —sent forth a missionary to testify, with rapt
look and surging eloquence, his belief in the shadows of his
own thoughts.
Emerson, coming down among men from his mystic altitudes, reminds us irresistibly at times of Rip Van Winkle,
with his gray beard and rusty firelock, descending the Catskill
Mountains, from his sleep of a hundred years. A dimn, sleepy
atmosphere hangs around him.  All things have an unreal
appearance.  Men seem "like trees walking.'  Of his own
identity he is by no means certain.  As in the " Taming of
the Shrew," the sun and the moon seem to have interchanged
places; and yet, arrived at his native village, he (not exactly
like honest Rip) sets up a grocer's shop, and sells, inot the
mystic draught of the mountain, but often the merest commonplace preparations of an antiquated morality.
In fact, nothing is more astounding about this writer than
the mingled originality and triteness of his matter. Now he
speaks as if from inmost communion with the soul of being;
Nature seems relieved of a deep burden which had long lain
on her bosom, when some of his oracular words are uttered;
and now it is as if the throat of the thunder had announced
the rule of three-as if the old silence had been broken, to
enunciate some truism which every schoolboy had long ago




RALPH WALDO EMERSON.                163
recorded in his copy-book.  The "Essay on Compensation,"
for example, proves most triumphantly that vice is its own
punishment, and virtue its own reward; but, so far as it
seeks to show that vice is its own only punishment, and virtue is its own only reward, it signally fails.  The truth, indeed, is this-vice does punish, and terribly punish, its victims, but who is to punish vice?  How is it to be gibbeted
for the warning of the moral universe?  Can a mere undercurrent of present punishment be sufficient for this, if there
be such a thing as a great general commonwealth in the universe at all?  Must it not receive, as the voluntary act of
responsible agents, some public and final rebuke? The compensation which it at present obtains is but comparatively a
course of private teaching; and does not the fact, that it is
on the whole unsuccessful, create a necessity for a more public, strict, and effectual reckoning and instruction?
Thus, what is true in this celebrated essay is not new;
and what is new is not true.  This is not unfrequently the
manner of Mr. Emerson.  To an egregious truism  he sometimes suddenly appends a paradox as egregious. Like a
stolid or a sly servant at the door of a drawing-room, he calls
out the names of an old respected guest and of an intruding
and presumptuous charlatan, so quickly and so close together, that they appear to the company to enter as a friendly
pair. Of intentional deception on such matters, we cheerfully and at once acquit him; but to his eye, emerging from
the strange dreamy abnormal regions in which he has dwelt
so long, old things appear new, and things new to very crudity appear stamped with the authority and covered with
the hoary grandeur of age.
Emerson's object of worship has been by many called
nature-it is, in reality,: man; but by man, in his dark ambiguities and inconsistencies, repelled, he has turned round
and sought to see his face exhibited in the reflector of nature. It is man whom he seeks every where in the creation.
In pursuit of an ideal man, he runs up the midnight winds
of the forest and questions every star of the sky.  To gain
some authentic tidings of man's origin-his nature-past and
future history —he listens with patient ear to the songs of
birds-the wail of torrents-as if each smallest surge of air
were whispering, could he but catch the meaning, about man.




164              RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Hie feels that every enigma runs into the great enigma —what is man? and that if he could but unlock his own heart,
the key of the universe were found.  Perhaps nature, in
some benignant or unguarded hour, will tell him where that
key was lost! At all events, he will persist in believing that
the creation is a vast symbol of man; that every tree and
blade of grass is somehow cognate with his nature, and significant of his destiny; and that the remotest stars are only
the distant perspective of that picture of which he is the
central figure.
It is this which so beautifies nature to his eye-that
gives him more than an organic or associated pleasure'in its
forms, and renders it to him, not so much an object of love
or of admiration as of ardent study.  To many nature is but
the face of a great doll-a well-painted insipidity; to Emerson it has sculptured on it an unknown but mighty language, which he hopes yet to decipher.  Could he but understand its alphabet! —could he but accurately spell out one
of its glorious syllables! In the light of that flashing
syllable he would appear to himself discovered, explained;
and thus, once for all, would be read the riddle of the
world!
This, too, prevents his intercourse with nature from becoming either tedious or melancholy.  Nature, to most, is a
gloomy companion.  Sometimes they are tired of it-more
frequently they are terrified.  " What does all this mean?
what would all this teach us? what would those frowning
schoolmasters of mountains have us to do or learn?" are
questions which, though not presented in form, are felt in
reality, and which clear, as by a whip of small cords, the desecrated temple of nature. A few, indeed, are still left
standing in the midst alone! And among those few is
Emerson, who is reconciled to remain, chiefly through the
hope and the desire of attaining one day more perfect knowledge of nature's silent cipher, and more entire communion
with nature's secret soul. Like an enthusiastic boy clasping
a Homer's "'Iliad," and saying, "I shall yet be able to understand this," does he seem to say, "Dear are ye to me,
Monadnoc and Agiochook, dear ye Alleghanies and Niagaras,
because I yet hope (or at least those may hope who are to
follow me) to unfix your clasps of iron-to unroll your sheets




RALPH WALDO EMERSON.                165
of adamant-to deliver the giant truths that are buried and
struggling below you —to arrest in human speech the accents of your vague and tumultuous thunder."
As it is. his converse with creation is intimate and endearing.  "Passing over a bare common, amid snow-puddles, he almost fears to say how glad he is." He seems (particularly in his "Woodnotes ") an inspired tree, his veins full
of sap instead of blood; and you take up his volume of
poems,. clad as it is in green, and smell to it as to a fresh
leaf.  He is like the shepherd (in Johnson's fine fable)
among the Carpathian rocks, who understood the language
of the vultures; the sounds-how manifold-of the American forest say to his purged ear what they say to few others,
and what even his language is unable fully to express.
Akin to this passionate love of nature is one main error
in Emerson's system. Because nature consoles and satisfies
him, he would preach it as a healing influence of universal
efficacy.  He would send man to the fields and woods to
learn instruction and get cured of his many wounds. These
are the airy academies which le recommends.  But, alas 
how few can act upon the recommendation! How few entertain a genuine love for nature! Man, through his unhappy-wanderings, has been separated, nay, divorced, from
what was originally his pure and beautiful bride —the universe. No one feels this more than Emerson, or has mourned
it in language more plaintive. But why will he persist in
prescribing nature as a panacea to those who, by his own
showing, are incapable of apprehending its virtue?  They
are clamoring for bread, and he would give them rocks and
ruins.  W'e hold that between man and nature there is a
gulf which nothing but a vital change upon his character,
circumstances, and habits can fill up.  Ere applying the
medicine, you must surely premise the stomach.  Man, as a
collective being, has little perception of the beauty, and none
of the high spiritual meaning of creation; and as well teach
the blind religion through the avenue of the eye, as teach
average man truth or hope, or faith or purity, through a nature amid which he dwells an alien and an enemy.
On no subject is there so much pretended, and on none
so little real feeling, as in reference to the beauties of nature.  We do not allude merely to the trash which professed




166             RALPH VALDO EMERSON.
authors, like even Dickens, indite, when, against the grain;
it is their cue to fall into raptures with Niagara, or the
scenery of the Eternal City, but to the experiences of everyday life. I-ow often have we travelled with parties of pleasure
(as they are called) whose faces, after the first burst of animal excitement, produced by fresh air and society, had subsided, it was impossible to contemplate without a mixture of
ludicrous and melancholy emotions. Besides, here and there,
a young gentleman with elevated eyebrow and conceited
side-look, spouting poetry; and a few young ladies looking
intensely sentimental during the spoutation, the majority exhibited, so far as pleasure was concerned, an absolute blank
-weariness, disgust, insipid disregard, or positive aversion,
to all the grander features of the scenery, were the general
feelings visible. Still more detestable were their occasional
exclamations of forced admiration, nearly as eloquent, but
not so sincere, as the enthusiasm of porkers over their provender. And how quickly did a starveling jest or a wretched
pun jerk them down from their altitudes to a more congenial
region! A clouble entendre told better than the sight of a
biforked Grampian.  The poppling of a cork was finer music
than the roar of a cataract.  A  silly flirtation among the
hazel-bushes was far more memorable than the sudden gleam
of a blue lake flashing through the umbrage like another
morning.  And when the day was over, and the party
were returning homewards, it was dismal amid the deepening shadows of earth and the thickening glories of the
sky, to witness the jaded looks, the exhausted spirits, the
emptied hearts and souls of those vain fiutterers about
nature, whom the mighty mother had amused herself with
tiring and tormenting, instead of unbarring to them  her
naked loveliness, or hinting to them  one of the smallest
secrets of her inmost soul. Specimens these of myriads
upon myriads of parties of pleasure, which fashion is yearly
stranding upon the shores of nature-to them  an inhospitable coast-and proofs that man, as a species, must grow,
and perhaps grow for ages. ere he be fit, even "on tiptoe
standing," to be on a level with that " house not made with
hands," of which he is now the unworthy tenant.  Surely
the beauties of nature are an appliance too refined for the
present coarse complaints of degraded humanity, which a
fiercer caustic must cure.




RALPH 7WALDO EMERSON.               167
Emerson may be denominated emphatically the man ot
contrasts.  At times he is, we have seen, the most commonplace, at other times the most paradoxical of thinkers.  So
is he at once one of the clearest and one of the most obscure of writers.  He is seldom muddy; but either transparent as crystal or utterly opaque.  He sprinkles sentences (as divines do Scripture quotations) upon his page,
which are not only clear, but cast, like glow-wormis, a far
and fairy light around them.  At other times he scatters
a shower of paragraphs, which lie, like elf-knots, insulated
and insoluble. Hence reading him has the stimulus of a
walk amid the interchanging lights and shadows of the
woods, or it is like a game of hide-and-seek, or you feel
somewhat like the unlearned reader of Howe and Baxter
when he comes upon their Latin and Greek quotations.
You skip or bolt his bits of mysticism, and pass on with
greater gusto to the clear and the open. Whether there
be degrees in biblical inspiration or not, there are degrees
in his. Now he rays out light, and now, like a black star,
he deluges us with darkness.  The explanation of all this
lies, we think, here-Emerson has naturally a poetic and
practical, not a philosophic or subtle mind; he has subjected himself, however, to philosophic culture, with much
care, but with partial success; when he speaks directly from
his own mind, his utterances are vivid to very brilliance;
when he speaks from recollection of his teachers, they are
exceedingly perplexed and obscure.
He is certainly, apart altogether from his verse, the
truest poet America has produced.  lie has looked immediately, and through no foreign medium, at the poetical
elements which he found lying around him.  He has " staid
at home with the soul," leaving others to gad abroad in
search of an artificial and imperfect inspiration.  He has
said, " If the spirit of poetry chooses to descend upon nme as
I stand still, it is well; if not, I will not go a step out of my
road in search of it; here, on this rugged soil of Massachusetts, I take my stand, baring my brow in the breeze of
my own country, and invoking the genius of my own words."
Nor has he invoked it in vain.,Words, which are pictures
— sounds, which are song —snatches of a deep woodland
melody-jubilant raptures in praise of nature, reminding




RALPH WALDO EBIMElSOi.
you afar off of those old Hebrew  hymns, which, paired to
the timbrel or the clash of cymbals, rose like the cries of
some great victory to heaven —are given to Emerson at his
pleasure.  His prose is not upon occasion, and elaborately
dyed with poetic hues, but wears them  ever about it on its
way, which is a winged way, not along the earth, but through
the high and liquid air. W~hy should a man like this write
verse?'Does he think that truth, like sheep, requires a bell
round its neck, ere it be permitted to go abroad?  Have
his thoughts risen irresistibly above the reaches of prose,
and voluntarily moved into harmonious numbers? Does he
mean to abandon-or could he, without remorse-that wondrous prose style of his, combining the sweet simplicity of
Addison with the force of Carlyle?  Is he impatient to
have his verses set to music, and sung in the streets or in
the drawing-rooms?  Let him be assured that, exquisite as
many of his poems are, his other writings are a truer and
richer voice, their short and mellow sentences moving to the
breath of his spirit as musically as the pine-cones to the
breeze.
WVhen we take into account this author's poetic tendencies and idealistic training, we are astonished that he should
be often the most practical of moralists.  And yet so it is.
His refined theories frequently bend down like rainbows,
and rest their bases on earth.  He often seeks to translate
transcendental truth into life and action.  Himself may be
standing still, but it is as a cannon stands still; his words
are careering over the world, calling on men to be fervent in
spirit, as well as diligent in business.  There is something
at times almost laughable in the sight of this man living
"collaterally or aside "-this quiet, wrapt mystic standing
with folded arms, like a second Simon Stylites, and yet
preaching motion, progress-fervent motion, perpetual kindling progress to all around him. Motionless as a finger-post,
he, like it, shows the way onwards to all passers-by.  He is,
in this respect, very unlike Wordsworth, who would protect
the quiet of his fields as carefully as that of his family vault,
or as the peace of his own heart; who, in love for calm,
would almost prefer the pacing of the silent streets of a city
of the plague to the most crowded thoroughfares of London,
and who hates each railway as if, to use the Scripture allusion,




RALPiH  WALDO EMIERSON.             169
its foundation were laid on his first-born, and its terminus
were set up over the grave of his youngest child. Emerson,
standing on the shore, blesses the steamers that are sweeping
past, and cries, " Sweep on to your destination with your
freightage of busy thoughts and throbbing purposes, and, as
you pass, churn up the waters into poetry i" perched on Monadnoc, he seems to print a path into the cloudland of the
future for the rushing railway train, which affects him not
with fear, but with hope, for he looks on the machinery of
this age as a great scheme of conductors, lying spread and
ready for the nobler influences of a coming period.  He
feels that the real truth is this: railways have not desecrated Nature, but have left  Can  be/tinzd, and it were well
that man's spiritual should overtake his physical progress.
The great lessons of a practical kind which Emerson teaches,
or tries to teach his countrymen, are faith, hope, charity, and
self-reliance.  He does not need to teach them the cheap virtues of industry and attention to their own interest; certain
distinctions between nzemt and tzunn, right and wrong, even
he has failed to impress upon their apprehension. But he
has been unwearied in urging them to faith-in other worcls,
to realize, above the details of life, its intrinsic worth and
grandeur as a whole, as well as the presence of divine laws,
controlling and animating it all; to hope in the existence of
an advance as certain as the motion of the globe (a feeling
this which we notice with pleasture to be growing in his
writings); to love, as the mother of that milder day which
he expects and prophesies; and to self-reliance, as the strong
girdle of a nation's, as well as of an individual's loins, without which both are "weak as is a breaking wave."
To a country like America, whose dependence upon Britain too often reminds us of an upstart hanging heavily, yet
with an air of insolent carelessness, upon the arm of a superior, of what use might the latter lesson be?  " Trust thyself. Cut a strong oaken staff from thy own woods, and rest
sturdily, like a woodland giant, upon it. Give over stealing
from and then abusing the old country.  Kill and eat thine
own mutton, instead of living on rotten importedfricass&es.
Aspire to originality in something else than national faults,
insolences, and brutalities.  Dare to be true, honest-thyself,
indeed, a nzew country-and the Great Spirit, who loved thee
8




1 70             RALPI WALDO. Ei3RIOI.:in thy shaggy primeval mantle, will love thee still, and
breathe on thee a breath of his old inspiration."  Thus, substantially, in a thousand places, does Emerson preach to his
native country.
In judging, whether of his faults or merits, we ought never
to lose sight of what is his real position —he was, and is a
recluse.  He has voluntarily retired from society.  Like the
knights of old, who left the society of their mistresses to
meditate in solitary places upon their charms, he, in love to
man, has left him, and muses alone upon his character and
destiny.  His is not the savage grumbling retreat of a Black
Dwarf, nor the Parthian flight of a Byron, nor the forced
expulsion of a Shelley, who, seeking to clasp all men to his
warm bosom, was with loud outcries repelled, and ran, shrieking, into solitude —it has been a quiet, deliberate, dignified
withdrawal.  lIe has said, "'If I leave you, I shall, perchance,
be better able to continue to love yol -and perhaps, too, better able to understand you-and perhaps, above all, better able
to profit you." And so the refined philanthropist has gone
away to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, among the
blackberry vines or by the "leopard colored rills," or up
the long dinm vistas of the forest glades.  A healthier and
happier Cowper, his retreat made, at the time, as little noise
as that of the solitary of Olney.  London knew not that one,
soon to be the greatest poet of that age, and the most powerful satirist of its own vices, was leaving for the country, in
the shape of a poor, timid hypochondriac. None cried "stole
away" to this wounded hare.  So Boston nor Nlew England
imagined not that their finest spirit had forsaken his chapel
for the cathedral of the woods-and they would have laughed
you to scorn had you told them so.
In this capacity of recluse he has conducted himself in a
way worthy of the voice which came to him from the heart
of the forest, saying, "('Come hither and I will show thee a
thing."' By exercise and stern study he has conquered that
tendency to aimless and indolent reverie, which is so apt to
assail thinking men in solitude.  By the practice of bodily
temperance and mental hope, he has, in a great measure,
evaded the gloom of vexing thoughts and importunate cravings.  His mind has, "like a melon," expanded in the sun.
shine.




RALPH WALDO EMERSON.                171
"The outward forms of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has view'd;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him illn solitude."
Still we cannot say that he has entirely escaped the drawbacks to which the recluse is subject. Ile has been living in
a world of his own-he has been more conversant with principles than with facts-and more with dreams than either.
His writing sometimes wants the edge and point which can
be gained only by rough contact with the world; as it is, it
is often rather an inarticulate murmur as of a brook, careless
whether it be heard or understood or not, than the sharp
voice of a living man.  Perhaps, also, like most solitaries, he
has formed and nursed an exaggerated idea of himself and
his mission. In despite to the current of general opinion, he
sometimes throws in rugged and crude absurdities, which
have come from some other source than of the " Oversoul!"
And, altogether, through the mist of the sweet vision, which
seems the permanent abode of his own mind, he has but imperfect glimpses of the depth and intensity of that human
misery, which is but another name for human life.
There is another subject where, we humbly think, his
views are still more egregiously in error. We refer to human
guilt. We agree with him in thinking that there is a point
of view from which this dark topic may be a theme of gratulation.  But we deem him premature and presumptuous in
imagining that he has already reached that high angle of
vision.  If.Foster's discolored sight, on the one hand, gave
" hell a murkier gloom," and made sin yet uglier than it is,
Emerson refines it away to nothing, and really seems to
regard the evil committed by man in precisely the same light
as the cunning of the serpent and the ferocity of the tiger.
Who has anointed his eyes with eye-salve, so that he can
look complacently, and with incipient praise on his lips, upon
the loathsome shapes of human depravity?  What Genius
if the western mountains has taken him  to an elevation,
whence the mass of man's wickedness, communicating with
hell, and growing up toward retribution, appears but a molehill, agreeably diversifying the monotony of this world's
landscape? The sun may, with his burning lips, kiss and
gild pollution, and remain pure; but that human spirit ought




172e            RALPHI  WALDO EMERSON.
to be supernal which can touch and toy with sin. And
if, in his vision of the world, there be barely room for guilt.
where is there space left or required for atonement?
It was once remarked by us of John Foster,"  pity but he
had been a wickeder man;" the meaning of which strange
expression was this-pity but that, instead of standing at
such an austere distance from human frailty, he had come
nearer it, and in a larger measure partaken of it himself;
for, in this case, his conceptions of it would have been juster,
mellower, and less terribly harsh.  We may parallel this by
saying, pity almost but Emerson had been a worse and an
unhappier man; for thus might he have felt more of the evil
of depravity, from its remorse and its retribution, and been
enabled to counteract that tendency, which evidently exists
in his sanguine temperament, to underrate its virulence.
Like every really original mind, Emerson has been frequently subjected to and injured by comparison with others.
Because he bears certain general resemblances to others, he
must be their imitator or feebler alias. Because he is as tall
as one or two reputed giants, he must be of their progeny!
Hle has been called, accordingly, the American Montaignethe American Carlyle-nay, a "Yankee pocket edition of
Carlyle." Unfortunate America! It has been so long the
land of mocking-birds, that when an eagle of Jove at last
appears, he must have imported his scream, and borrowed
the wild lustre of his eye! A great original standing up in
an imitative country looks so sudden and so strange, that
men at first conceive him a forced and foreign production.
We will, on the contrary, cling to our belief, that Emerson is
himself, and no other; and has learned that piercing yet
musical note to which nations are beginning to listen, directly
from the fontal source of all melody. We are sure that he
would rather be an owl, hooting his own hideous monotone,
than the most accomplished of the imitative race of mockingbirds or parrots.
We think that we can observe in many of Emerson's
iater essays, and in some of his poems, symptoms of deepening obscurity; the twilight of his thought seems rushing
down into night.  His utterances are becoming vaguer and
more elaborately oracular.  He is dealing in deliberate
puzzles-through the breaks in the dark forest of his page




RALPII WALDO EMERSON,                173
yOU see his mind in full retreat toward some remoter Cimmerian gloom.  That retreat we would arrest if we could;
for we are afraid that those who will follow him  thither will
be few and far between.  Since he has gathered a large body
of exoter'ic disciples, it is his duty to seek to instruct,
instead of perplexing and bewildering them.
Of Emerson's history we have little to tell. He was one
of several brothers-all men of promise and genius-who
died early, and whose loss, in one of his little poemrs, he
deplores, as the "strong star-bright companions" of his youth.
He officiated for some time as a clergyman in Boston.  An
American gentleman, who attended his chapel, gave us lately
a few particulars about his ministry. Noted for the amiability of his disposition, the strictness of his morals, and attention to his duties, he became, on these accounts, the idol of
his congregation. His preaching, however, was not generally
popular, nor did it deserve to be. Our informant declared,
that while Dr. Channing was the most, Emerson was the
least, popular minister in Boston, and confessed that he
never heard him preach a first rate sermon till his last, in
which he informed his congregation that he could conscientiously preach to them no more. The immediate cause of his
resignation was his adoption of some peculiar views of the
Lord's Supper. In reality, however, the pulpit was not his
pride of place. Its circle not only confined his body, but
restricted his soul.  He preferred rather to stray to and fro
along the crooked serpent of eternity! He went away to
think, farm, and write (as the Hutchinsons so sweetly sing)
in the " old granite state."  Thence, save to lecture, he has
seldom issued, till his late pilgrimage to Britain. One trial,
he has himself recorded to have shot like lightning through
the haze of his mystic tabernacle, and to have pierced his
soul to the quick. It was the death of a dear child of rare
promise, whose threnody he has sung as none else could. It
is the most touching of his strains to us, who have felt how
the blotting out of one fair young face (albeit not so nearly
related) is for a season the darkening of earth and of heaven.
Since beginning to write, we have had the opportunity of
hearing Emerson the lecturer, as well as of meeting Emerson
the man, and we shall close by a few jottings on him. Of
Emerson the private individual, it were indelicate to say




174              RALPH WALDO EMERiSON.
much; suffice it that he has neither tail nor cloven foot, has
indeed nothing very remarkable or peculiar about him, but
is simply a mild and intelligent gentleman, with whom you
might be hours and days in company, without suspecting
him to be a philosopher or a poet.  His manners are those
of one who has studied the graces in the woods, unwittingly learned his bow from the bend of the pine, and
his air and attitudes from  those into which the serviceable wind adjusts the forest trees, as it sweeps across
them. His conversation is at times a sweet rich dropping,
like honey fromi the rock.  He is a great man, gracefully
disguised under sincere modesty and simplicity of character;
is totally free from those go-ahead crotchets and cants which
disgust you in many Americans; and it is impossible for the
most prejudiced to be in his society, and not be impressed
with respect for the innocence of his life, and regard for the
unaffected sincerity of his manners. Plain and homely he
may be as a wooden bowl, but not the less rich and ethereal
is the nectar of thought by which he is filled.  A lecturer,
in the common sense of the term, he is not; call him rather
a public monologist, talking rather to himself than to his
audience-and what a quiet, calm, commanding conversation
it is  It'is not the seraph, or burning one that you see in
the midst of his wings of fire-it is the naked cherubic
reason thinking aloud before you.  He reads his lectures
without excitement, without energy, scarcely even with emphasis, as if to try what can be effected by the pure, unaided
momentum of thought.  It is soul totally unsheathed that
you have to do with; and you ask, is this a spirit's tongue
that is sounding on its way? so solitary and severe seems its
harmony. There is no betrayal of emotion, except now and
then when a slight tremble in his voice proclaims that he has
arrived at some spot of thought to him peculiarly sacred or
dear, even as our fellow-traveller along a road sometimes
starts and looks round, arrived at some landmark of passion
and memory, which to us has no interest; or as an earthly
steed might be conceived to shiver under the advent of a
supernal horseman-so his voice must falter here and there
below the glorious burden it has to bear.  There is no emphasis, often, but what is given by the eye, and this is felt
only by those who see him on the side view; neither stand



RALPI-HI vALDO EMIERSON.             1'75
ing behind nor before carn we form any conception of the rapt
living flash which breaks forth athwart the spectator.  His
eloquence is thus of that highest kind which produces great
effects at small expenditure of means, and without any effort
or turbulence;  still and strong as gravitation, it fixes, subdues, and turns us around.  To be more popular than it is,
it requires only two elemzents-first, a more artistic accommodation to the tastes and understandings of the audience;
and, secondly, greater power of personal passion, in which
Emerson's head as well as his nature seems deficient.  Could
but some fiery breath of political zeal or religious enthusiasm be let loose upon him, to create a more rapid and energetic movement in his style and manner, he would stir and
infiame the world.
His lectures, as to their substance, are very comprehensive.
In small compass, masses of thought,, results of long processes, lie compact and firm; as 240 pence are calmly inclosed in one bright round sovereign, so do volumes manifold
go to compose some of Emerson's short and Sibyline sentences.  In his lecture on Napoleon, as we have already seen,
he reduces him and the history of his empire to a strong
jelly.  Eloquence, that ample theme, in like manner he condenses into the hollow of one lecture -a lecture for once
which proved as popular as it was profound.  His intellectual
tactics somiewhat resemble those of Napoleon.  As he aimed
at, and broke the heart of opposing armies, Emerson loves
to grasp and tear out the trembling core of a subject, and
show it to his hearers.  In both of these lectures we admired
his selection of instances and anecdotes; each stood for a
distinct part of the subject, and rendered it at once intelligible and memorable.  An anecdote thus severely selected
answers the end of a bone in the hand of an anatomical lecturer: it appeals to sense as well as soul.  We liked, too,
his reading of a passage from the' Odyssey,' descriptive of
the eloquence of Ulysses.  It was translated into prose-the
prose of his better essays-by himself, and was read with a
calm  classical power and dignity, which made a thousand
hearts still as the grave.  For five minutes there seemed but
two things in the world-the silence, and the voice which
was passing through it.
If men, we have often exclaimed, would but listen as at



1 76             RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
tentively to sermons, as they do to the intinazctions at the
end!  Emerson generally commands such attention; especially, we are told, that during his first lecture in Edinburgh
on Natural Aristocracy it was fine to see him, by his very
bashfulness, driven not out of, but into himself, and speaking
as if in the forest alone with God and his own soul. -This
was true self-possession.  The audience, too, were made to
feel themselves as much alone as their orator. To give a
curdling sense of solitude in society, is a much higher
achievement than to give a sense of society in solitude. It is
among the mightiest acts of spiritual power, thus to insulate
the imagination or the conscience of man, and suggests afar
off the proceedings of that tremendous day, when in the
company of a universe each man will feel himself alone.
In the three lectures zwe heard from Mr. Emerson there
did not occur a single objectionable sentence.  But there
was unquestionably a blank in all, most melancholy to contemplate. We have no sympathy with the attempts which
have been made to poison the popular mind, and to rouse
the popular passions against this gentleman, whether by
misrepresenting his opinions or by blackening his motives.
He does not believe himself-whatever an ignorant and conceited scribbler in the I"United Presbyterian Magazine" may
say-to be God.  He is the least in the world of a proselytiser.  He visited this country solely as a literary man, invited to give literary lectures. Whatever be his creed, he has
not) in Scotland at least, protruded it; and even if he had,
it would have done little harm; for as easily transfer and
circulate Emerson's brain as his belief. But, when we think
of such a mind owning a faith seemingly so cold, and vague,
and shadowy; and when, in his lectures, we find moral and
spiritual truths of such importance robbed of their awful
sanctions, separated like rays cut off from the sun-fronm
their parent system and source —swung from off their imoorings upon the Rock of ages-the Infinite and the Eternaland supported upon his own authority alone-when, in short,
the 3Moon of genius comes between us and the Sun of God,
we feel a dreariness and desolation of spirit inexpressible;
and, much as we admire the author and love the man, we
are tempted to regret the hour when he first landed upon
our shores.  Our best wishes, and those of thousands, went




GEORGE DAWSON.                  177
with him on his homeward way; but coupled with a strong
desire that a better, clearer, and more definite light might
dawn upon his soul, and create around him a true "forest
sanctuary." Long has he been, like Jacob, dreaming in the
desert: surely the ladder cannot be far off.
GEORGE DAWSON.
TIIE office of an interpreter, if not of the highest order, is certainly very useful, honorable, and, at certain periods, particularly necessary.  There are times when the angle at which
the highest minds of the age stand to the middle and lower
classes is exceedingly awkward and uncertain. Their names
and their pretensions are well known; even a glimmer of
their doctrine has got abroad; some even of their books are
read with a maximum of avidity, and a minimum of understanding;  but a fuller reflection of their merits and their
views —a farther circulation of their spirit, and a more complete discharge of their electric influences, are still needed.
For these purposes, unless the men will condescend to interpret themselves, we must have a separate class for the purpose. Indeed, such a class will be created by the circumstances.  As each morning we see a grand process of interpretation, when the living light leaps downwards from heaven to the mountain summits, and from these to the lowlying hills, and from these to the deep glens-each mountain
and hill taking up in turn its part in the great translation,
till the landscape is one volume of glory-so mind' after
mind, in succession, and in the order of their intellectual
stature, must catch and reflect the empyrean fire of truth.
Chief among the interpreters of our time stands Thomas
Carlyle.  He has not added any new truth to the world's
stock, nor any artistic work to the world's literature, nor is
he now likely to do so; but he has stood between the British mind and the great German orbs, and flung down on us
their light, with a kind of contemptuous profusion, colored,
too, undoubtedly, by the strange rugged idiosyncrasy on
8*




178                 GEORGE DAWSON.
which it has been reflected.  This light, however, has fallen
short of the middle class, not to speak of the masses of
the community.  This translation must itself be translated.
— For some time it nmight have been advertised in the
newspapers-" WVanted, an intrepreter for Sartor Resartus."
Without the inducement of any such advertisement, but as
a volunteer, has Mr. George Dawson stepped forward, and
has now for two years been plying his profession with much
energy and very considerable success.
It were not praise-it were not even flattery-it were
simply insult and irony, to speak of Mr. Dawson in any
other light than as a clever, a very clever translator, or, if
he will, interpreter, of a greater translator and interpreter
than himself.  In all the lectures we have either heard or
read of, his every thought and shade of thought was Carlyle's.  The matter of the feast was, first course, Carlyle;
second, do.; dessert, do.; tozyours, Carlyle: the dishes, dressing, and sauce only, were his own. Nor do we at all quarrel with him for this.  Since the public are so highly satisfied, and since Carlyle himself is making no complaint, and
instituting no hue and cry, it; is all very well. It is really,
too, a delightful hctchis he does cook, full of pepper and
spice, and highly palatable to the majority.  Our only
proper ground of quarrel would be, if he were claiming any
independent merit in the thought, apart from the illustrations, the wit, and the easy vigorous talk of the exhibition.
We have again and again been on the point of exclaiming,
when compelled to contrast description with reality.  We
shall henceforth believe nothing till we have seen it with our
eyes, and heard it with our ears.  The most of the pictures
we see drawn of celebrated people seem, after we have met
with the originals, to have been painted by the blind.  So
very-many determinedly praise a man for qualities which he
has not-if a man is tall, they make him short; if dark, they
give him fair hair; if his brow be moderate in dimensions,
they call it a great mass of placid marble,; if he be an easy,
fluent speaker, they dignify him with the name of orator; if
his eye kindle with the progress of his theme, they tell us
that his face gets phosphorescent, and as the face of an
angel. Hence the mortifying disappointments which are so
common-disappointments produced less by the ijfcriority




GEORPGE DAWSON.                   179
than.,by the  zi/,likeness of the reality of the description.
A distinguished painter who visited Coleridge was chagrined
to find'his forehead, of which he had read ravings innumerable,
of quite an ordinary size. We watched Emerson's face very
narrowly, but could not, for our life, perceive any glow
mounting up its pale and pensive lines.  We had heard
much of Dawson's eloquence, but found that while there was
much fluency there was little fire, and no enthusiasm.  Distance and dunces together had metamorphosed him, even as
a nobler cause of deception sometimes changes a village
steeple into a tower of rubies, and plates a copse with gold.
To call this gentleman a Cdockney Carlyle, a transcendental bagmian, were to be too severe; to call him  a combination of Cobbett and Carlyle were to be too complimentary.  But while there is much in the matter which
reminds you of Carlyle, as the reflection reminds you of the
reality, there is much in his style and manner which recalls
Williaml Cobbett.  Could we conceive Cobbett by any possibility forswearing his own nature, converted to Germanism,
and proclaiming it in his own way, we shlould have had
George Dawson anticipated and forestalled.   The Saxon
style, the homely illustrations, the conversational air, the frequent appeals to common sense, the broad Anglicanismls  and
the perfect self-possession, are common to both, with some
important differences, indeed; since IDawson is much terser
and pointec-since his humlor is dry, not rich-and since he
is, as to substance, rather an echo than a native, though rude
voice.
To sucll qualities as we have now indirectly enumerated,
we are to attribute the sway he has acquired over popular,
and especially over English audiences.  They are not, while
hearing him, called profoundly either to think or feel. They
are not painfully reminded that they have not read. Enthuslastic appeal never warms their blood.   A noble self-contempt and forgetfulness is never inculcated.  Of reverence
for the ancient the past, and the mysterious, there is little
or none.  They are never excited even to any fervor of destructive zeal.  A  strong, somewhat rough voice is heard
pouring out an even, calm, yet swift torrent of mingled paradoxes and  truisms, smart epigrammatic  sentences, short,
cold, hurrying sarcasms, deliberate vulgarisms of expression,




180                 GEORGE DAWSON.
quotations friom " Sartor Resartus," and Scripture, andfrom
no other book-never growing and never diminishing in
interest-never suggesting an end as near, nor reminding
us of a beginning as past-every one eager to listen, but no
one sorry when it is done; the purpose of the whole being
to shake, we think too much, respect for formulas, creeds,
and constituted authorities-to inculcate, we think too strongly, a sense of independence and individualism-and to give to
the fuiture, we think, an undue preponderance over the past.
Mr. George Dawson has read with considerable care and
accuracy the signs of his time.  He has watched the direction and the rate of the popular tide, and has cast himself
on it with an air of martyrdom.  His has been the desperate determination at all hazards to sail with the stream.
He sees, what only the blind do not, that a new era is begun,
in which, as Napoleon said, " there shall be no Alps," when
they threatened to impede his march; our young mind has
in like manner sworn there shall -be no past, no history, no.Bible, no God even, if such things venture to stand across
our way, and curb ozur principle of progress, and is rushing
on heroically with this daring multitude. One is amused at
the cry of persecution which he raises on his way.  The term,
to us, in such cases as his, sounds supremely ludicious. What,
in general, does persecution for conscience-sake now mean?
It means, if the subject be a clergyman, the trembling of his
audience and the doubling of his income; if an author, the tenfold sals of his works; if a man in business, three customers
instead of one-not to speak of the pleasures of notoriety
lecturing engagements, gold watches, and pieces of plate
Pleasant and profitable persecution! even when it is diversified by a little newspaper abuse  the powerless hatred of
the deserted party-and some strictures in the magazines!
What comparison between this species of persecution and
the treatment which a Wordsworth or a Shelley received? or
what comparison between it and the neglect, contempt, and
poverty which now befall many a worthy and conscientious
supporter of the Ocld?  We knew an elderly neglected clergyman, who came to a brother minister and said, "I wish
you would preach against me; it might bring me into notice."
Mr. Dawson has been  preached, placarded, and prayed
into notice-a notice in which he has expanded and bour



GEORGE DAWSON.                  18 
geoned like a peach-tree in the sunshine, and yet of which he
thinks proper to complain as persecution! Pretty exchange i
an elegant pulpit for a barrel of burning coals-fifteen hundred
admiring auditors for athousand exulting foes-the " Church"
instead of the " Cross" of the Saviour.  We really cannot, in
this world of woe, find in our hearts one particle of pity to
spare for 3Mr. Dawson, nor for any such mellifluous martyrs.
No eagle soaring and screaming in the teeth of the storm
— no thunder-cloud moving up the wind, do we deem  our
hero; but, on the whole, a most complacent and beautiful
peacock's feather, sailing adown the breeze, yet with an air
as if it had created and could turn it if he chose; or shall
we say, a fine large bubble descending with dignity, as if it
were the cataract? or, shall we try it once more? a straw,
imagining that because it shows the direction, it s directing
the wind. If these figures do not give satisfaction, we have
fifty more at the service of iMr. Dawson's admirers; after all,
we must blame his admirers and his enemies more than himself. He has much about him that is frank, open, and amiable. A clever young man, endowed with a rare talent for
talk, he began to talk in a manner that offended his party.
Many, on the other hand, of no party, were struck with surprise at hearing such bold and liberal sentiments uttered
from such a quarter. Pure unmixed Carlylism coming from
a Baptist pulpit sounded in their ears sweet and strange, as
a "voice from a loftier climate."  The rest might have bees
expected.  Between the dislike of his foes, the wild enthu
siasm of his friends, the ill-calculated pounce of the Archbishop of York, the real, though borrowed merit of many of
his sentiments, and the real native force of his speech-he
found himself all at once on a giddy eminence which might
have turned stronger heads; for here was the rarissincn avis
of a liberal Baptist-a C(arlylistic clergyman-a juvenile
sage, and a transcendentalist talking English-there was no
bird in all Knowesley Park that could be named in comparison.  Here, besides, was positively the first Dawson (except Peel's friend) that had, as an intellectual man, been known
beyond his own doorway. Such circumstances, besides a felt
want in the public mind, which he professed to supply, account
for the rapid rise of one who had written and done nothing,
except a few lectures and sermons, to the summit of notoriety.




182-                 GEORGE DAWSON.
So far as Dawson is a faithful renderer or doer into English of Thomas Carlyle's sentiments, we have, we repeat, no
quarrelwith him.  But in some points we dislike his mode
of expounding and illustrating these, or if he be in all things
an accurate expounder of his principal, why, then, we must
just venture to question his principal's infallibility.
Mr. Dawson, for instance, sets himself with all his might
to inculcate the uselessness of the clergy as teachers of
truth, and tile superiority of the lecturing class, or prophets,
as he modestly calls them.  Samuel, he told us, was a much
greater personage than the priests of his day.  lWe do not,
in all points, " stand up for our order."  We are far from
thinking that the clergy, as a whole, are awake to the necessities of the age, or fully alive to all its tendencies.  WVe
know that Dr. Tholuck, when in this country, was grieved at
the want of learning he found in some of our greatest men,
and especially at their ignorance of the state orf matters in
Germany.  We know that he advised two eminent Doctors
of different denominations to read Strauss's " Life of Christ;"
and that, while one of them declined, in very strong language,
the other, Dr. Chalmers (how like him!) said, " Well, I will
read it, Dr. Tholuck; is't a big' boo/k?"  Strauss, of course, he
recommended, not friom sympathy with its theory, built because
it is a book as necessary to be read now by the defenders
of Christianity as was Gibbon's " History " fifty years ago. But
while granting much to Mlr. Dawson, we are far from  granting all.  Ministers do not profess to be prophets, except in
so far as they are cleclarcers of the divine will, as exhibited
in the Scriptures, or as they may be endowed with that deep
vision of truth and beauty which is now, by courtesy, called
prophetic sight. But who are prophets, pray, in any other
sense? Who can now pretend to stand to ministers in the relation, in which thatSamuel, who had, in his youth, been awakened by the voice of God, and who, in his manhood, haa, by
his call, aroused the slumbering thunder, and darkened the
cieavens by the waving of his band, stood to the priesthood
of Israel?  Not surely George Dawson, Esq.. A.M., nor yet
Ehomas Carlyle-no, nor lFichte and Goethe themselves.
Alas! may we not now, all of us, take up the complaint
)f the Psalmist?



GEORGE DAW5SON.                   183
"Our signs we do not now behold,
There is not us among
A Prophet more, nor any one
That knows the time how long."
It is, as it was at the close of Saul's guilty and inglorious
reign, when God refused to answer by dreams, by Urim, or
by prophets; and when, in defect of the true vision, he went
to consult with wizards and quack salve'rs.  We are, indeed,
rather more favored-we have still among us wise and gifted
men; but if we would find prophets, in the highest sense of
the word, we must just go back and sit at the feet of those
awful bards of Israel-those legislators of the future-whose
words are full of eyes, and the depth of whose insight comnmunicates with the omniscience of God.  As poets, as seers,
as teachers, as truthful and earnest men, not to speak merely of their august supernatural pretensions, they still tower
alone unsurmounted  and  unapproached, the H-imalayan
mountains of mankind.
It is easy for a popular lecturer, primed and ready with
his three or his six polished and labored efforts, to sneer at
the ministers of Jesus. But it is not so easy for one of this.
now calumniated class, to keep up for long years a succession
of effective appeals to the conscience and to the heart, in
season and out of season-through good report and through
bad report.  And it is not particularly kind or graceful in a
gentleman, who must have experienced the peculiar difficlulties of the order to which he still belongs, to turn again and
rend them; enjoying, as he does, even yet, some of the immunities of the class, it is mean in him to shirk its responsibilities, and, meaner still, to try to shake its credit in the
estimation of his countrymen.
He draws, to be sure, a distinction between a preacher
and a man preaching-a distinction as obvious nearly as that
between a fiddling man and a man fiddling, a barking puppy
and a puppy barking.  He is not a preaching man, but a
man preaching.  What a miserable quibble!  Who means
by a preacher any thing else than a man who has voluntarily
assumed the task of declaring the truth of God to his fellows?  Does one necessarily cease to be a man in becoming
a preacher?  Or does one necessarily become a man by
<easing to be, or wishing it to be thought that he has ceased




184                 GEORGE DAWSON.
to be, a preacher?  Nay, verily. In fact, a considerable
share of ilr. Dawson's popularity, with a certain class at
least, springs from  the preacher-air, and the preacherphrases, which still cling to his delivery and style. He is
little else than a clever lecturer, made out of the elements
or ruins of a second-rate preacher.
In Mr. Dawson's lectures we find no variety of thought.
Two or three ideas, imported into his mind, are rattled like
peas over and over, into a thousand different sounds or discords. The same terms, too, such as subjective and objective, dynamical and mechanical, are perpetually repeated,
with a parrot-like iteration.  There is in some minds, and
in some styles, a gigantic monotony, as in the ocean surges,
or in the beams of the sun.  [But there is also a small mannerism arising from the mimicry of a model-itself, in part,
a copy, which can with difficulty be endured for a few nights,
and for no more.
Of course he proclaims warfare against conventionalisms
of speech, and of thought: to call, in prayer, a woman a
handmaiden, the sea the great deep, &c., is with him a grave
offence. Words are things. Things ought to be called by
their right names. A spade should be a spade: and not,
with Dr. Johnson, a " broad, semi-wooden, semi-iron, instrument for tearing the bosom of terra firzCa, the pioneer of
the advenient seed."  Shade of Dr. Johnson! then, art thou
not provoked to ask, What in the name of wonder, George
Dawson, art thou? what callest thou thyself? Art thou infidel, pagan, or Christian, or any thing more than a man preaching? I know not how to entitle thee, positively; but, negatively,
depend upon it, I shall never call thee, by any accident, "a
great deep."
Too often in Mr. Dawson's prelections what is new is not
true, and what is true is not new.  In proclaiming the stern
truth that there is something higher than happinessnamely, blessedness-he only repeated the finest sentence
in that abysmal volume, " Sartor Resartus."  But who in
structed him for once to go beyond his master, and to ridicule the phrase, "luxury of doing good?" Because duty
can play its high part at times without public fee or reward,
has it not always, in its own exercise, "a joy beyond the
name of pleasure;' Does not Scripture often appeal to




GEORGE DAWSON.                  185
the desire and to the prospect of happiness as stimulants to
duty? Has not the Divine Being annexed even to sacrifice
and to martyrdom, a feeling which we may appropriately
term "luxury," if luxury mean something at once delicious
and rare?  "To be good for good's sake," is the noblest
reach of man; but what does good imply in its very conception? Surely some severe but real delight, partly in present
feeling, and partly in future prospect.  We know right well
the tendency of Mr. Dawson's sneer-it is an attempt to
scoff out the golden candlestick of celestial blessedness, as
the reward of the good; although as well might he seek to
puff away to-morrow's sun.
We notice, in connection with all his allusions to religion, a want of moral reverence for the subject.  Suppose it
were true, what he so often intimates, that God has abandoned our present forms of worship, in what spirit should he
tread the deserted shrine? In what spirit did (we beg pardon for the reference) the Son of Man walk in the desecrated
and doomed Temple of Jerusalem? It was not, certainly,
with contemptuous disregard any more than with the cry on
on his lips, Raze, raze it to its foundation! It was, doubtless, with tears iri his eyes, as he remembered, "Here God
once dwelt."  With what coolness, with what propensity to
sneer, with what ill-suppressed joy, at these long desolations,
do some now walk through what they call a ruin, as forsaken
as the temple of Jupiter Palatinus. Shame to thee, George
Dawson, if this be thy feeling, as we fear it is! This is not,
rely on it, the feeling of thy Master, though he never took
the vows of the ministry upon his soul. If we have not
totally misconstrued  the nature of Thomas Carlyle, he
passes through the sanctuary, which he deems now forsaken,
nay, a den of thieves, with emotions of profoundest sorrow,
because, to use the language of Howe, the broken arches, the
mouldering inscriptions, and the extinct fire, seem  to him
but too plainly to testify that the Great Inhabitant is gone.
Mr. Dawson's forte lies, unquestionably, in his lively and
amusing illustrations. His is a species of proverbial philosophy. He abounds both in "old saws and modern instances."  He accommodates the results of philosophy to
every-day life, and translates its technicalities into the loose
conversation, almost into the slang, of every-day language.




186                 GEORGE DAWSON.
It may be questioned whether in this he does men much
service; for, in the first place, in such a process a great deal
that is most valuable  necessarily  escapes.  There are
thoughts in every high philosophy which will not bear translation into ordinary speech. Our English vernacular will
only look ludicrous as it attempts to girth their greatness;
and these thoughts are, of course, the deepest and noblest.
Secondly, apart from this aboriginal difficulty, the translator,
when also a popular lecturer, is under strong temptation to
dilute what truth he does tell too' much, and to give his
babes, instead of milk, milk and water. And, thirdly, those
babes will be exceedingly apt to fancy, after a few such diluted preparations, that they have suddenly shot up into
men of full age. In the short space of four or five amusing hours,
they are quite qualified to chatter Carlylese-to dogmatize
on the characteristics and tendencies of the age, and to look
with sovereign contempt on ministers, and on all who are
wealk enough to put their trust in them. We met, some
time ago, in a London omnibus, a good-natured, amusing old
lady, at whom we inquired if she had ever been in Edinburgh.' She answered, " No; but I saw a panzoramna;r of it,
which gave me a very good hidear of it."  Such a satisfactory panoramaric  hitdear does Mr. Dawson give his auditors
of the German philosophy, and of Plato.
When I hear such a preacher, said one, I go home well
pleased with him; when I hear such another, I go home ill
pleased with myself.  Mr. Dawson sends home most of his
audience well pleased with him and with themselves, and thinking more of him and of themselves than of his theme.  They
carry away no stings with them-none of that fine humility,
of that divine despair, which contemplation of nature's vastness and of man's littleness inevitably produces, and yet
which never fails afterwards to excite genuine aspiration.
From hearing Professor Nichol, you come home with but one
thought, the grandeur of his subject; in which almost the
thought of the lecturer has been lost, to which he has but
served meekly to point, like the rod which he holds in his
hand. In hearing Samuel Brown you have a similar feeling,
blended, however, owing to his youth, with still more admiration for the man, who, at such an age, seems conversant
with mysteries so profound, as if he had commenced his stu



GEORGE DAWSON.                  187
dies in an ante-natal state of being. The masterly ease, self.
possession, clearness, interest, and fluency of Mr. Dawson's
talkl give you an hour's, or perchance a night's pleasure, and
that is all; for, indeed, he is rather a talker than a teacher.
To those who have read Carlyle's Mliscellanies and other
works, he tells nothing new; and those who have not, are in
general more anmused by the novel and vivid illustrations,
than impressedcl and subdued by what to them ought to be
the startling truths.  The enthusiast alone can teach, because
lie alone can feel up to that point where feeling overflows,
burning, and sometimes scalding into other minds. MIr. Dawson may be, we trust is, at heart, a sincere man, but he is not
an enthusiast; he has no self-forgetiulness, no rapt emotion
of any kind; he manages his instrument but too dexterously,
and too consciously well.  We have no conception what lihe
can have made of Switzerland-what shape its rockes torrents, and glaciers have assumed in his mind-what gin'gerbread cast of the Alps he has contrived to form, or how his
essentially cold and clever style has managed to rise to cope
with the magnificent field.  Were there any barn-fowl flutterings, any ghastly contortions of imaginative penury and
weakness? or did he, as we rather suspect,'with his wonted
tact, avoid the grander features of his subject, and turn
aside into paths equally pleasing, less hackneyed, and for
him less dangerous?  Let our Glasgow friends, who heard
him on this subject, answer the question. Altogether, Mr.
Dawson's mission seems to us exceedingly uncertain, both as
to its purpose and its probable results.  We do not see any
distinct reason or call why he should have separated himself
to that gospel of negations which he preaches. WVe have
asked him already, what is he? we ask him now what he
wishes us to be?  A man who has started from the ranks,
who has done so as if in obedience to a voice, "Come out,
and be thou separate," ought to be able to tell with some
explicitness what he would give us in exchange for what we
are in effect required to resign.  But a story," like theknifegrinder, "' he has none to tell, sir." He offers, it is true, relief to doubters-nay, builds a chapel for them, and calls
it by the unpyreteclin2g name, the " Church of the Saviour;:
but in truth his teaching only adds fire to fever, and
seems to us a masterly machinery foli creating or confirm



188                  GEORGE DAWSON.
ing doubt.  We grant him readily that doubters-the most
interesting  and one of the most numerous of classes of
men in the present day, including, not now as formerly,
merely the vain and the vicious, but many of the sincere,
the intelligent, the virtuous and the humble-including, especially, so many of the young and rising spirits of the time
-are not sufficiently attended to in the daily ministrations.
Their feelings are not respected, their questions are not fairly
answered, their motives and characters are misrepresented,
their doubts are flung back unresolved, contemptuously, in
their face; and hence, many of them are carrying their questions to other oracles, and getting their Gordian knots cut by
other swords than that of the Spirit.@
But let those who have done, repair the injury.  Let
the various churches of the country set to work with
greater zeal, with greater unanimity, and, above all, with
greater intelligence, and greater charity, to attend to this
most important and neglected class.  Let them not dream
that merely to abuse Germanism  is to answer it.  Let
them no longer waste their strength and breath in calling
Carlyle or Emerson by hard' names.  Let them  demonstrate that their charges against Christianity as dead, are
untrue, by showing that its ancient spirit is still alive.
Let them  remember that the front of skeptical battle is
changed since the days of Voltaire and Volney-that the
character of the leaders is changed too-and that there
must be a corresponding change in the tactics of Christian
defenders.  Sutch books as Paley, Watson, Hall on Modern
Infidelity, or Olinthus Gregory, the leviathan of German
skepticism takes up but as straw or rotten wood. They
split upon his adamantine scales.  The onset of Paine and
Volney was from  below-from  the hell of mean passions,
politics, and low conceptions of man; the onset of the
German philosophers is from  above-from  the height of
transcendental thought.  From  a higher eminence ought
their onset to be repelled.  Dr. Chalmers, fromi that lofty
watch-tower which he occupied, and round which, alas!
the shades of evening were gathering fast, saw the big
* We refer our readers for a more particular elucidation of our views
on this subject, to our subsequent paper on Sterling.




GEORGE DAVSON.                 189
bulking danger-and it was his all but last act to set the
trumpet to his mouth, and blow an alarm to the Christian
world.  Would it had been more widely echoed and obeyed!
Such a tender, general, and enlightened attention to the
doubting Thomases of the day, would produce numerous
good consequences. It would show religion in her most
amiable aspect-having compassion upon the ignorant, and
upon those that are out of the way. It would arrest the
doubts of many, ere they were hardened into a fierce and
aggressive infidelity. It would change every church into a
refuge for those who are tossed with tempest, and not comforted-a true "1 Church of the Saviour;" and it would proclaim to those officious' flatterers," who would rid men of
their burdens elsewhere than at the Cross and the Sepulchre,
that their occupation was gone. We are not, however, at all
sanguine of such results as near. Our wretched divisions
and partyisms —the bigoted battle we are still disposed to
do for the smallest minutih of our different creeds, while its
main pillars are so powerfully assailed-our general deadness and coldness, seem to augur that some mighty regenerating process is needed by all churches ere they can fully
meet wants which are yearly becoming more and more imperious. "' Good religious people," writes to us one of the most
eminent evangelical ministers in a sister country, "have a
great deal to learn, and some of them will never learn any
thing. They are unconscious of the new world in which
they live. They do not know what a different thing the
pulpit is, and how different the preacher ought to be, since
the new and mighty preacher in the form of the Press has
risen up, and occupied so much of the preacher's old ground.
The Press and the Pulpit might, and ought to understand
each other better than they do." Coinciding in such views,
we do not, however, expect that Mr. Dawson's pulpit will do
much to promote the reconciliation of those two rival
powers. He is verily not a preacher, but a man preaching
magazine articles sprinkled with Scripture texts.  He belongs to an amphibious order of beings neither in nor out of
the church. We cannot conceive himself long to remain
at ease in such an ambiguous position, nor that the public
can continue to place much confidence in him as a clergyman. It is whispered already that he is sinking as rapidly




190                 GEORGE DAWSON.
as he rose.  W~e are not afraid that he will ever be totally
overlooked.  He is young, ready, fluent, ambitious, with
much power of mental assimilation, a fertile, teeming brain,
and a tongue and pair of lungs perfectly first rate.  Such
qualities in bustling times can never fail of their reward, although we should imagine that the lecture-room, instead of
the chapel, will by and by become the favorite field for their
exhibition.
TWe venture to conclude this from the perusal of his sermon-the opening one of his new chapel-entitled, " The
Demands of the Age upon the Church."  If this be an average specimen of IMr. Dawson's writing or preaching powers,
we must warn the public that they are not to expect him to
become a Hall in the pulpit, or a Foster at the desk.  As a
composition, it is loose, careless, even vulgar. Think of an
expression like this, occurring in a discourse on such a solemn
occasion: "! T'Ve do not unite on the sly."  The style is an odd
compound of Carlylisms and Pickwickisms.  The bond of
union it proposes is no bond at all. A union of common
doubts and disbeliefs may form a vast moral infirmary, but
not a, church.  We forewarn him, that it is difficult now as
of old to make bricks without straw, and build a house without cement.  That the doubters deserve special tending, he
proves satisfactorily. He does not prove the adaptation of
his chapel to their case. The spirit of Christianity he would
divorce from its eternal principles and faicts-aun attempt' as
hopeless as to separate the life of a tree from its leaves,
branches, and trunk.  The only part of the discourse at all
valuable is its statement of the admitted fact, that vital
religion is at a low ebb; but even this he exaggerates, and his
notion, that it has passed over to the free-thinkers, is simply
not true.  We would just beg the public to compare this
specimen of the new style of preaching with some of Dr.
Croly's recently published sermons, where they will find vast
and varied erudition, burning genius, an eloquent severe,
classical and grand, Scriptural sentiment-all the qualities,
in short, which Dawson's writing has not —in order to learn
what exchange they are required to make, and to be convinced
that although his church be called the Church of the Saviour,
he is not destined to be the saviour of the Church.
We know full well that such a frank expression of our




GEOIGE DAWSON.                   191
sentiments will, as did our strictures on Macaulay and Burns,
create against us a number of opponents.  We are perfectly
indifferent.  Whenever the trigger of the gun, Truth, is
drawn, by however feeble a hand, and a report follows,
multitudes of timorous or stupid creatures are sure to rise
up alarmed or enraged, and to rend the air with their
screams.  It will be said that we are actuated by sonime
azimuzs against MIr. Dawson, just as a few blockheads accused
us of hating a man who had been dead for half a century,
and whose genius we had taken fifty opportunities of lanuding in terms little short of downright idolatry.  We must
simply disown any such feeling.  We gave Mr. Dawson
constant attendance and earnest attention.  We were occasionally delighted, and testified it by no feeble or niggardly
applause.  We saw much about him  in private that was
pleasing.  But a sense of duty, coupled, we grant, with a
certain feeling of indignation at the undue prominence which
is partly given him, and which in part he assumes, and to
which -no man possessed merely of mechanical gifts, however
extraordinary, is entitled, has urged us to write as we have
written.  "It is intolerable," said one, "to think of the literary coteries of London being over-crowed in the accent of an
Ecclefechain carter.'  This may be, and is, and ought to be
borne, when thlat accent stirs, warbles, and infilames, under
the words of genius. But it is intolerable, that a glib and
flowing tongue, conveying borrowed sentiments, in the
language of the Pickwick papers, should be listened to as
if behind it were flashing the eye of a Burns, or towering the
brow of a Shakspeare.  And it is still more intolerable, that
a man without depth, learning, originality, or enthusiasm,
should be swaying opinion, or shaking the faith of any in
the great inspirations of the past.
If Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are to be blotted out, let
the blank be filled up with names of a somewhat higher
calibre-and mighty to start a nobler spirit —than that of
George Dawson.
Our faith in popular lecturing has never been great, and
has been lessened by the experiences of several past winters.
In the course of them, we have heard five or six of the most
distinguished of the class, and have not only listened carefully to them, but have watched the effects of their prelec,




192                ALFRED TENNYSON.
tions on their audiences.  So far as the lecturers are concerned, our expectations have been exceeded rather than the
reverse. All, in different styles, were excellent. All, through
very different avenues, found their way to the attention and
to the applause of their hearers. One, by a rich anecdotage,
and the clear and copious detail of facts, nailed the ears of
his audience to his lips. Another gathered them around
him, talking though he was in an unknown tongue, through
the cloudy grandeur of his speculation. Another took them
captive by the enthusiasm which shone in his face and
quivered on his lips. Another passed across them, like a
rapid snow-drift, showering on their passive spirits a thick
succession of clear, cold sentences.  All exerted power; all
gave a certain amount of pleasure.  Did any much more 
WVas any permanent elevation given, or lasting effect produced?  Had Scotland, England, and America, been ransacked for their choicest spirits, only to produce a certain
tickling gratification, at most amounting to a high intellectual treat?  We do not wish to speak dogmatically on the
point, but it is our distinct impression that in a spiritual, not
in a pecuniary sense, the cost outwent the profit. The great
ends of teaching were not, and in the space, and in the circumstances, could hardly have been answered.  Multitudes,
unprepared by previous reading and training, were brought
out by curiosity, or in some cases by a better principle, to
hear some of the first men of the age; listened with most
exemuplary attention, were thrilled or tickled, but we fear
not fead.  We are convinced that steady attendance upon
one plain single month's course on geology, or modern history, would have done more good than whole years spent in
hearing such brilliant birds of passage.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
THE subject of the following sketch seems a signal example
of the intimate relation which solmetimes exists between
original genius, and a shrinking, sensitive, and morbid




ALFItED TENNYSON.                193
nature.  WVe see in all his writings the struggle of a strong
intellect to " turn and wind the fiery Pegasus " of a most
capricious, volatile, and dream-driven imagination.  Tennyson is a curious combination of impulse, strength, and delicacy approaching to weakness.  Could we conceive, not an
Eolian harp, but a grand piano, played on by the swift fingers
of the blast, it would give us some image of the sweet, subtle, tender, powerful, and changeful movements of his verse,
in which are wedded artificial elegance, artistic skill, and
wild, impetuous impulse.  It is the voice and lute of Ariel;
but heard not in a solitary and enchanted island, but in a
modern drawing-room, with beautiful women bending round,
and moss-roses breathing, in their faint fragrance, through
the half-opened windows.  Here, indeed, lies the paradox of
our author's genius. He is haunted, on the one hand, by
images of ideal and colossal grandeur, coming upon him from
the isle of the Syrens, the caves of the Kraken, the heights
of Ida, the solemn cycles of Cathay, the riches of the Arabian heaven; but, on the other hand, his fancy loves, better
than is manly or beseeming, the tricksy elegancies of artificial life —the "white sofas" of his study-the trim walks of
his garden —the luxuries of female dress-and all the tiny
comforts and beauties which nestle round an English parlor.
From the sublime to the snug, and vice versa, is with him but
a single step. This moment toying on the carpet with his
cat, he is the next soaring with a roe over the valley of
diamonds. We may liken him to the sea-shell which, sitting
complacently and undistinguished amid the commonplace
ornaments of the mantelpiece, has only to be lifted to give
forth from its smooth ear the far-rugged boom of the ocean
breakers.  In this union of feminine feebleness and imaginative strength, he much resembles John Keats, who at one
time could hew out the vast figure of the dethroned Saturn,
"CC quiet as a stone," with the force of a Michael Angelo, and,
again, with all the gusto of a milliner, describe the undressing of his heroine in the "Eve of St. Agnes."  Indeed,
although we have ascribed, and we think justly, original
genius to Tennyson, there is much in his mind, too, of the
imitative and the composite. He adds the occasional languor,
the luxury of descriptive beauty, the feminine tone, the tender melancholy, the grand aspirations, perpetually checked,
9




194                 ALFRED TENTNYsON.
and chilled by the access of morbid weakness, and the man
nerisms of style which distinguish Keats, to much of the
simplicity and the philosophic tone of Wordsworth, the peculiar rhythm and obscurity of Coleridge, and a portion of the
quaintness and allegorizing tendency which were common
with the Donnes, WVithers, and Quarleses, of the seventeenth
century.  WVhat is peculiar to himself is a certain carol, light
in air and tone, but profound in burden.  Hence his little
lyrics —such as "Oriana," " Mariana at the loatecld Grange,'
the " Talking Oak," the " May Queen " —are  among his
most original and striking productions.  They tell tales of
deep tragedy, or they convey lessons of wide significance, or
they paint vivid and complete pictures, in a few lively
touches, and by a few airy words, as if caught in dropping
from  the sky.  By sobs of sound, by half-hints of meaning,
by light, hurrying strokes on the ruddy chords of the heart,
by a ringing of changes on certain words and phrases, he
sways us as if with the united powers of music and poetry.
Our readers will, in illustration of this, remember his nameless little song, beginning
"' Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray crags, O sea!"
which is a mood of his own mind, faithfully rendered into
sweet and simple verse.  It is in composition no more complicated or elaborate than a house built by a child, but melts
you, as that house would, were you to see it after the dear
infant's death.  But than this he has higher moods, and
nobler, though still imperfect aspirations.  In his "Two
Voices," he approaches the question of all ages. —Whence
evil? And if he, no more than other speculators, unties, he
casts a soft and mellow light around this Gordian knot.
This poem is no fancy-piece, but manifestly a transcript from
his own personal experience.  He has sunk into one of those
melancholy moods incident to his order of mind, and has
become " aweary of the sun," and of all the sun shines upon
-especially  of his own miserable  idiosyncrasy.   There
slides in at that dark hour a still small voice: how different
froml that which thrilled on Elijah's ear in the caves of
Horeb! It is the voice of that awful lady whom De Quincey calls 11irlter tenebraru'ty, our lady of darkness.  It hints
at suicide as the only remedy for human woes.




ALFRED TENNYSON.                   195
"Thou art so full of misery,
Where it not better not to be!"
And then there follows an eager and uneasy interlocution
between the " dark and barren voice," and the soul of the
writer, half spurning and half holding parley with its suggestions. Seldom, truly, since the speech by which Despair
in Spenser enforces the same sad argument, did misanthropy
breathe a more withering blight over humanity and human
hopes; seldom did unfortunate by a shorter and readier road
reach the conclusion, " there is one remedy for all," than in
the utterance of this voice. Death in it looks lovely; nay, the
one lovely thing in the universe. Again and again the poet is
ready to yield to the desire of his own heart, thus seconded
by the mystic voice, and, in the words of one who often
listened to the same accents, to " lie down like a tired child,
and weep away this life of care." But again and again the
better element of his nature resists the temptation, and beats
back the melancholy voice.  At length, raising himself from
his lethargy, he rises, looks forth-it is the Sabbath morn,
and, as he sees the peaceful multitudes moving on to the
house of God, and as, like the Anciente Mariner, he " blesses
them  unaware," straightway the spell is broken, the " dull
and bitter voice is gone," and, hark!
" A second voice is at his ear,
A little whisper, silver-clear."
and it gives him a hidden and humble hope, which spreads
a quiet heaven within his soul. Now he can go forth into
the fields, and
" Wonder at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers,
You scarce can see the g)rass for flowers."
All nature calls upon him to rejoice, and to the eye of
his heart, at least, the riddle is read. Nay, we put it to
every heart if this do not, more than many elaborate argumentations, touch the core of the difficulty.  "Look up,'
said Leigh Hunt to Carlyle, when he had been taking the
darker side of the question, and they had both come out




1'96               ALFRED TENNYSON.
under the brilliance of a starry night-" look up, and find
your answer there!"  And although the reply failed to convince the party addressed, who, looking aloft at the sparkling
azure, after a deep pause, rejoined, with a sigh, and in tones
we can well imagine, so melancholy and far withdrawn, " Oh i
it's a sad sight;" yet, apart firom  the divine discoveries, it
was the true and only answer. The beauty, whether of
Tennyson's fields —where we 4" scarce can see the grass for
flowers"-or of Leigh Hunt's skies, "whose unwithered
countenance is young as on creation's day," and where we
find an infinite answer to our petty cavils-is enough to
soothe, if not to satisfy, to teach us the perfect patience of
expectancy, if not the full assurance of faith.
Tennyson, in some of his poems as well as this, reveals
in himself a current of thought tending towards very deep
and dark subjects.  This springs partly from the metaphysical bias of his intellect, and partly from the morbid emotions of his heart. And yet he seems generally to toy and
trifle with such tremendous themes-to touch them lightly
and hurriedly, as one might hot iron-at once eager and
reluctant to intermeddle with them. Nevertheless, there is
a perilous stuff about his heart, and upon his verse lies a
" melancholy compounded of many simples."  He is not the
poet of hope, or of action, or of passion, but of sentiment, of
pensive and prying curiosity, or of simple stationary wonder,
in view of the great sights and mysteries of Nature and man,
He has never thrown himself amid the heats and hubbub of
society, but remained alone, musing with a quiet but observant eye upon the tempestuous pageant which is sweeping
past him, and concerning himself little with the political or
religious controversies of his age.  There are, too, in some of
his writings, mild and subdued vestiges of a wounded spirit,
of a heart that has been disappointed, of an ambition that
has been repressed, of an intellect that has wrestled with
doubt, difficulty, and disease.
In " Loclksley Hall," for instance, he tells a tale of unfortunate passion with a gusto and depth of feeling, which
(unless we misconstrue the mark of the branding-iron) betray more than a fictitious interest in the theme.  It is a
poem breathing the spirit of, and not much inferior to, Byron's " Dream," in all but that clear concentration of misery




ALFRED TENNYSON.                    197
which bends over it like a bare and burning heaven over a
bare and burning desert.  " Locksley Hall," again, is turbid
and obscure in language, wild and distracted in feeling.
The wind is down, but the sea still runs high.  You see in
it the passion pawing like a lion who has newly missed his
prey, not fixed as yet in a marble form of still and hopeless
disappointmuent.  The lover, after a season of absence, returns to the scene of his early education and hapless love,
where of old he
"Wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time."
A feeling, cognate with, and yet more imperious than those
of his high aspirations, springs up in his mind. It arises in
spring like the crest of a singing-bird.  It is the feeling of
love for Amy his cousin, sole daughter of her father's house
and heart.  The feeling is mutual, and the current of their
true love flows smoothly on, till interrupted by the interference of relatives.  Thus far he remembers calmly; but
here recollection strikes the fierce chord of disappointment,
and he bursts impetuously forth" O, my cousin, shallow-hearted.   0, my Amy, mine no more.
0, the dreary, dreary moorland. 0, the barren, barren shore."
Darting then one hasty and almost vindictive glance down
her future history, he predicts that she shall lower to the
level of the clown she has wedded, and that he will use his
victim a little better than his dog or his horse.  Nay, she
will become
"Old and formal, suited to her petty part;
With her little hoard of maxims, preaching down a daughter's heart."
But himself, alas! what is to become of him?  Live he
must-suicide is too base an outlet from  existence for his
brave spirit.  But what to do with this bitter boon of being 2
There follow some wild and half-insane stanzas expressive of
the ambitions and uncertainties of his soul. It is the Cyclops
mad with blindness, and groping at the sides of his cave
He will hate and despise all women, or, at least, all British
maidens.  He will return to the orient land, whose "larger
constellations" saw  a father die.  He will, in his despair,




198                 ALFRED TENNYSON.
take some savage woman who shall rear his dusky race.
But no —the despair is momentary-he may not mate with a
squalid savage; he will rather revive old intellectual ambitions, and renew old aspirations, for he feels within him that
the " crescent promise of his spirit has not set." It is resolved —but, ere he goes, let every ray of remaining love and
misery go forth in one last accusing, avenging look at the
scene of his disappointment and the centre of his wo.
"Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall.
Now, for me, the woods may wither; now, for me, the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt;
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain, or hail, or fire, or snow,
For a mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go."
And thus the ballad closes, leaving, however, with us the
inevitable impression that the unfortunate lover is not done
with Locksley Hall nor its bitter memories-that Doubting Castle is not down, nor giant Despair dead-that the
calls of the curlews around it will still resound in his ears,
and the pale face of its Amy, still unutterably beloved, will
come back upon his dreams-that the iron has entered into
his soul-and that his life and his misery are henceforth
commensurate and the same.
Among the more remarkable of Tennyson's poems, besides those already mentioned, are " The Poet," "Dora,"
" Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "(Enone," "The
Lotos Eaters,'; Ulysses," "Godiva," and "The Vision of
Sin."  " The Poet " was written when the author was young,
and when the high ideal of his heart was just dawning upon
his mind. It is needless to say that his view of the powers
and influences of poetry is different with what prevails with
many in our era. Poetry is, with him, no glittering foil to
be wielded gayly on gala days.  It is, or ought to be, a sharp
two-edged sword.  It is not a baton in the hand of coarse
authority-it is a magic rod. It is not a morning flush in
the sky of youth, that shall fade in the sun of science-it is
a consuming and imperishable fire. It is not a mere amusement for young love-sick men and women —it is as serious
as death, and longer than life.  It is tuned philosophy —
winged science-fact on fire —" truth springing from earth"
— high thought voluntarily moving harmonious numbers.




ALFRED TENNYSON.                 199
His " Poet " is "l dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of
scorn, the love of love," and his words " shake the world."
The author, when he wrote "The Poet," was fresh from
school, and from Shelley, his early idol.  Ere writing "]Dora" "he had become conversant with the severer charms of
WVordsworth; and that poem contains in it not one figure or
flower-is bare, literal, and pathetic as the book of Ruth.
Its poetry is that which lies in all natural life, which, like a
deep quiet pool, has only to be disturbed in the slightest degree to send up in dance those bells and bubbles which give
it instantly ideal beauty and interest, and suddenly the pool
becomes a poem!
His " Recollections of the Arabian Nights " is a poem of
that species which connects itself perpetually, in feeling and
memory, with the original work, whose quintessence it collects. It speaks out the sentiments of millions of thankful
hearts.  We feel in it what a noble thing was the Arabian
mind-like the Arabian soil, "all the Sun's " —like the Arabian climate, fervid, golden-like the Arabian horse, light,
elegant, ethereal, swift as the wind. "C 0, for the golden prime
of good fHaroun Alras-chid!"  0, for one look-though it
were the last —of that Persian maid, whom the poet has
painted in words vivid as colors, palpable almost as sense.
Talk of enchantment! The "Thousand-and-One Nights is
one enchantment-more powerful than the lamp of Aladdin,
or the " Open Sesame" of Ali Baba.  The author, were he
one-not many-is a magician-a geni —greater than Scott,
than Cervantes, equal to Shakspeare himself. W hat poetry,
passion, pathos, beauty of sentiment, elegance of costume,
ingenuity of contrivance, wit, humor, farce, interest, variety,
tact in transition, sunniness of spirit, dream-like wealth of
imagination, incidental but precious light cast upon customs,
manners, history, religion-every thing, in short, that can
amuse or amaze, instruct or delight, the human spirit! Like
the'" Pilgrim's Progress"-devoured by boys, it is a devout
study for bearded men.
Tennyson has expressed, especially, the moonlight volup
tuousness of tone and spirit which breathes around those
delicious productions, as well as the lavish magnificence of
dress and decoration, of furniture and architecture, which
were worthy of the witch element, the sunny climate, and the




200                ALFIRED TENNYSON.
early enchanted era, where and when they were written,
But we doubt if he mates adequately with that more potent
and terrible magic which haunts their higher regions, as in
the sublime picture of the Prince's daughter fighting with
the Enchanter in mid air, or in the mysterious grandeur
which -follows all the adventures of Aboulfaouris. With this,
too, indeed, he must have sympathy; for it is evident that
he abundantly fulfils Coleridge's test of a genuine lover of
the " Arabian Nights." " Do you admire," said the author of
"' Kubla Khan" to Hazlitt, "the Thousand-and-one Nights?"
"No," was the answer.  "That's because you don't clreamct."
But, surely, since the "noticeable man, with large gray eyes,"
awoke in death from his long life-dream, no poet has arisen
of whom the word were more true than of Tennyson, whether
in reproach or commendation, asleep or awake-'- Behold this
dreamer cometh."
In " CEnone," we find him up on the heights of Ida, with
the large foot-prints of gods and goddesses still upon its
sward, and the citadel and town of Troy, as yet unfallen, as
yet unassail.ed, visible from its summit.  Here the poet sees
a vision of his own-a vision which, recorded in verse, forms
a high third with Wordsworth's "Laodamia" and Keats's
" Hyperion," in the classical style. Less austere and magnificent than the poem of Keats, which seems not so much
a torso of earthly art as a splinter fallen froim some other
exploded world-less chaste, polished, and spiritual than
" Laodamiza," that Elgin marble set in Elysian light, it surpasses both in picturesqe distinctness and pathetic power.
The story is essentially that of "Locksley Hall," but the
scene is not the flat and sandy moorland of Lincolnshire, but
the green gorges and lawns of Ida. The deceived lover is
Cnone, the daughter of a river god. She has been deceived
by Paris, and her plaint is the poem.  Melancholy her song,
as that of a disappointed woman-melodious, as that of an
aggrieved goddess.  It is to Ida, her mother mountain, that
she breathes her sorrow. She tells her of her lover's matchless beauty-of her yielding up her heart to him —of the
deities descending to receive the golden apple from his hands
— of his deciding it to Venus, upon the promise of the " fairest and most loving wife in Greece" —of his abandonment of
(Enone, and of her despair. Again and again, in her agony;




ALFRED TENNYSON.                  201she cries for Death; but the grim shadow, too busy in hew
ing down the happy, will not turn aside at her miserable bid
ding.  Her despair at last becomes fury; her tears begin to
burn; she will arise; she will leave her dreadful solitude"' I will rise, and go
Down into Troy, and, ere the stars come forth,
Talk with the wild Cassandra; for she says
A fire dances before her, and a sound
Rings ever in her ears of armed men.
What this may be I know not; but I know
That, whereso'er I am, by night and day
All earth and air seems only burning fire."
And fancy follows CEnone to Ilium, and sees the two beautiful broken-hearted maidens meeting, like two melancholy
flames, upon one funeral pile, mingling their hot tears, exchanging their sad stories, and joining, in desperate exultation, at the prospect of the ruin which is already darkening,
like a tempest, round the towers and temples of Troy. It is
pleasant to find from such productions that, after all, the
poetry of Greece is not dead-that the oaks of Delphos and
Dodona have not shed all their oracular leaves —that the
lightnings in Jove's hand are still warm-and the snows of
Olympus are yet clear and bright, shining over the waste of
years-that Mercury's feet are winged still-and still is
Apollo's hair unshorn-that'the mythology of Homer, long
dead to belief, is still alive to the airy purposes of poetrythat, though the " dreadful infant's hand" hath smitten down
the gods upon the 3apitol, it has left them  the freedom of
the Parnassian Hill; and that a Wordsworth, or a Tennyson,
may, evon now, by inclining the ear of imagination, hear the
river god plunging in Scamander-(Enone wailing upon Ida
-01d Triton blowing his wreathed horn; for never was a
truth more certain than that " a thing of beauty is a joy for
ever."
WTe had intended to say something of his " Lotos-eaters."
but are afraid to break in upon its charmed rest-to disturb
its sleepy spell —to venture on that land "in which it seemed
always afternoon "-or to stir its melancholy, mild-eyed inhabitants.  We will pass it by, treading so softly that the' blind mole may not hear a footfall."  We must beware of
9




202                 ALFRED TENNYSON.
slumbering, and we could hardly but be dull on the enchanted
ground.
While the "Lotos-eaters" breathes the very spirit of
luxurious repose, and seems, to apply his own words, a
perfect poem in " perfect rest," " Ulysses " is the incarnation
of restlessness and insatiable activity.  Sick of Ithaca,
Argus, Telemachus, and (su6 rosa) of Penelope too, the old,
much enduring Mariner King, is again panting for untried
dangers and undiscovered lands.
"M My purpose holds,
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."
Tennyson, with his fine artistic instinct, saw that the idea
of Ulysses at rest was an incongruous thought, and has
chosen rather to picture him journeying ever onwards toward
infinity or death" It may be that the gulphs will wash us downIt may be, we shall reach the happy isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."
And with breathless interest, and a feeling approaching the
sublime, we watch the gray-headed monarch stepping, with
his few aged followers, into the bark, which is to be their
home till death, and stretching away toward eternity; and
every heart and imagination cry out after him —" Go, and
return no more."
" Godiva " is an old story newly told-a delicate business
delicately handled-the final and illuminated version of an
ancient and world-famous tradition.  Its beauty is, that,
like its heroine, it is" clothed on with chastity."  It represses the imagination as gently and effectually as her naked
virtue did the eye.  We hold our breath, and shut every
window of our fancy, till the great ride be over. And in
this trial and triumph of female resolution and virtue, the
poet would have us believe that Nature herself sympathized
— that the light was bashful, and the sun ashamed, and the
wind hushed. till the sublime pilgrimage was past-and that,
when it ended, a sigh of satisfaction, wide as the circle of
earth and heaven, proclaimed Godiva's victory.
The "Vision of Sin" strikes, we think, upon a stronger,




ALFRED TENNYSON.                    203
though darker, chord than any of his other poems.  There
are in it illpenetrable obscurities, but, like jet black ornaments, some may think them dearer for their darkness. Yota
cannot, says Hazlitt, make "'an allegory go on all fours."
A vision must be hazy —a ghost should surely be a shadow.
Enough, if there be a meaning in the mystery, an oracle
speaking through the gloom. The dream is that of a youth,
who is seen riding to the gate of a palace, firom which
"~ Came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls and led him in."
He is lost straightway in mad and wicked revel, tempestuously yet musically described.  Meanwhile, unheeded by
the revellers, a "' vapor, (the mist of carArzess!) heavy, hueless, formless, cold," is floating slowly on toward the palace.
At length it touches the gate, and the dream  changes, and
such a change!
" Isaw
A gray and gap-toothed man, as lean as Death,
Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath,
And lighted at a ruined inn."
And, lighted there, he utters hisbitter and blasted feelings
in lines, reminding us, from  their fierce irony, their misanthropy, their thrice-drugged  despair, of Swift's';Legion
Club;" and-as in that wicked, wondrous poem —a light
sparkle of contemptuous levity glimmers with  a ghastly
sheen over the putrid pool of malice and misery below, and
cannot all disguise the workings of that remorse which is not
repentance. At length this sad evil utterance dies away in
the throat of the expiring sinner, and behind his consummated ruin there arises a "1 mystic mountain range," along
which voices are heard lamenting, or seeking to explain the
causes of his ruin.  One says" Behold it was a crime
Of sense, avenged by sense, that wove with time."
Another" The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame."




204                  ALFRED TENNYSON.
A. third"' He had not wholly quenched his powerA little grain of conscience made him sour."
And thus, at length, in a darkness visible of mystery and
grandeur, the " Vision of Sin " closes:" At las't I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the sumnmit, Is there any hope?
To which an answer peal'd from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn."
A reply there is; but whether in the affirmative or negative
we do not know.  A  revelation there is; but whether it be
an interference in behalf of the sinner, or a display, in ruddy
light, of God's righteousness in his punishment, is left in
deep uncertainty.  Tennyson, like Addison in his "Vision
of iMirza," ventures not to withdraw the veil from  the left
side of the eternal ocean.  He leaves the curtain to be the
painting.  He permits the'imagination of the reader to
figure, if it dare, shapes of beauty, or forms of fiery wrath,
upon the " awful rose of dawn," as upon a vast back-ground.
It is his only to start the thrilling suggestion.
After all, we have considerable misgivings about placing
Tennyson- -for what he has hitherto done-among our great
poets.  We cheerfully accord him  great powers; but he is,
as yet, guiltless. of great achievements.  His genius is bold,
but is waylaid at almost every step by the timidity and
weakness of his temperament.  His utterance is not proportionate to his vision.  He sometimnes reminds us of a dumb
man with important tidings within, but only able to express
them  by gestures, starts, sobs, and tears.  His works are
loopholes, not windows, through which intense glimpses come
and go, but no broad, clear, and rounded prospect is commanded.  As a thinker, he often seems like one who should
perversely pause a hundred feet from the summit of a lofty
hill, and refuse to ascend higher.  "Up! the breezes call
thee-the clouds marshal thy way-the glorious prospect
waits thee, as a bride for her husband —angels or gods may
meet thee on the top-it may be thy i>Mountain of Transfigu



ALFRED TENNYSON.                 205
ration."  But, no; the pensive or wilful poet chooses to remain below.
Nevertheless, the eye of genius is flashing in Tennyson's
head, and his ear is unstopped, whether to the harmonies
of nature, or to the still sad music of humanity.  We care
not much in which of the tracks he has already cut out he
may choose to walk; but we would prefer if he were persuaded more frequently to see visions and dream dreams —
like his "Vision of Sinl" —imbued with high purpose, and
forming the Modern Metamorphoses of truth.  We have no
hope that he will ever be, in the low sense, a popular poet, or
that to him the task is allotted of extracting music from the railway train, or of setting in song the " fairy tales of science "the great astronomical or geological discoveries of the age.
Nor is he likely ever to write any thing which, like the poems
of Burns, or Campbell, can go directly to the heart of the
entire nation. For no "' Song of the Shirt " even, need we
look from him. But the imaginativeness of his nature, the
deep vein of his moral sentiment, the bias given to his mind
by his early reading, the airy charm of his versification, and
the seclusion in which he lives, like a flower in its own peculiar jar, all seem to prepare him for becoming a great spiritual dreamer, who might write not only " Recollections of the
Arabian Nights," but Arabian Nights themselves, equally
graceful in costume, but impressed with a deeper sentiment,
chastened into severer taste, and warmed with a holier flame.
Success to such pregnant slumbers! soft be the pillow as that
of his own " Sleeping Beauty;" may every syrup of strength
and sweetness drop upon his eyelids, and may his dreams be
such as to banish sleep from many an eye, and to people the
hearts of millions with beauty!
On the whole, perhaps Tennyson is less a prophet than an
artist.  And this alone would serve better to reconcile us to
his silence, should it turn out that his poetic career is over.
The loss of even the finest artist may be supplied-that of a prophet, who has been cut off in the midst of his mission, or
whose words some envious influence or circumstance has
snatched from his lips, is irreparable.  In the one case, it
is but a painter's pencil that is broken; in the other it is a
magic rod shivered. Still, even as an artist, Tennyson has
not yet done himself full justice, nor built up any structure




206                 ALFRED TENNYSON.
so shapely, complete, and living, as may perpetuate his
niame.rs
Alfred Tennyson is the son of an English clergyman in
Lincolnshire.  He is of a retiring disposition, and seldom,
though sometimes, emerges from his retirement into the
literary coteries of London. And yet welcome is he ever
among them-with his eager physiognomy, his dark hair and
eyes, and his small, black tobacco pipe. Some years ago, we
met a brother of his in Dumfries, who bore, we were told,
a marked, though miniature resemblance to him,-a beautiful painter and an expert versifier, after the style of
Alfred.
The particulars of his literary career are familiar to most.
BHis first production was a small volume of poems, published
in 1831.  Praised in the "Westminster" elaborately, and
extravagantly eulogized in the Englishman's Magazine " (a
periodical conducted by William Kennedy, but long since
defunct, and which, according to some malicious persons,
died of this same article)-it was sadly mangled by less generous critics.  "Blackwood's Magazine " doled it out some
severely sifted praise; and the author, in his next volume,
rhymed back his ingratitude in the well-known lines to
"Rusty, musty, fusty, crusty Christopher," whose blame he
forgave, but whose praise he could not.  Mteanwhile, he was
quietly forming a small but zealous cohort of admirers; and
some of his poems, such as;" Mariana," &.c., were universally
read and appreciated.  His second production was less successful, and deserved to be less successful, than the first.  It
was stuffed with wilful impertinencies and affectations. His
critics told him he wrote ill, and he answered them by writing worse.  His third exhibited a very different spirit.  It
consisted of a selection from his two former volumes, and a
number of additional pieces-the principal of which we have
already analyzed.  In his selection, he winnows his former
works with a very salutary severity; but what has he done
with that delectable strain of the " Syrens?"  We think he
has acted well in stabling and shutting up his "Krakens"
in their dim, ocean mangers; but we are not so willing to
X His "Princess," published since the above, is a medley of success,
failure, and half-success-not even an attempt towards a whole.




PROFESSOR NICHOL.                  207
part with that beautiful sisterhood, and hope to see them
again at no distant day, standing in their lovely isle, and
singing —
"Come hither, come hither, and be our lords,
For merry brides are we.
We will kiss sweet kisses and speak sweet words.
Ye will not find so happy a shore,
Weary mariners all the world o'er.
Oh fly, oh fly no more."
PROFESSOR NICHOL.
THIs is the age of public lecturing, and we might spend a
long time in discussing its pros and cons, its advantages and
its evils. The open and legitimate objects which popular
lecturing proposes to itself are chiefly the three following:
instruction, excitement, and communication between the
higher minds of the age and those of a lower grade.  Now,
in reference to its utility as an organ of instruction, much
may be said on both sides.  In public lecturing, truth is
painted to the eye; it is enforced and illustrated by voice,
gesture, and action; it stands in the person of the orator as
in an illumined window.   The information thus given,
attended by a personal interest, and accompanied by a
peculiar emphasis, is more profoundly impressed upon the
memory: and nmany, by the fairy aspect of truth which is
presented, are induced to love and learn, who otherwise
would have remained indifferent and distant.  On the other
hand, the quantity of knowledge communicated by lecturing
is seldom large; and as to its quality, lecturers are under
strong temptations to dilute it down to the capacities of
their audience; and, instead of conducting them  from first
principles to details, to give them particular facts, and tell
them  to travel back themselves to leading principles, an
advice which they seldom, if ever, follow.  Too often the
hearers, however strongly urged to the contrary by their




208                PROFESSOR NICHOL.
instructors, forget to pursue profounder researches, to seek
after higher sources; and the close of the six or seven
lectures is the close of their studies, and furnishes the complement of their knowledge.  Often too, the class who have
least access to books have also least access to lectures, or even
when privileged to attend them, find their special wants but
indifferently supplied.
In the excitement produced by good public lecturing, its
advocates find a more plausible argument in its favor. It is
an amusement so happy and so innocent; it withdraws so
many froml the theatre, the card-table, and the tavern; it
gives such a stimulus to nascent intellects; it creates around
the lecturer such circles and semicircles of shining faces; it
rouses in so many breasts the spark of literary and scientific
genius;. it commences the manufacture of so many incipient
Miltons, no longer mute and inglorious; and of whole generations of young Arkwrights, worthy of their illustrious progenitor.  Nay, we would go a little farther still: we would
"better the instruction."  Its excitement and pleasure do
not stop here. The lecture-room promotes a great many
matches; it brings young ladies and gentlemen into close
and intimate propinquity; it excites active and animated
flirtations; it forms, besides, a pleasant interchange to one
class with the card-table —to another, an agreeable lounge on
the road to the afterpiece; and to a third, a safe and decent
half-way house to a quiet social talk in a quiet alehouse.  It is
also a nursery for the numerous sprigs of criticism which
abound-faithfully figured by the immortal " Punch," in those
specimens of the rising generation who deem that, as " for that
ere Shakspeare, he has been vastly overrated." And last, not
least, it permits many a comfortable nap to the hard-wrought
doctor, or schoolmaster, or artizan —to whom it matters not
whether the lecturer be in the moon or in the clouds, as they
are only, like their instructor, absent and lost.
Joking, however, apart, popular lecturing is undoubtedly a source both of much entertainment and excitement,
though we are not sure but that that entertainment is
more valued by the luxurious as a variety in their pleasures, than by the middle and lower classes as a necessity
in their intellectual life; and although we are sure that an
undue portion of that excitement springs from the glare of




PROFESSOR NICHOL.                209
lights, the presence of ladies, the mere " heat, and stare, and
pressure" of which Chalmers complained; and that comparatively little of it can be traced to the art, less to the genius,
and least of all to the subject, of the discourser.
As a means of communication between men of science
and literature and the age, it is, we are afraid, what M[r.
Horne would call a "' false medium."  You have in it the
prophet, shorn, dressed, perhaps scented, perhaps playing
miserable monkey-tricks to divert the audience-and not
the Moses coining down the Mount, with face shining, but
with lips stammering, from that dread communion on the
summit; or if the prophet do preserve his integrity, and
speak to the souls instead of the eyes and ears of his audience, it is at his proper peril; wild yawnings, slumbers
both loud and deep, not to speak of the nmore polite hints
conveyed in the music of slapping doors and rasping floors,
are the reward of his fidelity. We are aware, indeed, that a
few  have been able to overcome such obstacles, and, in
spite of stern adherence to a high object to gain general
acceptance. But these are the exceptions.  Their success,
besides, has greatly resulted from other causes than the truth
they uttered.  Certain graces of manner-certain striking
points in delivery-a certain melody, to which their thoughts
were set-created at the first an interest which gradually, as
the enthusiasm  of the speaker increased, swelled into a
brute wonder, which made you fancy the words " Orpheus no
fable," written in a transparency over the speaker's head.
But clear steady visions of truth, true and satisfying pleasure, and any permanent or transforming change, were
not given.  The audience were lifted up for a season, like
an animal caught in a whirlwind, by the sheer power of eloquence; they were not really elevated one distinct stepthey came down precisely the same creatures, and to the
same point, as before, and the thing would be remembered by
them afterwards as a dream.
MIinds, again, somewhat inferior to the prophetic order,
find a far freer and more useful passage to the public ear and
intellect, and succeed in giving not only a vague emotion of
delight, but some solid knowledge, and some lasting result.
Such a mind is that of our admirable friend, Professor Nichol; and even at the apparent risk of indelicacy, we propose




2 1 0              PROFESSOR NICHIOL.
to analyze its constituent qualities, as well as the special
causes of his great success as a lecturer.
The first time we heard of Professor Nichol was on the
publication of his "V Views of the Architecture of the
Heavens," and the first thing that struck us about the
production was the felicity and boldness of its title.  The
words "Architecture of the Heavens" suggested, first, the
thought that the heavens were the building of a distinct
divine aichitect; secondly, that the building was still in
progress; and, thirdly, that from even this low and distant platform, we are permitted glimpses of its gradual
growth toward perfection.  The essence, in fact, of the
nebular hypothesis was contained in the title; and although
that hypothesis is now commonly thought exploded, it is
only so far as the visible evidence is concerned-as a probable and beautiful explanation of phenomena, the original of
which is lost in the darkness of immeasurable antiquity, it retains its value. But how suggestive to us at the time was the
expression, "Architecture of the Heavens!"  Formerly we
deemed that when man awaked into existence, the building, indeed,was there in all its magnitude, but that the scaffoldingwas
down-all trace and vestige of the operation elaborately removed-and that the almighty Architect had withdrawn and
hid himself. But now we had come upon the warm footprints
of omnipotence-the Power was only a few steps in advance;
nay, thrilling thought! we had only to lift our telescopes to
behold him actually at work up there, in the midnight sky.
The telescope enabled us to stand behind the processes of the
Eternal-it was a wing by which we overtook the great retreat of the Deity, if indeed a retreat it was, and not rather
a perpetual progress-a triumphal march onwards into the
infinite dark.  It brought us ever new. electric, telegraphic
tidings of Him whose goings forth were of old-from everlasting-and which were nezv to everlasting as well.  Such
were the dim, yet high suggestions, of the nebular hypothesis.
If we relinquished them recently with a sigh, we now sigh
no more; for now we have been taught, in a manner most
impressive, the immense age of the universe, whose orbs seem
hoary in their splendor, and have thus found a new measure
for computing our knowledge, or rather for more accurately
estimating our ignorance, of the days, of the years, of the




PROFESSORt NICHOL.              211
right hand of him that is the Most High.  How long, we
now exclaim, it must be since the Great Artist put his finishing touch to that serene gallery of paintings we call the
stars, and yet how perfect and how godlike their execution;
since their lustre, their beauty, and their holy calm are this
night as fresh and unfaded as at the beginning. And how
solemn the thought, if these works, in the hiding of their Creator, be so magnificent, how great must himself be, and how
great must he have been, especially as he travailed in birth
with such an offspring, amid the jubilant shouts of all-awakening intelligence!
It is very common to skip the preface in order to get at
the book. In this case, we skipped the book to get at the
pictures. We read, nay, devoured, the plates-the poems
shall we call them —ere we read a word of the letter-press.
And most marvellous to us was their revelation of those starry
sprinklings, relieved against the dark background-those
wild capricious shapes, which reminded you of rearing steeds
under the control of perfect riders-seeming at once to spurn
and to be subject to immutable laws-those unbanked rivers
of glory flowing through the universe-why, we seemed standing on a Pisgah, commanding the prospect of immensity itself.
But still more striking to overlook, as we then imagined,
the laboratory of God, and to see his work in every stage of
its progress —the six demiurgic days presented to us contemporaneously and at once. No wonder that such plates enchanted us, and that we seemed gazing on rough copies from
the paintings of the Divine hand itself. What a triumph,
too, to mind over matter, and to a poor sun-illumined worm,
over his haughty torch-to be able, vith a piin-point, to indicate, and, if necessary, to hide his place in the firmament!
It was, indeed, an hour much deserving of memory.  The
folding-doors of the universe seemed to open upon us in
musical thunder; and if we could not as yet enter, yct we
could wish, like Mirza, for the wings of a great eagle to fly
away within them. It was one of those apocalyptic moments
that occur, or that can occur so seldom in life, for it is not
every day that we can see, for the first time, in the expanded
page of immensity, the charter of our soul's freedom, and
feel ourselves "enlarged " to the extent of the length and
breadth, the depth and the height of the creation.




212                PROFESSOR NICIOL.
Returning from a reverie, in which we saw our sun and
his thousand neighbor stars quenched like a taper in the
blaze of that higher noon, we found ourselves on earth again,
and renmembered that we had yet to read Dr. Nichol's book.
And it is the highest compliment we can pay it, to say that
it did not dissipate or detract from the impressions which
the eloquent pictures had produced, and that it gave them a
yet clearer and more definite form. It bridged in the foaming torrent of our enthusiasm.  It translated (as Virgil does
Homer) the stern and literal grandeurs of night into a mild
and less dazzling version.  We liked, in the first place, its
form. It consisted of letters, and of letters to a lady. This
held out a prospect of ease, familiarity, clearness, and grace.
iMost expounders, hitherto, of astronomical truth, had been
either too stilted in their style, or too scientific in their substance.  But here was a graceful conversation, such as an
accomplished philosopher might carry on with an intelligent
female, under the twilight canopy, or in the window recess,
as the moon was rising. It in no way transcended female
comprehension, or if it did, it was only to slide into one of
those beautiful, bewitching mists, which the imagination of.women so much loves.  There were, too, a warmth and a
heartiness about the style and manner, which distinguished
the book favorably from the majority of scientific treatises.
These, generally, are cold and dry. Trusting, it would seem,
to the intrinsic grandeur of the subject, they convey their
impressions of it in a didactic and feeble style, and catalogue
stars as indifferently as they would the withered leaves of
the forest.  Nichol, on the contrary, seems to point to them,
not with a cold rod, but with a waving torch.  He never
"' doubts that the stars are fire "-no immeasurable icebergs
they, floating in frozen air, but glowing, burning, almost living orbs; and his words glow, burn, and nearly start from
the page in unison.  We will not deny that this heat and
enthusiasm sometimes betray him into splencdida vitia-into
rhetorical exaggerations-into passages which sound hollow,
whether they are so or not-and worse, into dim and vague
obscurities, copied too closely from his own nebulhe, where
you have misty glimmer, instead of clear, solid land; but
his faults are of a kind which it is far more easy to avoid
than to reach, which no sordid or commonplace mind, howev



PnOFESSOR NICHOL.                  213
er accomplished, durst commit; and the spirit which animates his most tasteless combinations of sound, and peeps
through his swelling intricacies of sentence, is always beautiful and sincere. Beyond most writers, too, on this theme,
he has the power of giving, even to the uninitiated, a clear
and memorable idea of his subject-the truths of Astronomy
he paints upon the eye and soul of the reader.  And this he
is enabled to do-first, because he has a clear vision himself,
which his enthusiasm is seldom permitted to dull or to distort; and, secondly, because he seeks-labors-is not satisfied till he has transferred this entire to the minds of his
readers, and of his auditors.  Thus far of the mere manner
of his writing. In considering its spirit, we shall find metal
more attractive. This is distinguished by its sincere enthusiasm, its joyous hope, and by its religious reverence.
What field for enthusiasm can be named in comparison
with the innumerous and ever-burning stars-the first objects
which attract the eyes of children, who send up their sweetest smiles, and uplift their tiny hands to pluck them down as
playthings —the beloved of solitary shepherds, who, lying on
the hillside, try to count them in their multitudes, call them
by names of their own, love those " watchers and holy ones,"
as if they were companions and friends, and sometimes exclaim, with the great shepherd king of Israel, " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man!"-the beloved
of the mariner, who, pacing his midnight deck, turns often
aloft fis eye to those starry sparklers, shining on him through
the shroud,) or -
"M /irrored in the ocean vastA Thousand fathoms down,"the loved of the wakeful, especially of those who are awake
through sorrow, who, as they see them  trembling through
the lattice, feel, or fancy, that they are sympathizing with
their agonies, and would, if they could, send down a message
from their far thrones that might wipe away their tearsthe loved of the astronomer, who, a friendly spy, watches
their every motion, and through the tube of his telescope distils into himself the essence of their beauty, their meaning,
and their story-the loved of the poet's soul, who snatches




214                PROFESSOR NICHOL.
many a live-coal of inspiration from their flaming altars —
the loved of the Christian, who sees in them the reflection of
his Father's glory, the milestones on the path of his Redeemer's departure, and of his return-the loved of all who
have eyes to see, understandings to comprehend, and souls
to feel their grandeur so unspeakable, their silence so profound, their separation from each other, and from us so entire, their multitude so immense, their lustre so brilliant,
their forms so singular, their order so regular, their motions
so  lignified, so rapid, and so calm.  " If," says Emerson,
"the stars were to appear one night in a thousand years,
how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many
generations the remembrance of the city of God which had
thus been shown. But night after night come out these
preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.'
It is singular, that while the theory of the stars has been
perpetually changing, the conception of their sublime character has, under every theory, remained nearly the same.
While they are believed to be, as in the darker ages, absolutely divine, incorruptible, and perfect in their essence,
they were not regarded with more enthusiasm, alluded to
with more frequency, or lauded with more eloquence, than
now, when we know that imperfection, and inequality, decay,
and destruction, snow, and perhaps sin, have found their way
thither, as well as here; and Dante, amid his innumerable
descriptions of the heavenly bodies-and no poet has so
many-has said nothing finer in their praise than we find in
some of the bursts of Bayly.  If science has, with rude hand,
torn off from the stars that false lustre of saupernaturalismn
which they bore so long, it has immeasurably multiplied their
numbers, ul'.locked their secrets, at once brought them nearer
and thrown them farther off, and supplied the glitter of superstition by the severe light of law. If they seem no longer the thrones of angels, they are at least porch-lamps in
the temple of Almighty God. If no longer the regents of
human destiny, they are the Urim and Thummim upon the
breast of the Ancient of Days.  If not now regarded as a
part of the highest heaven, they at least light the way that
leadeth to honor, glory, and immortality.  From sparks they
have broadened into suns; from thousands they have mul



PROFESSOR NICI-IOL.               215
tiplied into millions. It is ever thus with the progress of
genuine truth. Remorselessly, as it rushes on, it scatters a
thousand beautiful dreams, slumbering like morning dewdrops among the branches of the wood, but from the path of
its progress there rises, more slowly, a stern, but true and
lasting glory, before which, in due time, the former "shall no
more be remembered, neither come into mind."
A  collection of all the descriptions of the stars, in the
poetry and prose of every age, would constitute itself a
galaxy.  It would include Homer's wondrous one-lined
allusions to them —so rapid and so strong, as they shone
over Ida, or kept still watch above the solitary Ulysses in
his sea-wanderings-the crown they wove over the bare
head of the sleepless Prometheus-the glances of power
and sympathy which they shed in, through rents in the
night of the Grecian tragedies-the ornate and labored pictures of Virgil and Lucretius-the thick imagery they supply to the Scripture bards-their perpetual intermingling
with the Divilnz  Conzedic; darting down through crevices in.
the descending circles of damnation, circling the mount of
purgatory, and paving the way to the vision of essential
Deity —Shakspeare's less frequent but equally beautiful
touches —Milton's plaintive, yet serene references to their
set glories —Young's bursts of wonder, almost of longing and
desire, for those nearer neighbors to the eternal throne,
which appeared to him to see so far and to know so muchByron's wild and angry lashing at them, like a sea, seeking
to rise, and reach and quench them, on a thousand shipwrecks-Wordsworth's love to them,fori loving and resting
on his favorite mountains —Bayly's hymnings of devotionChalmers' long-linked swells of pious enthusiasm-and last,
not least, our author's raptures, more measured, more artistic, but equally sincere.
There occurs a passage in one of Byron's letters, written
in Venice, where he describes himself, after a debauch, looking out at the night, when he exclaims,'" What nothings we
are before these stars!" and adds, that he never s.flicieztly
felt their' gr)eatness, till he looked at them through Herschel's
telescope, and saw that they were worlds.  We rather wonder
at this, for we have always thought that, to a highly imaginative mind, it mattered little whether it looked to the stars




PROFESSOR NICHOL.
through the eye or the telescope.  Who does not see and
feel that they are worlds, if he has a heart and an imagination, as well as an eye?  Who cares for the size of algebraic
symbols?  A star, at largest, is but a symbol, and the smaller
it seems, the more scope it leaves for imagination.  The
telescope tends rather to crush and overwhelm than to stimulate-to fill than to fire-some souls. It necessarily, too,
deprives the seeing of the stars, so far as they are regarded
individually, of many of its finest accessories.  The mountain which the star seems to touch-the tree through which
it trembles —the soft evening air on which it seems silently
to feed —the quick contrasts between it and its neighboring
orbs-its part as one of a constellated family —such poetical
aspects of it are all lost, and the glare of illumination falls upon
one vast unit, insulated at once from earth, and from the other
parts of heaven. It is as though we should apply a magnifyingglass to a single face in a group of painted figures, thereby
enlarging one object at the expense of the others, which are
not diminished, but blotted out. While, of course, acknowledging the mighty powers and uses of the telescope, and
confessing that from no clreamn did we ever more reluctantly
awake than from one which lately transported us to Parsonstown, and showed us the nebula in Orion just dropping to
pieces, like a bright dissolving cloud, yet we venture to assert
that many derive as much pleasure and excitement from the
crescent moon still as in Shakspeare's time, a silver bpow new
bent in heaven-from round, shivering Venus in the gireen
west-from the star of Jove suspended high over head, like
the apparent king of the sky —and from those glorious
jewels, hanging like two pendents, of equal weight and brilliance, from the ear of night, Orion and the Great Bear, as
they could from any revelation of the telescope. This very
night we saw what probably impressed our imagination as
much as a glimpse of the Rossian glories would have done.
TlIe night has been dark and drifting till a few minutes ago.
WVe went out to the door of our dwelling, looking for nothing
but darkness, when suddenly, as if flashing out through and
from the gloom, and meeting us like a gigantic ghost at our
very threshold, we were aware of the presence of Orion, and
involuntarily shuddered at the sight.
All astronomers of high name have been led at first to




PrrOFESSOrI NICI-IOL.            217
their science by the workings of an enthusiasm  as strong
as passion and as high as poetry.  We cannot doubt that
Newton was from his boyhood fascinated by the beauty of
the heavenly bodies, and that his wistful boyish glances at
their serene splendor and mystic dance formed the germs of
his future discoveries.  To some Woolst/howfpe reverie of tvrilight, we may trace the fall of the keys of the universe at
the feet of his matured manhood! Surely a loftier principle
was stirring in him than that which renders the juvenile
mechanician uneasy till he has analyzed the construction of.
a toy.  It was not, in the first instance, the mathematical
puzzles connected with them  that attracted him to those remote regions  but it was their remoteness, magnitude, and
mystery, which roused him  to grapple with their secrets.
Ordinary children love to see, and would like to join, the
march of soldiers, as they step stately by.  The boy Newton burned to accompany, as an intelligent witness and companion, the steps of planets and suns.  This enthusiasm
never altogether subsided, as many well-known anecdotes
prove. But too soon it ceased to express itself otherwise
than by silent study and wonder; it retired deep into the
centre of his being, and men, astonished at the lack-lustre
look with which the eye of the sage was contemplating the
stars, knew not that his spirit was the while gazing at theim
as with the insatiate glance of an eagle.  Thus frequently
has it been with astronomers.  Their ardor diving beyond
human sight or sympathy has failed to attract the minds of
others, and by coating itself in the ice of cold formiule and
petrified words, has repelled many a poetical enthusiast,
whose imagination was not his only faculty. We look on
professor Nichol as an acconiplished  mediator between the
two classes of mind, or, as we have formerly called him, an
Aaron to many an ineloquent 5i'oses of astronomy.
How he has preserved his child-like love for his subjectmatter we do not know, but certainly we always feel, when
reading him, that we are following the track of suns, burning and beneficent as footsteps of God, and not of "cinders
of the element," whirled round in a mere mechanical motion,
and chiefly valuable as lively and cheap illustrations of
5" Euclid's Elements!"  It is said that he has sacrificed powers of original discovery to popular effect; but what if this
10




'21 8              PROFESSOR NICI-HOL.
popular effect, in which so many are now  participating,
should be to rouse the slumbering energies of still mightier
geniuses, and give us a few Newtons, instead of one fully
developed Nichol!' Ha! I think there be six Richmonds
in the field."
WVe like next to, and akin to this, in Professor Nichol,
his spirit of hope and joy.  This, we think, ought to be, but
is not always the result of starry contemplations.  We
quoted before Carlyle's celebrated exclamation, "Ah, it's
a sad sight,"' as he looked up to a sparkling January sky.
Whether we join with him in this, or with Emerson in expressions of, jubilant praise, may depend partly upon our
state of'feeling.  In certain moods the stars will appear
hearths, in others hells.  The moon is bayed at not by
dogs alone.  The evening star awakens the gloomy hour of
the misanthrope, and shines the signal to the murderer, as
well as lights the lover to his assignation with his mistress,
and the poet to his meeting with the muse.  It seems now,
besides, evident to most, that the universe being made of one
material, struggle, uncertainty, woe, and the other evils to
which finitude is heir, are, in all probability, extended to its
remotest limits, and that thus the stars are no islands of the
blest, but, like our own world, stern arenas of contest, of defeat or of victory. Still, there are many reasons why the heavenly bodies should be a permanent spring of cheering, if
pensive, thought. There is, first, their unfathomable beauty.
Is it nothing to the happiness of man that God has suspended over his head this book of divine pictures, talking to him
in their own low but mighty speech, spotting his nights with
splendor. stnd filling his soul with an inspiring influence which
no earthly object can communicate? Doubts and difficulties
may occupy part of the intervening time, but the first and
the last feeling of humanity is, " Thanks, endless and
boundless, to Heaven for the stars."  Secondly, They give
us a sense of liberty which no other external cause can do,
and which. must enhance the happiness of man.  This was
one great good of the discovery of America.  It did not,
when found, fulfil the dreams of navigators; it was not a
cluster of fortunate isles, filled with happy spirits-the
worst passions of man were found among the most beautiful scenery in the world; but its discovery shivered the




PROr"fSSOR NICHOL.              219
fetters of usage and prejudice, burst the old nrcmnita m-tndi;
and man, the one-eyed giant, found himself groping and
pawing, to say the least, in a wider dungeon, and breathing a freer air. But the modern astronomy has broken
down stronger walls, and made man, in a sense, free of
the universe.  What though he has good reason to believe
that these many mansions of his Father's house are not, as
yet, peopled with the perfect and the happy. To him,
height and depth have unbarred many of their sacred marvels-new provinces, pointing to innumerable others behind, have expanded in the kingdom of the Infinite-every
limit and barrier have fled away, and the surprised prisoner feels his spirit at large, unbounded in a boundless
universe. Surely the telescope, in infusing into the mind
such a sense of freedom, has been a benefactor to the heart
of man, who may exclaim  to it, in the language of the
sword-song, "Joy-giver, I kiss thee."  But, thirdly, the
stars diffuse happiness through the thoughtful mind, as
revealing a whole so vast that all our partial and gloomy
views of it are straightway stamped with imperfection and
imbecility.  How little and idle our most plausible theories
look under the weight of that beaming canopy! Imagine
the shellfish, amidst its sludge, dreaming of the constitution of that world of waters which rolls above! So insignificant appears a Locke, a Kant, or a Spinoza, exalted
each some five or six feet above his grave, and theorizing so
dogmatically on the principles of the starry ocean.  We
seem to see the mighty mother bending down, listening to
each tiny but pompous voice, smilingly measuring the size
of the sage, and saying, in the irony of the gods, " And is
this really thy opinion, my little hero, and hast thou, within
that pretty new thimble of thine, actually condensed the
sea of truth? Perge Puer." Thus the midnight sky teaches
us at once the greatness and the littleness of man-his
greatness by comparison with his past self-his littleness
by comparison with the expanse of the universe, and with
his future being; and by both lessons it summonses us to
joy; because from the one we are obviously advancing upwards, and because fiom the other our doubts are seen to be
as little as our resolution of them; our darkness yet pettier
than our light.  Why, to one who could from a high point of




220                PRIOFESSOR NICHOL.
view overlook the general scheme of things, the darkest and
broadest shadow that ever crossed the mind of mnan-that ever
made him dig for death or leap howling into perdition —may appear no larger than one dim speck upon a mountain of diamond.
We stand up, therefore, with Leigh Hunt and Emerson
versus Carlyle and Foster, for the old name-the happy stars;
and Professor Nichol will come in and complete the majority.
Without specially, or at large, arguing the question, he takes
it for granted. and sees human immortality and infinite progress legibly inscribed on the sky.  The words  onwards"
and "to come" are to him the rung changes of the sphere-.
music, and fearlessly, and as in dance, he follows them  into
the hoary deep.
WNe admire, still more, Professor Nichol's spirit of reverence. iReligion as a human feeling is so natural a deduction from the spectacles of night, that we sometimes fancy,
that did man live conzstantly in a sunless world, and under
a starry canopy, he would be a wiser and holier, if a sadder being.  One cause, we imagine, why people in the
country are more serious than the same class in towns, is,
that they are brought more frequently, with less interruption, and often alone, into contact with the night sky, which
falls sometimes on the solitary head heavy as a mantle with
studs of gold.  "An undevout astronomer," says Young,' is
mad." Nor will the case of La Place disprove this poetic
adage-if we understand him  to mean, by devotion, that
general sense of the Infinite in the imagination which
passes as worship into the heart, and comes out as praise upon
the lips.  In this sense La. Place was a worshipper-and that
not merely, as Isaac Taylor intimates, of a law which had
frozen into a vast icy idol, but of the warmn creation as it
shone. around him.  Still, his worship did not reach the
measure, or deserve the name, of piety; it was the worship
of an effect, not of its living, personal, and father-like cause.
Nichol, on the other hand, never loses sight of the universe
as an instant, ever-rushing emanation of the Deity.  " God,"
he says, quoting a friend of kindred spirit, " literally creates
the universe every moment." He is led by Boscovich's theory
of atoms to suppose an infinite Will, producing incessantly
all force and motion.  And thus the beauty of things seems
to him, as it were, an immediate flush upon the cheek of the




PROFESSOR NICHOL.                221
Maker, and their light a lustre in his eye, and their motion
the circulation of his untiring energies; and yet, withal, the
works are never lost in the conception of their Creator, nor
the Creator pantheistically identified with the works.  The
mighty picture, and its mightier background and source, are
inseparably connected, but are never confused.
He takes up, in short, precisely the view and the attitude
of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in regard to the external
universe.  To them, that is just a blight or black screen concealing God.  "Whither can they go from  his Spirit? whither can they flee from his presence 2"  At every step, and
in every circumstance, they feel themselves God-inclosed,
God-filled, God-breathing men, with a spiritual Presence
lowering or smiling on them from the sky, sounding in wild
tempest, or creeping in panic stillness across the surface
of the earth; and if they turn within, lo! it is there also
-an Eye hung in the central darkness of their own heart.
This sublime consciousness a cold science had in a great
measure extinguished.  Deity, for a season, was banished
from the feeling of men; but we are mistaken if a higher
and better philosophy have not brought hrim back!-brought
back the sun to the earth, in bringing back sight to the
blind! Say, rather, a better philosophy, of which our author
is not the least eloquent expounder, is bringing back man
to a perception of the overhanging Deity.
On the relations which connect astronomy with revealed
religion, Professor Nichol, though not silent, is somewhat
less explicit than we could have wished. In the absence
of the powerful light which he could have cast upon this
topic, we must permit ourselves a few cursory remarks
constituting an outline, which may or may not afterwards
be filled up.  The Christian Scriptures were, of course,
never intended to teach astronomy, any more than to teach
botany, or zoology, or conchology, or any other ology, but
theology; their main object is to bear a message of mercy to
a fallen race, and their allusions to other subjects are necessarily incidental, brief, glancing for a moment to a passing
topic, and then rapidly returning to the main and master
theme.  It follows, therefore, that if we look into them
for a systematic statement of truth on any secular subject, we may look long, and look in vain.  Nay, we need not




222                PROFESSOR NICHIOL.
have been surprised, although they had in every point coin
cided with floating popular notions of physical subjects,
provided they did not fail, by their wonted divine alchemy,
to deduce from them eternal lessons of moral truth and
wisdom.  But as "all things are known to the soul"-as
even the mind of genius, in its higher hour, has rare
glimpses of subjects lying round about, as well as within,
the sphere of its thought-so, much more we might have expected that the divinely inspired soul should have hints and
intimations, occasional and imperfect, of other fields besides
its own.  Working in ecstasy, was the prophetic mind never
to overleap its barriers?
VWe affirm, and could, we think, prove the following propositions:-1st, We find in the Scripture-writers not only a
feeling of the grandeur of the heavenly bodies, but a sense.
obscure, indeed, yet distinct, of their vast magnitu e; 2dly,
No real contradiction to the leading principles of the modern astronomy; 3dly, One or two hints, that, whether by
revelation or otherwise. the true scheme of  the universe was
understood by more than one of their number; 4thly, The
recognition, especially, of the principle of a plurality of
worlds; and, 5thly, The recognition of the operation of
decay, change, convulsion, and  conflagration, among the
stars.  " He hangeth," says Job, " the earth upon nothing."
What a clear and noble gleam  of astronomical insight was
this in that dark age! In the deep wilderness of Edom did
this truth, the germ of the Copernican hypothesis, flash upon
the soul of the lon3ly herdsman, as he turned up his eye to a
heaven of far more brilliance than ours, through whose serene and. transparent air night looked down in all her queenlike majesty. There wandering, the inspired herdsman, and
seeing that those orbs which his heart told him were worlds,
were suspended and balanced in the mere void, his mind
leaped to the daring conclusion, that so, too, was the firm
earth beneath his feet; and with like enthusiasm to that of
Archimedes, when he cried " Eureka! euraeka!" did he exclaim, " He hangeth the earth upon nothing, and stretcheth
out the north over the e2mpty place."
In like manner, striking is the relation between some
admitted facts of astronomy, and some recent speculations
in metaphysics, and those remarkable declarations of Scrip



PROFESSOR NICI-OL.               223
ture concerning the non-permanence of this material framework.  We will not soon forget a little circumstance of
curious coincidence which occurred in our own experience,
in reference to this subject. We had returned from hearing,
in Dundee, a lecture by a brilliant friend, in which, in his
own inimitable way, and as a deduction from his own daring
theory, he had described the dissolution of the universe.
At family prayers that very evening, in the course of our
ordinary reading, occurred the third chapter of Peter, prophesying the same event. WVe were all, particularly the lecturer himself, struck with it.  It seemedl a sublime commientary from the written word upon the lesson we had
heard read us from  the stars.  So far fromu looking on it as
a mere chance coincidence, we all appeared to hear in it
God's own whisper-that we had not been hearing or believ~ing a lie.
We are aware that the magnitude and multitude of the
stars have furnished a theme of objection to the skeptic, ancd
have elsewhere attempted to show, that Dr. Chalmers has
not fully or satisfactorily answered that objection.  His': Sermons on the Modern Astronomy " —certainly of this
century the most brilliant contribution to the ocratory of religion-are not distinguished by his usual originality and
force of argument.  They repel assumptions by assumptions; and, in the exuberant tide of eloquence, the sophism
in question is lost sight of, but not drowned.  The objection
of the skeptic was —Would the Proprietor of a universe so
vast have given his Son to die for a world so small? and,
perhaps the best reply might be condensed in three questions asked in return to the infidel's one.  Ist, What is
material magnitude compared to mind? 2dly, Can you
pr'ove that the vast magnitude on which you found your objection is peopled by moral beings? and, 3dly, What has
magnitude to do with a moral question? What, for instance, has the size of a city to do with the moral character of its inhabitants?  WVhat has the extent of a country
to do with the intellectual or moral interest which may or
may not be connected with its plains?  Whether is Ben
Mae Dhui or Bannockburn the dearer to the Scottish heart,
though the one be the prince of Scottish hills, and the other
only a poor plain, undistinguished save by an humble stone,




224                 POrFEuSSOR NICICHOL.
and by the imnmortal memories of patriotism and courapg
which gather around that field, where "those who had wi'
WVallace bled " bade: welcome to their gory bed, or to victory 2"  Whether is more glorious the gay city of Madrid,
or the lonely cape of Trafalgar, where the guns cf Nelson,
from their iron lips, spake destruction to the united fleets of
France and Spain?  Whether is Mont Blanec or M3orgarten
the nobler object, though the one be the
" Monarch of mountainsThey crown'd him long ago,
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
WVith a diadenm of snow "
and the other only a humble field where the Swiss baffled
their Austrialn oppressors, and wihere " first in the shock
with Xuri's spear was the arm of William Tell.?"  Whether
is more beloved by the Christian's heart Caucasus or Calvary? and yet the one is the loftiest of Asia's mountains, and
the other a little hill-a mere dot upon the surface of the
globe.  So, may there not issue from  this remote earth of
ours-frolm  the noble deeds it has witnessed-from the nobler aspirations which have been breathed upon it-froml the
high thoughts which have been thought upon its surface —
fiom the eloquent words which have stirred its air into music-front the poets who have wrought its language into undying song-froin the philosophers who have explored the
secrets of its laws —fron the men of God who have knelt in
its temples-froam the angels who have touched its mountains
-from the footsteps of Incarnate D-eity, which have imprinted its plains-a burst of glory, before which the lustre of
suns, constellations and firmaments, must pale, tremble, and
melt away?
Another consideration is important and obvious.  If the
greatness of the creation and of its God dwindles earth and
man, it nmust dwindle also every separate section of the universe, and each separate family-for all sections and fantilies, compared to infinity, are less than nothing; and if special circumstances in man's history called for a special interposition in his behalf, surely the urgency of the demand
justifies the interference.  And as to the question of condescension) the very term  involves a false and human concep



PROFESSOI NICHOL,                225
tion of God; or if God did condescend to come down to
man's condition, it was, in fact, little more than had he condescended to care for and die for angels-the gulf between
bothi ranks of being and himself being boundless.  Besides,
if, as many suppose, misery and sin extend throughout the
universe, may not the scheme of human redemption be only
a part of a general process-as Chalmers says,' "May not the
redemption of many guilty worlds have been laid on the Redeemer's shoulders;" or if, on the other hand, ours be the
sole world that has fallen, would not this alone account for
the importance attached to, and the sacrifices made for it?
Just as, let the meanest man in a kingdom commit a high
crime, his insignificance is forgotten —he rises instantly into
importanci —he is summoned to solemn trial, and on his trial the interest and eyes of an entire nation are suspended;
or let the tiniest bill in a country, so tiny that it was not
thought worth while to give it a name, but break out into a
volcano, and that fire will become to it as a crown-men will
flock from every quarter to see it-it will become the principal feature, the terrible tongue of the region and the old
snow-clad mountains will appear diminished in its presence.
So (this view Dr. Chalmers has admirably amplified, but has
not sought to prove the pyrem~2ise on which it would require to
be founded), if we should call earth the only blot on the fair
page of God's universe, we can thus account why angels have
rested on its summits-the voice of God been heard in its
groves-and the Son of God, for thirty-three years, ate its
bread, walked on its surface, and at last died for its sins.
But, in seeking partially to fill up Dr. Nichol's blanks,
1et us not forget his redundant merits-the genial glow of
his spirit-the rich yet nice exuberance of his languagehis tremulous and prolonged sympathy with every note of
his theme-the clear telescopic light he casts on what is
dark-the fine chiaroscuro in which he often bathes what is
clear —the choice flowers of poesy which he culls and wreaths
around the drier and barer corners of his discourse-and
the rich steam of pious feeling which rises irresistibly from
each of his closes, as fiom a censer of incense. Such qualities
we find not only in his first work, but even more finely displayed, we think, in his book on the " Solar System."  "We
would indite," says Charles Lamb, "something on the solar
10*




226                PROFESSOR NICHOL.
system.  Betty, bring the candles."  How the gentle Elia
fared in this candle-light excursion he does not inform  us.
In the absence of authentic details concerning this expedition, we have willingly accepted Dr. Nichol's more scientific
guidance. We have stood with him on the shining summits
of the Moon, looked around on the glazed desolation, gone
down into the dreader than Domdaniel caverns, and, conming
up, asked at the huge overhanging Earth and the stripped
stony Sun, the unanswered question-is this a choas or a
ruin?  We have climbed the tall cliffs of Venus-been
motes in Mercury, itself a mote in the near blaze of the Sun
-pressed our footprints in the snows of 3Mars —swam across
the star of Jove, so beautiful and large-paused, and wished
to pause for ever, under the divine evenings of Saturn, wishing his ring that of eternity-salutec, from Herschel, the Sun,
as the " Stc6' of Day," far, faint, diminished, discrowned-and
from Neptune, as from a promontory, have looked out into
the empire of a night like day, while behind us lay a day
like night.  A winged painter, with bold pinion and bolder
pencil, did he lead us from world to world, and his wing
seemed to get stronger, and his vision clearer, and his colors
more vivid, the dimmer the region, and the farther the
flight.
If we have, in speaking at such length of Dr. Nichol as
a writer, left ourselves less room to descant on his merits as
a lecturer, our reason is, in both characters he is substantially the same.  His writings are just undelivered lectures
-his lectures are just spoken books.  There are some in
whom speaking developes new powers, and who are more at
home behind the desk of the lecture-room than behind that
of the study. There are others in whom speaking discovers
new deficiencies, and who, fiom want of practice, or diffidence, or contempt for their audience, lecture below their
general powers.  Professor Nichol belongs to neither of
those classes.  Both in the study and the lecture-rooml, he
is the same clear expounder, vivid describer, and tempered
enthusiast.  His manner, without detracting aught from,.
adds little or nothing to, the impression of his thought or
style, of which it is simply the medium. Its principal quality
is ease-an ease not materially impaired by a certain hesitation.  Hesitation, we need scarcely say, has often a great




PROFESSOR NICHOL.                 227
charm.  How fine sometimes it is accompanying the prattle
of a beautiful childc! And we know some popular divines
who have stamimered themselves into pulpit celebrity, proving that a fault dexterously managed, is worth tWo mlerits
left in a state of nature.  Dr. Nichol's hesitation is not
great, is confined to his extempore speech, and seems rather
to spring from an excess than a deficiency of matter or words.
Every little while, too, he resorts to his notes, and reads his
fine passages with much gusto and effect. W5e must say,
however, that we prefer him when carrying on his conversations-so lively, explicit, and entertaining-with his hearers.
In this combined character of lecturer and popular
writer, Dr. Nichol has done more than any man living to
unease science from its nummy confinements, and to make
it walk abroad as a free and living thing.  And though he
should never accomplish much in the walks of positive discovery, nor even build up any solid systematic treatise of
scientific exposition, he shall not have labored in vain, nor
spent his strength for nought.  He has, in his various works
and progresses through the country, scattered the profuse
seeds of what shall yet be an abundant harvest of astronomical enlightenment and  enthu siasm.  aWe have been
amazed and delighted to witness the impression he contrives
to make upon even humble minds, by the joint effect of his
subject-his gorgeous style-his gigantic diagrams, and the
enthusiasm which speaks through his pallid visage and large
gray eyes; and how many "ready-made astronomers'  he
leaves behind him wherever he goes.
At the commencement of this century, the popular literature of astronomy was in no very palmy condition.  Fontenelle, indeed, had defended, with mluch acuteness and elegance, the doctrine of a " plurality of worlds."  Addison,
like a " child-angel," had prattled a wondrous prattle about
the stars in sonle of his Saturday " Spectators."  But the
real text-book of popular prose instruction on this subject
was "I Hervey's M}Ieditations"-a book written by a good
man, but feeble writer, and chiefly distinguished by its inane
glitter.  But now, not to speak of Dr. Dick, whose lucid, iinteresting, and widely-read books have done so much to popularize the theme, the genius of Chalmers, Isaac Taylor, and
others, has made up for the indifference of ages.  Still, Ni



228                 PROFESSOR NICHIOL.
lchol is the prose laureate of the stars.  From  his writings
ascends hitherto the richest tribute of mingled intelligence
of their laws-love for their beauty-admiration of their
still strong order-hope in the prospects of mankind, as reeetectd in their mirror —and sense, ever profound and near,
of that unseen Power, who counts their numbers, sustains
their motions, and makes their thousand eyes the organs and
the symbols of his omniscience.
In some of the Professor's recent works, such as his "' Observations on the System  of the World,"' and his Preface to
Willnm's " Education," we have been a little annoyed at the
quantity of careless writing they contain-at once loose, obscure, and incorrect-and have been tempted to lay the
blame now upon his printers, and now upon his own most incomprehensible and 6zebzulozs hanzdwritinzg.
We take our leave of this subject with considerable regret, both because we are always sorry to part from a frank,
friendly, and intelligent companion like Dr. Nichol, and because we are even yet sorrier to leave a theme so fascinating,
even to an unscientific writer, as the " star-eyed science."
We cannot close without alluding to the recent death of Miss
Herschel, long the associate of Sir William, in his midnight
observations, and to whom our author pays an elegant compliment, in his "Architecture of the Heavens."  After long
enjoying the brilliant reputation of her brother, and the
equally wide and true, if not so brilliant, reputation of her
nephew-retaining, amid  the chills of extremfe age, all
the ardor of her enthusiasm, and engaged, it is said, to the
last in her favorite pursuit-she has fallen asleep.  Every
astronomer, surely, is ready to envy her fate, so far as her
retaining to the end her post is concerned.  To die at the
telescope is surely a nobler destiny than to die at the can
non, or on the throne."
- Since this was written, the Professor has been in America, and the
public may soon expect the result in a separate, and, we doubt not, moLa
interesting work.




MI's. HEMTANS.                 223
I~RS. H EMANS.
FEIMALE authorship is, if not a great, certainly a singular
fact.  And if a singular fact in this century, what must it
have been in the earlier ages of the world-when it existed
as certainly as now, and was more than now a phenomenon,
standing often insulated and alone?  If, even in this age,
blues are blac/-balled, and homespun is still the "- only wear,"
and music, grammar, and  grzamarye are the three elements
legitimately included and generally expected in the education of woman, in what light must the Aspasias and the
Sapphos of the past have been regarded 2  Probably as
Auszts natuZrce, in whom a passionate attachment to literature
was pardoned as a pleasant peccadillo, or agreeable insanity;
just as a slight squint in the eye of a beauty, or even a far-off
faux pCas in her reputation, is still not unfrequently forgiven.
But alas! in our age the exception is likely soon to become
the rule-the luesus the law; and, at all events, of female
authorship the least gallant of critics is compelled now to
take cognizance; and without absolutely admitting this as
ozur characteristic, we must confess the diffidence as well as
the good-will wherewith we approach a subject where respect for truth and respect for the sex are sometimes apt to
jostle and jar.
The works of British women have now taken up, not by
courtesy but by right, a full and conspicuous place in our
literature. They constitute an elegant library in themselves;
and there is hardly a department in science, in philosophy,
in morals, in politics, in the belles-lettres, in fiction, or in
the fine arts, but has been occupied, and ably occupied, by a
lady.  This certainly proclaims a high state of cultivation
on the part of the many which has thus flowered out into
composition in the case of the few.  It exhibits an extension
and refinement of that element of female influence which, in
the private intercourse of society, has been productive of
such blessed effects-it mingles with the harsh tone of general literature, "as the lute pierceth through the cymbal's
clash."-it blends with it a vein of delicate discrimination,
of mild charity, and of purity of morals-gives it a healthy




230                    BmRS. HirIANS.
and happy tone, the tone of the fireside  it is in the chamber
of our literature, a quiet and lovely presence; by its very
gentleness, overawing as well as refining and beautifying it
all.  One principal characteristic of female writing in our
age is its sterling sense.  It is told of Coleridge, that he was
accustomed, on important emergencies, to consult a female
friend, placing implicit confidence in her first instructive
suggestions. If she proceeded to add her reasons, he checked
her immediately.  "! Leave these, madam, to me to find out."
We find this rare and valuable sense- this short-hand reasoning-exemplified in our lady authors-producing, even in the
absence of original genius, or of profound penetration, or of
wide experience, a sense of perfect security, as we follow
their gentle guidance.  Indeed, on all questions affecting
proprieties, decorums, what we may call the ethics of sentimentalism, minor as well as major morals, their verdict may
be considered oracular, and without appeal.  We remark,
too, in the writings of females, a tone of greater generosity
than in those of men. They are more candid and amiable
in their judgments of authors and of books.  Commend us
to female critics.  They are not eternally consumed by the
desire of being witty, astute, and severe, of carping at what
they could not equal-of hewing down what they could or
vwoulcl not have built up.  The principle, nail ccdi'irari, is
none of theirs; and whether it be that a sneer disfigures
their beautiful lips, it is seldom  seen upon them.  And in
correspondence with this, it is curious that (in our judgments, and, we suspect, theirs) the worst critics are persons
who dislike the sex, and whom the sex dislikes-musty,
fusty old bachelors, such as Gifford, or certain pedantic prigs
in the press of the present day.  Ladies. on the other hand,
are seldom severe judges of any thing, except each other's
dress and deportment; and in defect of profound principles,
they are helped out by that fine instinctive sense of theirs,
which partakes of the genial nature, and verges upon genius
itself.
Passing from  such preliminary remarks, we proceed to
our theme.  We have selected Mrs. Hemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, not because we consider her the
best, but because we consider her by far the most feminine
writer of the age. All the woman in her shines. You could




TIRS. IlEMANS.                  231
not (unknowing of the author) open a page of her writings
without feeling this is written by a lady.  Her inspiration
always pauses at the feminine point.  It never " oversteps
the modesty of nature," nor the dignity and decorum of womanhood.  She is no sibyl, tossed to and fro in the tempest
of furious excitement, but ever a "l deep, majestical, and highsouled woman "-the calm mistress of the highest and stormiest of her emotions.  The finest compliment we can pay
her-perhaps the finest compliment that it is possible to pay
to woman, as a moral being-is to compare her to " one of
Shakspeare's women," and to say, had Imogen, or Isabella,
or Cornelia become an author, she had so written.
Sometimes, indeed, Mrs. Hemans herself seems seduced,
through the warmth of her temperament, the facility and
rapidity of her execution, and the intensely lyrical tone of
her genius, to dream  that the shadow of the Pythoness is
waving behind her, and controlling the motions of her song.
To herself she appears to be uttering oracular deliverances.
Alas!'"oracles speak," and her poetry, as to all effective
utterance of original truth, is silent.  It is emotion only
that is audible to the sharpest ear that listens to her song.
A bee wreathing round you in the warm  summer morn her
singing circle, gives you as much new insight into the
universe as do the sweetest strains which have ever issued
from this " voice of spring."  We are reluctantly compelled,
therefore, to deny her, in its highest sense, the name of
poet-a word often abused, often misapplied in mere compliment or courtesy, but which ought ever to retain its stern
and original signification.  A mncaker she is not.  W~hat
dream of childhood has she ever, to any imagination, reborn.
whose slumbers has she ever peopled with new and terrible
visions? what new form or figure has she annexed, like a
second shadow, to our own idiosyncracy, to track us on our
way for ever? to what mind has she given such a burning
stamp of impression as it feels eternity itself unable to
efface?  There is no such result from  the poetry of Mrs.
Ilemans.  She is less a maker than a mwusician, and her
works appear rather to rise to the airs of the piano than
to that still sad music of humanity-the adequate instrument
for the expression of which has not yet been invented by
man.  From the tremulous movement, the wailing cadences:




232                   sIns. nESIANS.
the artistic pauses, and the conscious-swelling climaxes of
her verse, we always figure her as modulating, inspiring,
and controlling her thoughts and words to the tune of some
fine instrument, which is less the vehicle than the creator of
the strain.  In her poetry, consequently, the music rather
awakens the meaning, than does the meaning round and
mellow off into the mlusic.
With what purpose does a lady, in whom perfect skill
and practice have not altogether drowned enthusiasm, sit
down to her harp, piano, or guitar. Not'altogether for the
purpose of display-not at all for that of instruction to her
audience-but in a great measure that she may develop, in
a lawful form, the sensibilities of her own bosom. Thus sat
Felicia Htemans before her lyre —not touching it with awful
reverence, as though each string were a star, but regarding
it as the soother and sustainer of her own high-wrought
emotions-a graceful alias of herself.  Spring, in its vague
joyousness, has not a more appropriate voice in the note of
the cuckoo than feminine sensibility had in the more varied
but hardly profounder song of the authoress before us.
We wish not to be misunderstood.  Mrs. HI-emans had
something more than the common belief of all poets in the
existence of the beautiful. She was a genuine woman, and,
therefore, the sequence (as we shall see speedily) is irresistible, imbued with a Christian spirit.  Nor has she feared to
set her creed to music in her poetry. But it was as a betrayal, rather than as a purpose, that she so did.  She was
more the organ of sentiment and sensibility than of high and
solemn truth —more a golden morning mist, now glittering
and then gone in the sun, than a steady dial at once
meekly reflecting and faithfully watching and measuring his
beams.
She was, as Lord Jeffrey well remarks, an admirable
writer of occasional verses.  She has caught, in her poetry,
passing moods of her own mind-meditations of the sleep
less night-transient glimpses of thought, visiting her in
her serener hours-the 1" silver lining" of those cloudy feelings which preside over her darker-and the impressions
made upon her mind by the more remarkable events of her
every-day life-and the more exciting passages of her reading.  Her works are a versified journal of a quiet, ideal,




MlS. 1-IEMANS.                  233
and beautiful life —the life at once of a wonman and a poetess, with just enough, and no more,  of romance to cast
around it a mellow autumnal coloring.  The songs, hymns,
and odes in which this life is registered, are as soft and bright
as atoms of the rainbow; like them, tears transmuted into
glory, but, no more than they, are great or complete.  In
many poets, we see the germ  of greatness, which might, in
happier circumstances, or in a more genial season, have been
developed.  But no such germ can the most microscopic survey discover in her, and we feel that at her death her beautiful
but tiny task was done.  Indeed, with such delicate organization, and such intense susceptiveness as hers, the elaboration, the long reach of thoug'ht, the slow czuzulative advance,
the deep-curbed, yet cherished ambition which a great work
requires and implies, are, we fear, incompatible.
It follows, naturally from this, that her largest are her
worst productions.  They labor under the fatal defect of tedium.  They are a surfeit of sweets.  Conceive an orchard
of rose-trees.  Who would not, stupefied and bewildered by
excess and extravagance of beauty, prefer the old, sturdy,
and well-laden boughs of the pear and pippen, and feel the
truth of the adage-" The apple tree is the fairest tree in the
wood?"  Hence few, comparatively, have taken refuge in her
"forest sanctuary," reluctant and rare the ears which have
listened to her "' Vespers of Palermo," her " Siege of Valencia" has stormed no hearts, and her' Skeptic" made, we
fear, few converts.  But who has not wept over her "G0raves
of a Household," or hushed his heart to hear her " Treasures
of the Deep," in which the old Sea himself seems to speak,
or wished to take the left hand of the Hebrew child and lead
him  up, along with his mother, to the temple service; or
thrilled and shouted in the gorge of "lMorgarten," or trembled at the stroke of her " Hour of Death?"  Such poems
are of the kind which win their way into every house, and
every collection, and every heart.  They secure for their
authors a sweet garden plot of reputation, which is envied
by none, and with which no one intermeddles.  Thus flowers
smile, unharmed, to the bolt which levels the pine beside
them. The tapers live while suns sink and disappear. Even a
single sweet poelm, flowing from a gentle mind in a happy hour,
is as " ointment poured forth," and carries a humble name in




234                    MIRS. i-EMANS.
fragrance far down into futurity, while the elaborate produce
tions of loftier spirits rot upon the shelves.  A Lucretius exhausts the riches of his magnificent mind in a stately poem,
which is barely remembered, and never read.  A Wolfe expresses the emotions of every heart at the recital of Sir John
Moore's funeral in a few rude rhymes, and becomes immortal. A Shelley, dipping his pen in the bloody sweat of his
lonely and agonized heart, traces voluminous lines of e" red
and burning" poetry, and his works are known only to some
hardy explorers.  A  Michael Bruce transfers one springjoy of his dying frame, stirred by the note of the Cuckoo,
to a brief and tear-stained page; and henceforth the voice
of the bird seems vocal with his name, and wherever, from
the " engulphed navel'3 of the wood, you hear its strange,
nameless, tameless, wandering, unearthly voice, you think of
*the poet who sighed away his soul and gathered his fame in
its praise.  A Bayley constructs a work "before ail ages,'
lavishes on it imagination that might suffice for a century of
poets; and it lies, on some recherch tables, like a foreign
curiosity, to be seen, shown, and lifted, rather than to be
read and pondered.  A William Miller sings, one gloaming,
his "Wee Willie Winkie," and the nurseries of an entire
nation re-echo the simple strain, and every Scottish mother
blesses, in one breath, her babe and his poet.  We mention
this, not entirely to approve, but in part to wonder at it. It
is not just that one strain fiom a lute or a pan's pipe should
survive a thunder-psalm-that effusions should eclipse works.
M[rs. Hemans's poems are strictly effusions; and not a
little of their charm springs from  their unstudied and extempore character.  This, too, is in fine keeping with the
sex of the writer. You are saved the ludicrous image of a
double-dyed Blue, in papers and morning wrapper, sweating
at some stupendous treatise or tragedy firom morn to noon,
and from  noon to dewy eve-you see a graceful and gifted
woman, passing from. the cares of her family and the enjoyments of society, to inscribe on her tablets some fine thought
or feeling, which had throughout the day existed as a still
sunshine upon her countenance, or perhaps as a quiet unshed
tear in her eye.  In this case, the transition is so natural
and graceful, from  the duties or delights of the day to the
employments of the desk, that there is as little pedantry in




SRS. HEMVIANS.                235
writing a poem as in writing a letter, and the authoress appears only the lady in flower. Indeed, to recur to a former
remark, M3rs. Hemans is distinguished above all others by
her intense womanliness; and as her own character is so
true to her sex, so her sympathies with her sex are very peculiar and profound.  Of the joys and the sorrows, the difficulties and the duties, the trials and the temptations, the
hopes and the fears, the proper sphere and mission of woman,
and of those peculiar consolations which the "world cannot
give nor take away,' that sustain her even when baffled, she
has a true and thorough appreciation; and her " Records of
WVoman," and her "Songs of the Affections," are just audible beatings of the deep female heart.  In our judgment,
Mrs. Ellis's idea of woman is trite, vulgar, and limited, compared with that of " Egeria," as Miss Jewsbury used fondly
to denote her beloved friend. What a gallery of Shakspeare's
female characters would the author of the " Mothers, Daughters, and Women of England " have painted! What could
she have said of Juliet   I- How would she have contrived to
twist Beatrice into a pattern Miss?  Perdita! would she
have sent her to a boarding-school? or insisted onfinzishing,
according to the Hannah More pattern, the divine Miranda?
Of that pretty Pagan Imogen, what would she make?
Imagine her criticism on Lady Macbeth, or on Ophelia's dying speech and confession, or her revelation of the " Family
Secrets " of the "Merry Wives of Windsor!"
Next to her pictures of the domestic affections stand
Mrs. HIemans's pictures of nature. These are less minute
than passionate, less sublime than beautiful, less studies
than free, broad, and rapid sketches. Her favorite scenery
was the woodland, a taste in which we can thoroughly sympathize.  In the wood there is a fulness, a roundness, a
rich harmony, and a comfort. which soothe and completely
satisfy the imagination. There, too, there is much life and
motion. The glens, the still moorlands, and the rugged
hills, will not move, save to one master finger, the finger of
the earthquake, who is chary of his great displays; but before each lightest touch of the breeze the complacent leaves
of the woodland begin to stir, and the depth of solitude
seems instantly peopled, and from  perfect silence there
comes a still small voice, so sweet and sudden that it is as




236                    MR,. mILTMANS.
if every leaf were the tongue of a separate spirit.   Her favorite season was the autumn, though her finest verses are
dedicated to the spring.  Here, too, we devoutly participate
in her feelings.  Thle shortening day-the new out-bursting
from  their veil of daylight of those, in summer, neglected
tremblers, the stars-the yellow corn-the gray and pensive
light-the joy of harvest-the fine firing  of all-the groves
(not the "fading but the kindling of the leaf ")-the frequent
and moaning winds-the spiritual quiet in which, at other
times, the stubble-fields are bathed-the rekindling of the
cheerful fires upon the hearth-the leaves falling to their
own sad music-the rising stackyards- the wild fruit, ripened at the cold sun of the frost-the " inelffable gleans of light
dropping upon favorite glens or rivers, or hills that shine
out like the shoulder of Pelops "-the beseeching looks with
which, trembling on the verge of winter, the belated season
seemxs to say, "1 Love me well, I am the last of the sisterhood
that you can love "-in short, that indescribable charm which
breathes in its very air and colors its very light, and sheds
its joy of grief over all things, have concurred with some
sweet and some sad associations to render autumn to us the
loveliest and the dearest of all seasons.  As Mrs. Hemans
loved woodland scenery for its kindly " looks of shelter," so
she loved the autumn principally for its correspondence with
that fine melancholy which was the permanent atmosphere
of her being.  In one of her letters, speaking of an autumn
day, she says, " The day was one of a kind I like-soft, still,
and gray, such as makes the earth appear a'pensive but
a happy place."'  WVe have sometimes thought that much of
WVordsworth's poetry should always be read and can never
be so fully felt as in the autumn, when " Laodamnia," at least,
must have been written.  Should not poems, as well as pictures, have their peculiar light, in which alone they can properly be seen?  Should not Scott be read in spring, Shelley
in the fervid summer, Wordsworth in autumn, Cowper and
Byron in the winter, Shakspeare all the year round?
In many points Mrs. Hlemans reminds us of a poet just
named, and whom  she passionately admired, namely Shelley.
Like him, drooping, fragile, a reed shaken by the wind, a
mighty wind, in sooth, too powerful for the tremulous reed
on which it discoursed its music; like him, the victim of ex



ImRS. HEMANS.                   237
quisite nervous organization; like hilm, verse flowed on and
from her, and the sweet sound often overpowered the meaning, kissing it, as it were, to death; like him, she was melancholy, but the sadness of both was musical, tearful, active,
not stony, silent, and motionless, still less misanthropical and
disdainful;  like him, she was gentle, playful, they could
both run about their prison garden, and daily with the dark
chains which, they knew, bound them till death.  Mirs. IHemans, indeed, was not like Shelley, a vates; she has never
reached his heights nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to
our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister
in one beautiful but delicate and dying family.  Their very
appearance must have been similar. IHow like must the girl,
Felicia Dorothea Browne, with the mantling bloom of her
cheeks, her hair of a rich golden brown, and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes, have been to the noble
boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, when he came first to Oxford,
a fair-haired, bright-eyed enthusiast, o-n whose cheek and
brow, and in whose eye was already beginning to burn a fire,
which ultimately enwrappead his whole being in flmles {
In 3Mrs. Hemans's melancholy, one " simple " was wanting,
which was largely mixed in Shelley's, that of faithless despondency.  Her spirit was cheered by faith-by a soft
and noble form  of the softest noblest faith-a form, reminding us much from its balance of human, poetical, and
celestial elements, of that Jeremy  Taylor —thle  " Shakspeare of divines."  Although, as we have said, her poetry
is not, of prepense and purpose, the express image of her
religious thought, yet it is a rich illustration of the religious
tendency of the female mind. Indeed, females may be called
the natural guardians of morality and faith.  These shall
always be safe in the depths of the female intellect, and of
the female heart-an intellect, the.essence of which is worship-a heart, the element of which is love. Unhired, disinterested, spontaneous is the aid they give to the blessed
cause; leaning, indeed, in their lovely weakness on the
"worship of sorrow," they, at the same time, prop it up
through  the wide and holy influences which they wield.
Their piety, too, is no fierce and foul polemic flame-it is
that of the feelings-the quick instinctive sense of dutythe wouder-stricken soul and the loving heart-often it is




238                    MRS. IHETANS.
not even a conscious emotion at' all-but in Wordsworth's
language-they lie in'" Abraham's bosom all the year,
And God is with them, and they know it not."
In Mirs. Hemans's writings you find this pious tendency
of her sex unsoiled by an atom of cant, or bigotry, or exclusiveness; and shaded only by so much pensiveness as attests
its divinity and its depth: for as man's misery is said to
spring from his greatness, so the gloom which often overhangs the earnest spirit arises from its more immediate proximity to the Infinite and the Eternal.  And who would not
be ready to sacrifice all the cheap sunshine of earthly success and satisfaction for even a touch of a shadow so sublitme?
After all, the nature of this poetess is more interesting
than her genius, or than its finest productions.  These descencd upon us like voices from a mountain summit, suggesting to us an elevation of character far higher than thenmselves. If not, in a transcendent sense, a poet, her life was
a poem. Poetry colored all her existence with a golden
light-poetry presided at her needlework-poetry mingled
with her domestic and her maternal duties-poetry sat down
with her to her piano-poetry fluttered her hair and flushed
her cheek in her mountain rambles-poetry quivered in her
voice, which was a " sweet sad melodcy"-poetry accompanied
her-to the orchard as she read the "Talisman,' in that
long glorious summer clay which she has made immortaland poetry attended her to the house of God, and listened
with her to the proud pealing organ, as to an echo firom within the veil. Poetry performed for her a still tenderer ministry; it soothed the deep sorrows, on which we dare not
enter, which shaded the tissue of her history-it mixed its
richest cupful of the "joy of grief" for her selected lips —it
lapped her in a dream of beauty, through which the sad re —
alities of life looked in, softened and mellowed in the medium.  W~hat could poetry have done more for her, except,
indeed, by giving her that sight " as far as the incommunicable"-that supreme vision which she gives so rarely, and
which she bestows often as a curse, instead of a blessing?
Mrs. Hemans, on the other hand, was too favorite a child of




MRS. ELIZABETII  BARItETT BROWNING.        239
the )Muse to receive any such baneful boon. Poetry beautified her life. blunted and perfumned the thorns of her anguishll
softened the pillow of her sickness, and combined with her
firm  and most feminine faith to shed a gleam  of soft and
tearful glory upon her death.
Thus lived, wrote, suffered, and died "Egeria."  Without farther seeking to weigh the worth, or settle the future
place of her works, let us be thankful to have had her among
us, and that she did what she could, in her bright, sorelytried, yet triumphant passage.  She grew in beauty; was
blasted where she grew; rained around her poetry, like
bright tears from  her eyes; learned in suffering what she
taught in song; died. and all hearts to which she ever ministered delight, have obeyed the call of Wordsworth, to
" Mourn rather for that holy spirit,
Mild as the spring, as ocean deep;
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a dreamless sleep."
MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
IN selecting Mrs. -lemans as our first specimen of Female
Authors, we did so avowedly, because she seemed to us the
most feminine writer of the day.  We now select tMrs.
Browning for the opposite reason, that she. is, or at least is
said by many to be, the most masculine of our female
writers.
To settle the respective spheres and calibres of the male
and the female mind, is one of the most difficult of philosophical problems. To argue, merely, that because the mind
of woman has never hitherto produced a "Paradise Lost,"
or a " Principia," it is therefore for ever incapable of producing similar masterpieces, seems to us unfair, for various
reasons. In the first place, how many ages elapsed ere the
calete mind realized such prodigies of intellectual achievement?  And do not they still stand unparalleled  and
almost unapproached?  And were it not as reasonable to




240       SMIRS. ELIZABETH BARREILTT BROWNING.
assert that mlan as that  oiman can renew them no more2
Secondly, because the premise is granted-that woman has
not- does the conclusion follow, that woman cannot excogitate an argument as great as the "Principia," or build
up a rhyme as lofty as the "Paradise Lost?",Wtould it
not have been as wise for one who knew Milton only as the
dIilton of " Lycidas" and "ALrcades," to have contended
that he was incapable of a great epic poemn  And is
there nothing in Madame De Stael, in Rahel the Germaness, in Mary Somerville, and even in Mary Wollstonecraft, to suggest the idea of heights, fronting the very peaks
of the Principia and the Paradlise, to which woman may
yet attain?.Thirdly, has not woman understood and appreciated the greatest works of genius as fully as man?
Then may she in time equal them; for what is true appreciation but the sowing of a germ in the mind, which shall
ultimately bear similar fruit?  There is nothing, says Godwin, which the human mind can conceive, which it cannot
execute; we may add, there is nothing the human mind can
understand which it cannot equal.  Fourthly, let us never
forget that womnan, as to intellectual progress, is in a state of
infancy. Changed as by malignant magic, now into an article
of furniture, and now into a toy of pleasure, she is only as
yet undergoing a better transmigration, and " timidly expanding into life."
Almost all that is valuable in female authorship has
been produced within the last half-century, that is, since the
female was generally recognized to be an intellectual creature; and if she has in such a short period, so progressed,
what demi-Mahomletan shall venture to set bounds to her
future advancement.  Even though we should grant that
woman, more from her bodily constitution than her mental,
is inferior to Pmano andt that lman, having got, shall probably
keep, his start of centuries, we see nothing to prevent woman
overtaking, and outstripping with ease, his jp2resent farthest
point of intellectual progress. %We do not look on such productions as " Lear,' and the " Prometheus Vinetus," with
the despair wherewith the boy who has leaped in vain to seize,
regards ever after the moon and the stars; they are, after
all, the masonry of men, and not the architecture of the gods;




SMRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.        241
and if man may surpass, why may not woman, " taken out of
his side,"' equal theni2?
Of womnan, we may say, at least, that there are already
provinces where her power is incontested and supreme.
And in proportion as civilization advances, and as the
darker and fiercer passions which constitute the ferc nzatnrc
subside, in the lull of that milder day, the voice of woman
will beconme more audible, exert a wider magic, and be as
the voice of spring to the opening year. ~We stay not to
prove that the sex of genius isfemzizinze, and that those poets
who are most profoundly impressing  our young British
minds, are those who, in tenderness and sensibility-in peculiar power, and peculiar weakness, are all but females.
And whatever may be said of the effects of culture, in deadening the genius of man, we are mistaken if it has not always
had the contrary effect upon that of woman, (where do we
find a female Bloomfield or Burns?) so that, on entering on
the far more highly civilized periods which are manifestly
approaching, she will but be breathing the atmosphere calculated to nourish and invigorate, instead of weakening and
chilling, her mental life.  Our admirable friend, tr. De
Quincey, has, we think, conceded even more than we require,
in granting that woman can die more nobly than man.~
For whether is the writing or the doing of great tragedy the
higher achievement?  Poor the attitude even of Shakspeare,
penning the fire-syllables of IMacbeth, to that of Joan of Arc,
entering into the falanes as into her wedding suit.  What
comparison between the face inflamed of a MIirabeau or a
Chalmers, as they thundered; and the blush on the cheek of
Charlotte Corday, still extant, as her head was presented to
the people?  And who shall name the depicter of the death
of Beatrice Cenci with'that heroine herself; or with Madame
Roland, whose conduct on the scaffold might make one in
"love with death?"' If to die nobly demand the highest
concentration of the moral, intellectual, and even artistic
powers-and if woman has par' excellence exemplified such a
concentration, there follows a conclusion to which we should
be irresistibly led, were it not that we question the minor
proposition in the argument-we hold that man has often as' See in " Tait" a paper on Joan of Arc.
11




242         lIRS. ELIZABETH BARI'RETT B1ROIVNING.
fully as woman risen to the dignity of death, anda  met him
not as a vassal, but as a superior.
To say that MBrs. Browning has more of the man than
any female writer of the period, may appear rather an equivocal compiiment; and its truth even may be questioned.
We may, however, be permitted to say, that she has more of
the heroine than her compeers.  Hers is a high, heroic nature,
which adopts for the motto at once of its life and of its poetry,
" Perfect through suffering."  Shelley says:" Most wretched Inen
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in sufifring what they teach in song."
But wrong is not always the stern schoolmnistress of sot.
There are sufferings springing from  other sources —firom
intense senzsibility —from  bodily ailtent —froml   the loss of
cherished. objects, which also find in poetry their natural
vent. And we do think that such poetry, if not so powerful,
is infinitely more pleasing and more instructive than that
which is inspired by real or imaginary grievance.  The
turbid torrent is not the proper mirror for reflecting the face
of nature; and none but the moody and the discontented will
seek to see in it an aggravated and distorted edition of their
own gloomy brows. The poetry of wrong is not the best and
most permanent.  It was not wrong alone that excited,
though it unquestionably directed, the course of Dante's and
Milton's vein.  The poetry of Shakspeare's wrong is condensed in his sonnets —the poetry of his forbearance and
forgiveness, of his gratitude and his happiness, is in his
dramas. The poetry of Pope's wrong (a scratch from a thorn
hedge!) is in his " Dunciadl," not in his " Rape of the Lock."
The poetry of W5ordsworth's wrong is in his " Prefaces," not
in his "Excursion."  The poetry of Byron's wrong is in
those deep curses which sometimes disturb the harmony of
his poems; and that of Shelley's in the maniacal scream
which occasionally interrupts the pc3ans of his song.  But
all these had probably been as great, or greater poets, had
no wrong befallen them, or had it taught them  another
lesson, than either peevishly to proclaim  or furiously to
resent it.
Mrs. Bnowning has suffered, so far as we are aware; no




MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.          243
wrong froml the age.  She might, indeed, for some time
have spoken of neglect.  But people of genius should now
learn the truth, that neg'lect is not t'ro1ng; or if it be, it is a
wrong in which they often set the example. Neglecting the
tastes of the majority, the majority avenges itself by neglecting them.  Standing and singing in a congregation of
the deaf, they are senseless enough to complain that they are
not heard.  Or should they address the multitude, and
should the multitude not listen, it never strikes them that
the fault is their own; they ought to have compelled attention.  Orpheus was listened to: the thunder is: even the
gentlest spring shower commands its audience.  If neglect
means wilful winking at claims which are felt, it is indeed a
wrong; but a wrong seldom if ever committed, and which
complaint will not cure-if it means, merely, ignorance of
claims which have never been presented or enforced, Where
and whose is the criminality?
To do Mrs. Browning justice, she has not complained of
neglect nor injury at all. But she has acknowledged herself
inspired by the genius of suffering.  And this seems to have
exerted divers influences upon her poetry.  It has, in the
first place, taught her to rear for herself a spot of transcendental retreat, a city of refuge in the clouds. Scared away
from  her own heart, she has soared upwards, and found a
rest elsewhere.  To those flights of idealism in which she
indulges, to those distant and daring themes which she
selects, she is urged less, we think, through native tendency
of mind, than to fill the vacuity of a sick and craving spirit.
This is not peculiar to her. It may be called, indeed, the'i Retreat of the Ten Thousand;" though strong and daring
must be those that can successfully accomplish it.  Only the
steps of sorrow-we had almost said only the steps of despair-can climb such dizzy heights. The healthy and the
happy mind selects subjects of a healthy and a happy sort,
and which lie within the sphere of every-day life and everyday thought.  But for minds which have been wrung and
riven, there is a similar attraction in gloomy themes, as that
which leads them  to the side of dark rivers, to the heart of
deep forests; or into the centre of waste glens.  Step forth,
ye giant children of Sorrow and Genius, that we may tell
your names, and compute your multitudes. First, there is




244        MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
the proud thundershod  Eschylean family, all conceived in
the "eclipse" of that most powerful of Grecian spirits
Then follows Lucretius"W' ho cast his plummet down the broad
Deep universe, and said, No God 
Finding no bottom, he denied
Divinely the divine, and died,
Chief poet upon Tiber side."-(Mlris. Browning.)
There stalk forward, next in the procession, the kings, priests,
popes, prelates, and the yet guiltier and mightier shapes of
Dante's Hell.  Next, the Satan of Milton advances, champing the curb, and regarding even Prometheus as no mate for
his proud and lonely misery. Then comes, cowering and
shivering on, the timid Castaway of Cowper.  He is followed
by Byron's heroes, a haughty yet melancholy troop, with
conscious mlacdnzess animating their gestitres and glaring in
their eyes.  The Anciente Marinere succeeds, now fearfully
reverting his looks, and now fixing his glittering eye forward
on a peopled and terrible vacancy.  And, lastly, a frail
shadowy and shifting shape, looking now Laon, now like
Lionel, and now like Prometheus, proclaims that Alastor
himself is here,' the Benjamin in this family of tears.
"Whither shall I wander," seems Mrs. Browning to have
said te herself, "to-day to escape from my own sad thoughts,
and to lose, to noble purpose, the sense of my own identity?
I will go eastward to Eden, where perfection and happiness
once dwelt.  I will pass, secure in virtue, the far-flashing
sword of the cherubim; I will knock at the door and enter.
I will lie down in the forsaken garden; I will pillow my
head where Milton pillowed his, on the grass cool with the
shadow of the Tree of Life; and I will dream a vision of
my own, of what this place once was, and of what it was to
leave it for the wilderness." And she has passed the waving
sword, and she has entered the awful garden, and she has
dreamed a dream, and she has, awaking, told it as a " Drama
of Exile."  It were vain to deny that the dream is one full
of genius-that it is entirely original; and that it never once,
except by antithesis, suggests a thought of Milton's mnore passive and palpable vision. Her Paradise is not a garden, it
is a flush on a summer evening sky. Her Adam is not the




MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING-           245
fair large-fronted man, with all manlike qualities meeting
unconsciously in his full clear nature-lhe is a German metaphysician.  Her Eve is herself, an amiable and gifted blue
stocking, not the mere meek motherly woman, with what
Aird beautifully calls the " broad, ripe, serene, and gracious
composure of love about her."  I-Her spirits are neither cherubim  nor seraphim-neither knowing nor burning onesthey are fairies, not, however, of -the Puck or Ariel species,
but of a new metaphysical breed; they do not ride on, but
split hairs; they do not dance, but reason; or if they dance,
it is on the point of a needle, in cycles and tpicycles of mystic and mazy motion.  There is much beauty and power in
passages of the poem, and a sweet inarticulate melody, like
the fabled cry of mandrakes, in the lyrics.  Still we do not
see the taste of turning the sweet open garden of Eden into
a maze-we do not approve of the daring precedent of trying
conclusions with Milton on his own high field of victoryand we are, we must say, jealous of all encroachments upon
that fair Paradise which has so long painted itself upon our
imaginations —where all the luxuries of earth mingled in
the feast with all the dainties of the heavens-where celestial plants grew under the same sun with terrestrial blossoms,
and where the cadences of seraphic music filled up the pauses
in the voice of God.  Far different, indeed, is Mrs. Browning's from Dryden's disgusting inroad into Eden —as different, almost, as the advent of Raphael from the encroachment
of Satan. But the poem professed to stand in the lustre of
the fiery sword, and this should have burnt up some of its
conceits, and silenced some of its meaner minstrelsies. And
all such attempts we regard precisely as we do the beauties
of the Apocrypha, when compared tc the beauties of the Bible.  They are as certainly beauties, but beauties of an inferior order-they are flowers, but not the roses which grew
along the banks of the Four Rivers, or caught in their crinmson cups the "first sad drops wept at committing of the
mortal sin."  " One blossom of Eden outblooms them all."
Having accepted from  Mrs. Browning's own hand sadness, or at least seriousness, as the key to her nature and
genius, let us continue to apply it in our future remarks.
This at once impels her to, and fits her for, the high-position
she has assumed, uttering the' Cry of the Human."  And




246        M6RS. ELIZABETH BARIRETT BROWNING.
whom would the human race prefer as their earthly advocatea
to a high-souled and gifted wouman?  What voice but the
female voice could so softly and strongly, so eloquently and
meltingly, interpret to the ear of him whose name is Love,
the deep woes and deeper wants of " poor humanity's afflicted
will, struggling in vain with ruthless destiny?"  Some may
quarrel with the title, " The Human," as an affectation; but,
in the first place, if so, it is a very small one, and a small
affectation can never furnish matter for a great quarrel;
secondly, we are not disposed to make a man, and still less
a woman, an offender for a word, and thirdly, we fancy we
can discern a good reason for her use of the term.  What is
it that is crying aloud through her voice to Heaven? It is
not the feral or fiendish element in human nature?  That
has found an organ in Byron  an echo in his bellowing verse.
It is the human element in man —bruised, bleeding, all but
dead under the pressure of evil circumstances, under the ten
thousand tyrannies, mistakes, and delusions of the world,
that has here ceased any longer to be silent, and is speaking
in a sistr's voice to Time and to Eternity-to Earth and
Heaven.  The poem may truly be called a prayer for the
times, and no collect in the English liturgy surpasses it in
truth and tenderness, though some may think its tone daring
to the brink of blasphemy, and piercing almost: to anguish.
G(racefully from this proud and giddy pinnacle, where
she has stood as the conscious and commissioned representative of the human race, she descends to the door of the
factory, and pleads for the children inclosed in that crowded
and busy hell.  The " Cry of the Factory Children " moves
you, because it is no poem at all-it is just a long sob, veiled
and stifled as it ascends through the hoarse voices of the
poor beings themselves. Since we read it we can scarcely
pass a factory without seeming to hear this psalm  issuing
from the machinery, as if it were protesting against its own
abused powers.  But, to use the language of a writer quoted
a little before, " The Fairy Queen is dead, shrouded in a
yard of cotton stuff made by the spinning-jenny, and by
that other piece of new improved machinery, the sozlts cnzcl
loclies of BritisA chilcrenz, for which death alone holds the
patent."- From Mrs. Browning, perhaps the most imaginative and intellectual of British females, down to a pale-faced,




MRS. ELIZABETIH BARRETT BROWNING.          24 7
thick-voiced, degraded, hardly humnan, factory girl, what a
long and precipitous descent!  But though hardly, she is
human;  and availing herself of the snmall, trembling, but
eternally indestructible link of connection implied in a cornmon nature, our author can identify herself with the cause,
and incarnate her genius in the person of the poor perishing
child.  How unspeakably more affecting is the pleading in
behalf of a particular portion of the race, than in behalf of
the entire fanmily! MIrs. Browning might have uttered a
hundred "cries of the, human," and proved herself only a
sentimental artist, and awakened little save an echo dying
away in distant elfin laughter;  but the cry of a factory
child, coming through a woman's, has gone to a nation's
heart.
Although occupied thus with the sterner wants and sorrows of society, she is not devoid of interest in its milinor
miseries and disappointments.  She can sit down beside
little Ella (the miniature of Alnaschar) and watch the history of her day.dream -beside the swan's nest among the
reeds, and see in her disappointment a type of human hopes
in general, even when towering and radiant as summer
clouds.  Ella's dreamn  among the reeds   What else was
Godwin's Political Justice?  W5hat else was St. Simlonianism? What else is Young Englandism. And what else are
the hopes built by many now upon certai-c   perfected schemes
of education, which, freely translated, just mean the farther
sharpening and furnishing of knaves and fools; and now
upon a  Coming Mfan," who is to supply every defieiency,
reconcile every contradiction, and right every wrong.  Yes,
he will come mounted on the red-roan horse of sweet Ella's
vision!
Shadowed by the same uniform  seriousness are the only
two poems of her which we shall farther at present.mention
-we  mean her "lVision of Poets,' and her " Geraldine's
Courtship."  The aim  of the first is to present, in short
compass, and almost in single lines, the characteristics of the
greater poets of past and present times.  This undertaking.
involved in it very considerable difficulties. For, in the first
place, most great poets possess more than one distinguishing
peculiarity.  To select a single differential point is always
hazardous, andcl often deceptive.  2dly, After you have




248         MIRS., ELIZABETI-I BARRPETT BROWNING.
selected the prominent characteristic of your author, it is
no easy task to express it in a word, or in a line.  To compress thus an Iliad in a nutshell, to imprison a giant geni
in an iron pot, is more a feat of magic than an act of
criticism.  3dly, It is especially difficult to express the differentia of a writer in a manlner at once easy and natural,
picturesque and poetical.  In the very terms of such an
attempt as MIrs. Browning makes, it is implied that she not
only defines, but describes the particular writer.  But to
curdle up a character into  one noble word, to describe
Shakspeare, for instance, in such compass, what sun-syllable
shall suffice; or must we renew Byron's wish?"Could I uinbosomn and embody now
That which is most within me; could I wreak
My thought upon expression 
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword."
Accordingly, this style of portraiture (shall we call it, as
generally pursued, the thumb-nail style?) Ilas seldom been
prosecuted with much success.  Ebenezer Elliot has a copy
of verses after this fashion, not quite worthy of him. What,
for example, does the following line tell us of Shelley 2
"Ill-fated Shelley, vainly great and brave."
The same words might have been used about Sir John
Moore, or Pompey.  Mrs. Browning's verses are far supe.
rior.  Sometimes, indeed, we see her clipping at a character,
in order to fit it better into the place she has prepared for it.
Sometimes she cranms the half of an author into a verse, and
has to leave out the rest for want of room.  Sometimes over
a familiar face she throws a veil of words and darkness. But
often her one glance sees, and her one word shows. the very
heart of an author's genius and character.  Our readers may
recur to the lines already quoted in reference to Lucretius.
as one of her best portraitures.  Altogether this style, as
generally prosecuted,, is a small one, not much better than
anagrams and acrostics-ranks, indeed, not much hiaher
than the ingenuity of the persons who transcribe the " Pleasures of Hope " on the breadth of a crown-piece, and slio-la




MRS. ELIZABETHt BAPRRETT BROWNING.         249
be resigned to such praiseworthy personages. By far the
best specimen of it we remember, is the very clever list involving a running commentary of the works of Lord Byron,
by Dr. MiI'Ginn; unless, indeed, it be Gay's "' Catalogue Raisonne 7' of the portentous poems of Sir Richard Blackmore.
Who shall embalm, in a similar way, the endless writings of
James, Cooper, and Dickens?
"Lady Geraldine's Courtship," as a transcript from the
"red-leaved tablets of the heart "-as a tale of love, set to
the richest music-as a picture of the subtle workings, the
stern reasonings, and the terrible bursts of passion-is above
praise.  How like a volcano does the poet's heart at length
explode! How first all power is given him in the dreadful
trance of silence, and then in the loosened tempest of speech!
What a wild, fierce logic flows forth from his lips, in which,
as in that of Lear's madness, the foundations of society seem
to quiver like reeds, and the mountains of conventionalism
are no longer found; and in the lull of that tempest, and in
the returning sunshine, how beautiful, how almost superhuman, seem the figures of the two lovers seen now and
magnified through the mist of the reader's fast-flowing tears.
It is a tale of successful love,. and yet it melts you like a
tragedy, and most melts you in the crisis of the triumph.
On Geraldine we had gazed as on a star, with dry-eyed and
and distant admiration; but when that star' dissolves in
showers at the feet of her poet lover, we weep for very joy.
Truly a tear is a sad yet beautiful thing; it constitutes a
link connecting us with distant countries, nay, connecting us
with distant worlds.  Gravitation has, amid. all her immunsity, wrought no such lovely work as when she rounded
a tear.
From  this beautiful poem  alone, we might argue Mrs.
Browning's capacity for producing a great domestic tragedy.
We might argue it, also, from  the various peculiarities of
her genius-her far vision into the springs of human conduct —into those viewless veins of fire, or of poison, which
wind within the human heart-her sympathy with dark
bosoms-the passion for truth, which pierces often the mist
of her dimner thouglt, like a flash of irrepressible lightning —hler fervid temperament, always glowing round her
intellectual sight —a and her queen-like dominion over illl11*




250        MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
agery and language.  Wte think, meanwhile, that she has nmis.
taken her sphere.  In that rare atmosphere of transcendentalism which she has reached, she respires with difficulty, and
with pain.  She is not " native and endued " into that element.  WVe would warn her off the giddy region, where tempests may blow as well as clouds gather. Her recent sonnets in "Blackwood" are sad failures-the very light in
tlhem is darkness-thoughts, in themselves as untangible as
the films upon the window pane, are concealed in a woof of
words, till their thin and shadowy meaning fades utterly
away.  Morbid weakness, she should remenmber, is not masculine strength.  But can she not, through the rents in her
cloudy tabernacle, discern, far below in the vale, fields of
deep though homely beauty, where she might more gracefully
and'successfully exercise her exquisite genius?  She has
only to stoop to conquer.  By and by we may —using unprofanely an expression originally profane-be tempted to
say, as we look up the darkened mountain, with its flashes
of fire hourly waxing fewer and feebler, "As for this poetess,
we wot not what has become of her."*.
While we are venturing on accents of wariling, we might
also remind  her that there are in her style and manner
peculiarities which a wicked world will persist in calling affectations.  On the charge of affectation, generally, we are
disposed to lay little stress-it is a charge so easily got up,
and which can be so readily swelled into a cuckoo cry;- it is
often applied with such injustice, and it so generally attaches
to singularities in manner, instead of insincerities in spirit
and matter.  But why should a true man, or a true woman,
expose themselves needlessly to such a charge?  We think
in general, that true taste in this, as in matters of dress and
etiquette, dictates conformity to the present mode, provided
that does not unduly cramp the freedom and the force of
natural motions.  There is, indeed, a class of writers who
are chartered libertines-who deal with language as they
please —who toss it about as the autumn wind leaves; who,
in the agony of their earnestness, or in the fury of their excitement, seize on rude and unpolished words, as Titans on
rocks and mountains, and gain artistic triumphs in opposition to all the rules of art.  Such are Wilson and Carlyle,
and such were Burke and Chalmers.  These men we must




rIRS. SHELLER.                  251
just take as they are, and be thankful for them  as they are.
We must just give them their own way.  And whether such
a permission be given or not, it is likely to be taken.'Canst
thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a
cord which thou lettest clown? will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?  Will
the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?
canst thou bind him with his band in the furrow? will he
harrow the valleys after thee? wilt thou believe that he will
bring home thy seed, and gather into thy barn?"  No: like
the tameless creatures of the wilderness-like the chainless
elements of the air —such men obey a law, and use a language, and follow a path of their own.
But this rare privilege Mrs. Browning cannot claim. And
she owes it to herself and to her admirers to simplify her
manner-to sift her diction of whatever is harsh and barbarous-to speak whatever truth is in her, in the clear articulate language of men-and to quicken, as she well can, the
dead forms of ordinary verbiage, by the spirit of her own
superabundant life.  Then, but not till then, shall her voice
break fully through the environment of coteries, cliques, and
magazine readers, and fall upon the ear of the general public, like. the sound, sweet in its sublimity; simple amid its
complex elements, earthly in its cause and unearthly in its
effect upon the soul, of a, multitude of waters.
MIRS. SHELLEY.
MuciHi as we hear of Schools of Authors, there has, properly speaking, been but one in British literature-at least,
within this century.  There was never, for example, any
such thing as a Lake school. A school supposes certain conditions and circumstances which are not to be found among
the poets referred to.  It supposes, first of all, a comlmonl
master. Now, the Lake poets had no common master, either
among themselves or others.  They owned allegiance neither
to Shakspeare, nor Milton, nor Wordsworth.  Each stood




252                   MRS. SHELLEY.
near, but each stood alone, like the stars composing one of
the constellations.  A school, again, implies a common creed.
But we have no evidence, external or internal, that though
the poetical diction of the Lakers bore a certain resemblance)
their poetical creed was identical.  Indeed, we are yet to
learn that Southey had, of any depth or definitude, a poetical creed at all. A school, again, supposes a similar mode
of training.  But how different the erratic education of Coleringe, from the slow, solemn, silent degrees by which, without
noise of hammer or edge-tool, arose, like the ancient temple,
the majestic structure of Wordsworth's mind  A school,
besides, implies such strong and striking resemblances as
shall serve to overpower the specific differences between the
writers who compose it.  But we are mistaken if the dissinmilarities between Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey be
not as great as the points in which they agree.  Take, for
example, the one quality of speculative intellect.  That,
in the mind of Coleridge, was restless, discontented, and
daring-in Wordsworth, still, collected, brooding perpetually over narrow but profound depths-in Southey, almost
totally quiescent.  The term  Lake School, in short, applied
at first in derision, has been retained, principally because
it is convenient-nay suggests a pleasing image, and gives
both the public and the critics "glimpses that do make
them  less forlorn,' of -the blue peaks of Helvellyn and
Skiddaw, and of the blue waters of Derwent and Windermlnere.
The Cookney School was, if possible, a misnomer more
abs-urd-striving, as it did, in vain to include within one
term, three spirits so essentially distinct as Hazlitt, Keats
and Leigh Hunt-the first a stern metaphysician, who had
fallen into a hopeless passion for poetry; the second, the
purest specimen of the ideal-a ball of beautiful foam, " cut
off from the water," and not adopted by the air; the third,
a fine tf-icksy medium between the poet and the wit, half a
sylph and half an Ariel, now hovering round a lady's curl,
and now stirring the fiery tresses of the sun-a fairy, fluctuating link, connecting Pope with Shelley. We need not be
at pains to cut out into little stars the Blackwood constellation, or dwell on the differences between a Wilson, a Lockhart, and a Jaimes Hogg.




IlRS. SHELLEY.                253
One school, however, there has appeared within the last
fifty years, answering to all the characteristics we have enumerated, namely, the Godwin school, who, by a common inaster-the old man eloquent himlself-a common philosophical
as well as poetical belief, common training, that of warfare
with society, and many specific resemblances in manner and
style, are proclaimed to be one. This cluster includes the
names of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecroft, Brockden
Brown of Amrerica, Shelley, and Mrs. Shelley.
Old Godwin scarcely got justice in Tait's Magazine from
Mr. De Quincey.  Slow, cumbrous, elephantine as he was,
there was always a fine spirit animating his most lumpish
movements.  He was never contemptible-often commlonplace, indeed, but often great.  There was much in him of
the German cast of mind-the same painful and plodding
diligence, added to high imaginative qualities.  His great
merit at the time —and his great error, as it proved afterwards-lay in wedding a partial philosophic system with the
universal truth of fiction.  Hence the element which made
the public drunk with his merits at first rendered them
oblivious afterwards. So dangerous it is to connect fiction
(the finer alias of truth) with any dogma or mythus less
perishable than the theogony of Homer, or the catholicisln
of Cervantes. After all, what was the theory of Godwin but
the masque of Christianity?  Cloaking the leading principle
of our religion, its disinterested benevolence, under a copy of
the features of Helvetius and Volney, he went a mumming
with it in the train on the philosophers of the Revolution.
But when he approached the domain of actual life and of the
human affections, the ugly disguise dropped, and his fictions
we hesitate not to characterize as among the noblest illustrations of the Sermon on the Mount.  But to the public they
seemed the reiterations of exploded and dangerous errorssuch a load of prejudice and prepossession had been suspended
to their author's skirts. And now, the excitement of danger
and disgust having passed away from his theories, interest in
the works which propounded them has also subsided. "! Caleb
Williams," once denounced by Hannah MIore as a cunning
and popular preparation of the poison which the "Political
Justice " had contained in a cruder form, is now forgotten,
we suspect, by all but a very select class.  "St. Leon,;




254'          MlRS. SHELLEY.
"Fieetwood.":! BIandeville," and " Clouclesley,"  with all
their varied merits, never attracted attention, except through
the reflex interest and terror excited by their author's former
works. Thus political excitement has been at once a raising
and a ruining influence to the writings of a great English
author-ruining, we mean, at present-for the shade of neglect has yet to be created which can permanently conceal
their sterling and imperishable worth.  After the majority
of the writings of Dickens have perished —after one-half of.Bulwer's, and one-fourth of Scott's novels have been forgotten-shall some reflective spirits be found following the
fugitive steps of Caleb Williamls, or standing by the grave of
Marguerite de Danmville, or sympathizing with the gloom of
MIandeville, or of Bethlem  Gabor, as they do well to be
angry even unto death.  If sincerity, simplicity, strength of
thought, purity of sentiment and power of genius can
secure immortality to any productions, it is to the fictions
of Godwin.
Mary WVollstonecroft-since we saw her countenance prefixed to her husband's memoir-a face so sweet, so spiritual,
so far withdrawn from earthly thoughts, steeped in an enthusiasm so genuine-we have ceased to wonder at the passionate
attachment of Southey, Fuseli, and Godwin, to the gifted
being who bore it.  It is the most feminine countenance we
ever saw in picture.  The 1 "Rights of Women " seem in it
melted down into one deliquium of love.  Fuseli once, when
asked if he believed in the immortality of the soul, replied
in language rather too rough to be quoted verbatim, "! I don't
know if youz have a soul, but I amill sure that I have."
We are certain that he believed in the existence of at least
one other immortal spirit-that of the owner of the still,
serene, and rapt countenance on which lie hopelessly doted.
It is curious that on the first meeting of Godwin and his
future wife, they " interdespised "-they recoiled from each
other, like two enemies suddenly meeting on the street, and
it required much after-intercourse to reconcile them, and
ultimately to create that passion which led to their union.
Mary Wolistonecroft shone most in conversation..From
this to composition she seemed to descend as from a throne.
Coleridge describes her meeting and extinguishing some
of Godwin's objections to her arguments with a light, easy,




MIfs. S1-IE L L-EY.             255
playful air.  Her fan was a very falehion in debate.  Hier
works —" History of the French Revolution." "Wanderer
of Norway,' "Rights of Women," &c. —have all perished.
Her own career was chequered and unhappy-her end was
premature-she died in childbed of Mrs. Shelley (like the
sun going down to reveal the evening star); but her name
shall live as that of a deep, majestical, and high-souled womnan-the Madame Roland of England —and who could, as
well as she, have paused on her way to the scaffold, and
wished for a pen to " record the strange thoughts that were
arising in her mind."  Peace to her ashes! How consoling
to think that those who in life were restless and unhappy,
sleep the sleep of death as soundly as others-nay, seemn to
sleep more soundly-to be hushed by a softer lullaby, and
surrounded by a profounder peace, than the ordinary tenants
of the grave. Yes, sweeter, deeper, and longer is the repose
of the trzinu t child, after his day of wandering is over, and
the night of his rest is come.
Another "wanderer o'er eternity" was Brockden Brown,
the Godwin of America.  And worse for him, he was a wanderer, not from, but among men.  For Cain of old, it was a
relief to go forth from  his species into the virgin empty
earth.  The builders of the Tower of Babel lmust have rejoiced as they saw the summit of their abortive building sinking dC.own in the level plain; they fled from  it as a stony
silent satire on their baffled ambition, and as a memorial of
the confusion of their speech-it scourged them  forth into
the wilderness, where they found peace and oblivion.  A
self-exiled Byron or Landor is rather to be envied; for
though "how can your wanderer escape from his own shadow 2" yet it is much if that shadow sweep forests and cataracts, fill large at morning or evening upon Alps and Apennines, or swell into the Demon of the Brockan.  In this
case misery takes a prouder, loftier shape, and mounts a
burning throne.  But a man like Brockden Brown, forced
to carry his incommunicable sorrow into. the press and thick
of human society, nay, to coin it into the means of procuring
daily bread, he is the true hero, even though he should fall
in the struggle.  To carry one's misery to market, and sell
it to the highest bidder, what a necessity for a proud and
sensitive spirit! Assuredly Brown was a brave struggler, if




MS6. SHELLEY.
not a successful one.  Amid poverty, neglect, non-apprecia
tion, hard labor, and the thousand nzciiseries of the crude
country which America then was, he retained his integrity;
he wrote on at what Godwin calls his "story books;' he
sought inspiration froom his own gloomy woods and silent
fields; and his works appear, amid what are called "' standard
novels," like tall wind-swept American pines amid shrubbery
and brushwood. His name, after his untimely death (at the
age of thirty-nine), was returned upon his ungrateful country
-from Britain, where his writings first attained eminent
distinction, while even yet Americans, generally, prefer the
adventure and bustle of Cooper to the stern Dante-like simplicity, the philosophical spirit, and the harrowing and ghostlike interest of Brown.
Of Shelley, having spoken so often, what more can we
say'? I e seems to us as though the most beautiful of beings
had been struck blind. Mr. De Quincey, in unconscious plagiarism from ourselves, compares him to a "lunatic angel."
But perhaps, after all, his disease might be better denominated blindness. It was not because he saw falsely, but as if
seeing and delaying to worship the glory of Christ and his
religion, that delay was punished by a swift and sudden darkness.  Imagine the Apollo Belvidere, animated and fleshed,
all his dream-like loveliness of form retained, but his eyes
remaining shut! Thus blind and beautiful stood Shelley on his
pedestal, or went wandering, an inspired sleep-walker, among
his fellows, who, alas! not seeing his melancholy plight, struck
and spurned, instead of gently and soothingly trying to lead
himn into the right path. We still think, notwithstanding Mr.
De Quincey's eloquent strictures in reply, that if pity and kindhearted expostulation. had been employed, they might have
had the effect, if not of weaning him from his errors, at least
of modifying his expressions and feelings-if not of opening
his eyes, at least of rendering him more patient and hopeful
under his eclipse.  What but a partial clouding of his mind
could have prompted such a question as he asked upon the
following occasion? Haydon, the painter, met him once at a
large dinner party in London. During the entertainment, a
thin, cracked, shrieking voice was heard from one end of the
table, " You don't believe, do you, Mr. Haydon, in that execrable thing, Christianity?  The voice was pocr Shelley's,




PMRS. SHELLEY.                 257
who could not be at rest with any new acquaintance till he
ascertained his impressions on that one topic.
Poets, perhaps all men, best understand thlemselves. Thus
no word so true has been spoken of Shelley, as where he says
of himself, that " an adamantine veil was built up between
his mind and heart."  His intellect led him in one direction
— the true impulses of his heart in another.  The one was
with Spinosa; the other with John.  The controversy raged
between them like fire, and even at death was not decided.
We rejoice, in contrast with the brutal treatment he met
with while living, to notice the tenderness which the most
evangelical periodicals (witness a late number of the "a North
British Review ") extend to the memory of this most sincere,
spiritual, and unearthly of modern men. It is to us a proud
reflection, that for at least seventeen years our opinion of him
has remained unaltered.
It is not at all to be wondered at, that two such spirits as
Shelley and bMary Godwin, when they met, should become
instantly attached.  On his own doctrine of a state of preexistence, we imight say that the marriage had been determined long before, while yet the souls were waiting in the
great antenatal ante-chamlber! They met at last, like two
drops of water —like two flames of fire-like two beautiful
clouds which have crossed the moon, the sky, and all its
stars, to hold their midnight assignation  over a fa'vorite
and lonely river. Mfiary Godwin was an enthusiast from her
childhood.  She passed, by her own account, part of her
youth at Broughty Ferry, in sweet and sinless reverie among
its cliffs. The place is, to us, familiar.  It possesses some
fine features —a bold promontory crowned with an- ancient
castle jutting far out the Tay, which here broadens into an
arm of the ocean —a beach, in part smooth with sand, and in
part paved with pebbles —cottages lying artlessly along the
shore, clean, as if washed by the near sea —sandy hillocks
rising behind —and westward, the river, like an inland lake,
stretching around Dundee, with its fine harbor and its surmounting Law, which, in its turn, is surmounted by the far
blue shapes of the gigantic Stuieknachroan and Benvoirlich.
Did the bay of Spezia ever suggest to Mirs. Shelley's mind
the features of the Scottish scene?  That scene, seen so often, seldom fails to bring before us her image-the child, and




'258                  I\~MRS. SHELLEY.
soon to be the bride, of genius.  Was she ever, like Mirza
overheard in her soliloquies, and did she bear the shame, aecordingly, in blushes which still rekindle at the recollection?
Did the rude fishermen of the place deem  her wondrous
wise, or did they deem her mad, with her wandering eye, her
rapt and gleaming countenance, her light step imoving to
the music of he. maiden meditation?  The smooth sand retains no trace of her young feet-to the present race she is
altogether unknown; bhut we have more than once seen the
man:of genius, and its lover, turn round and look at the spot,
with warmer interest, and with brightening eye, as we told
them that she had been there.
We have spoken of irs. Shelley's similarity of genius
to her husband —we by no means think her his equal.  She
has not his subtlety, swiftness, wealth of imagination, and
is never caught up (like Ezekiel by his lock of hair) into the
same rushing whirlwind of inspiration.   She has much,
however, of his imaginative and of his speculative qualities-her tendency, like his, is to the romantic, the ethereal, and the terrible. The tie detaining her, as well as him;
to the earth, is slender —her protest against society is his
copied out in a female hand-her style is carefully and successfully modelled upon his-she bears, in brief, to him, the
resemblance which Laone did to Laon, which Astarte did to
Manfred.  Perhaps, indeed, intercourse with a being so
peculiar, that those who came in contact with, either withdrew from him in hatred, or fell into the current of his being,
vanquished and enthralled, has somewhat affected the originality, and narrowed the extent of her own genius.  Indian
widows used to fling themselves upon the funeral pyre of
their husbands: she has thrown upon that of hers her mode
of thought, her mould of style, her creed, her heart, her all.
Her admiration of Shelley was, and is, an idolatry.  Can we
wonder at it?  Separated from him in the prime of life, with
all his faculties in the finest bloom of promise, with peace
beginning to build in the crevices of his torn heart, and with
fame hovering ere it stooped upon his head —separated, too,
in circumstances so sudden and cruel-can we be astonished
that from the wounds of love came forth the blood of worship
and sacrifice?  Wordsworth speaks of himself as feeling for''the Old Sea some reverential fear."  But in the mlind of'




MRS. SHELLEY.                  259
" Mary " there must lurk a feeling of a still stronger kind
toward that element which he, next to herself, had of all
things most passionately loved —which he trusted as a parent
— to which he exposed himself, defenceless (he could not
swim —he could only soar)-which he had sung in many a
strain of matchless sweetness, but which betrayed and destroyed him-how can she, without horror, hear the boom of
its waves, or look without a shudder, either at its stormy or
its smiling countenance?  What a picture she presents to
our imagination, running with dishevelled hair, along the seashore, questioning all she met if they could tell her of her
husband-nay, shrieking out the dreadful question to the
surges, which, like a dumb murderer, had done the deed, but
could not utter the confession!
Mrs. Shelley's genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and circumscribed-more so than even her father'sand, in this point, presents a strong contrast to her husband's, which could run along every note of the gamut-be
witty or wild, satirical or sentimental, didactic or dramatic,
epic or lyrical, as it pleased him.  She has no wit, nor humor
-little dramatic talent.  Strong, clear description of the
gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the
mind, or of.those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work, somewhat laIboriously creates, is her
forte.  Hence her reputation still rests upon " Frankenstein; for her' Last Man," "Perkin  Warbeck," &c., are
far inferior, if not entirely unworthy of her talents. She
unquestionably made him; but, like a mule or a monster, he
has had no progeny.
C(an any one have forgot the interesting account she gives
of her first conception of that extraordinary story, when she
had retired to rest, her fancy heated by hearing ghost tales;
and when the whole circumstances of the story appeared at
once before her eye, as in a camera obscura?  It is ever
thus, we imagine, that truly original conceptions are produced.  They are cast-not wrought.  They come as wholes,
and not in parts.  It was thus that C" Tam o'Shanter " completed, along Burns' mind, his weird and tipsy gallop in a
single hour.  Thus Coleridge composed the outline of his
" Ancient lMarinere," in one evening walk near Nether
Stowey.  So rapidly rose "F rankenstein," which, as Moore




260                  MRS. SHELLEY.
well remarks, has been one of those striking conceptions
which take hold of the public mind at once and for ever.
The theme is morbid and disgusting enough.  The
story is that of one whlo finds out the principle of life, constructs a monstrous being, who, because his maker fails in
forming a female companion to him, ultimately murders
the dearest friend of his benefactor, and, in remorse and
despair, disappears amid the eternal snows of the North
Pole. Nothing more preposterous than the meagre outline
of the story exists in literature. But Mrs. Shelley deserves
great credit, nevertheless.  In the first place, she has succeeded in her delineation; she has painted this shapeless being upon the imagination of the world for ever; and beside
Caliban, and Hecate, and Death and Life, and all other weird
and gloomy creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involuntary, gigantic unit stands.  To succeed in an attempt so
daring, proves at once the power of the author, and a certain
value even in the original conception.  To keep verging perpetually on the limit of the absurd, and to produce the while
all the effects of the sublime, takes and tasks very high faculties indeed.  Occasionally, we admit, she does overstep
the mark.  Thus the whole scene of the monster's education in the cottage, his overhearing the reading of the " Paradise Losf," the " Sorrows of. Werter," &c., and in this way
acquiring knowledge and refined sentiments, seems unspeakably ridiculous. A Caco-demon weeping in concert with Eve
or Werter is too ludicrous an idea-as absurd as though he
had been represented as boarded at Capsicum Hall. But
it is wonderful how delicately and gracefully Mrs. Shelley
has managed the whole prodigious business. She touchles
pitch with a lady's glove, and is not defiled.  From a whole
forest of the  "nettle danger" she extracts a sweet and plentiful supply of the " flower safety."  With a fine female footing, she preserves the narroxw path which divides the terrible
from the disgusting. She unites, not in a. junction of words
alone, but in effect, the "horribly beautiful."  Her monster
is not only as Caliban appeared to Trinculo-a very pretty
monster, but somewhat poetical and pathetic withal.  You
almost weep for him in his utter insulation.  Alone! dread
word, though it were to be alone in heaven! Alone! word
hardly more dreadful if it were to be alone in hell!




,MRS. SHELLEY.                  261
"Alone, all, all, alone.
Alone on a wide, wide sea;
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony."
Wrapt around by his loneliness, as by a silent burning
chain, does this gigantic creature run through the world, like
a lion who has lost its mate, in a forest of fire, seeking for
his kindred being, but seeking for ever in vain.  IHe is not
only alone, but alone because he has no being like him
throughout the whole universe.  What a solitude within a
solitude!-solitude comparable only to that of the Alchemist
in St. Leon, when he buries his last tie to humanity in his
wife's grave, and goes on his way, "friendless; friendless,
alone, alone."
What a scene is the process of his creation, lnd especially the hour when he first began to breathe, to open his illfavored eyes, and to stretch his ill-shapen arms toward his terrified author, who, for the first time, becomes aware of the
enormity of the. mistake  he  has committed; who has
had a giant's strength, and used it tyrannously like a
giant, and who shudders and shrinks back froom his own horrible handiwork! It is a type whether intended or not, of
the fate of genius, when it dares either to revile or to resist
the common laws and obligations and conditions of lman
and the universe.  Better, better far be blasted with the
lightnings of heaven, than by the recoil, upon one's own head,
of one false, homeless, returning, revenging thozught.
Scarcely second t). her description of the moment when,
at midnight, and under the light of a waning moon, the
monster was born, is his sudden apparition upon a glacier
among the high Alps.  This scene strikes us the more, as it
seems the fulfilment of a fear which all have felt,:who have
found themselves alone among such desolate regions.  Who
has not at times trembled lest those ghastlier and drearier
places of nature, which abound in our own Highlands, should
bear a different progeny from the ptarmigan, the sheep, the
raven, or the eagle-les-t the mountain should suddenly crown
itself with a Titanic sceptre, and the mist, dlsparting, reveal
demoniac forms, and the lonely moor, discover its ugly
dwarf, as if dropped down from the overhanging thunder cloud
-and the forest of pines show  unearthly shapes sailing




26(2                  MiaS. SHELLEY.
among their shades-and the cataract overboil with its own
wild creations?  Thus fitly, amid scenery like that of some
dream of nightmare, on a glacier as on a throne, stands up
before the eye of his own maker, the miscreation, and he
cries out, "Whence and what art thou, execrable shape i"
In darkness and distance, at last, the being disappears,
and the imagination dhres hardly pursue him  as he passes
amid those congenial shapes of colossal size, terror, and
mystery, which we fancy to haunt those outskirts of existence, with, behlnd them  at midnight, " all Europe and
Asia fast asleep, and before theml the silent immensity and
palace of the Eternal, to which our sun is but a porch-lamp."
Altogether the work is wonderful as the work of a girl
of eighteen.  She has never since fully equalled or approached its power, nor do we ever expect that she shall.
One distinct addition to our original creations must be conceded her-and it is no little praise; for there are few writers of fiction who have done so much out of Germnany.
W~hat are they, in this respect, to our painters-to Fuseli,
with his quaint brain, so prodigal of unearthly shapes —to
John Martin, who has created over his head a whole dark,
frowning, but magnificent wvorlcl-or to David Scott, our
late dear friend, in whose studio, while standing surrounded
by pictured poems of such startling originality, such austere
selection of theme, and such solemn dignity of treatment
(forgetting not himself, the grave, mild, quiet; shadowy enthusiast, with his slow, deep, sepulchral tones), you were almost tempted to exclaimn, " How dreadful is this place!"
Of one promised and anticipated task we must, ere we
close, respectfully remind Mrs. Shelley; it is of the life of
her husband.  That, even after Captain Medwyn's recent
work, has evidently yet to be written. No hand but hers
can wirite it well.  Critics may anatomize his qualities —she
only can paint his likeness.  In proclaiming blis praise, exaggeration in her will be pardoned; and in unveiling his
faults, tenderness may be expected from  her; she alone, we
believe, after all, fully understands him; she alone fully
knows the particulars of his outer and inner history; and
we hope and believe, that her biography will be a monumment
to his memory, as lasting as the Euganean hills; and her
lament over his loss as sweet as the everlasting dirge, sung




WVILLIAM. COBBETT.                 263
in their "late remorse of love," by the waters of the Italian
sea.
YWILLIAM COBIBETT.
WILLIAMI  COBBETT, we may, without feai oi contradiction,
call the father of cheap literature.  His self-styled "' twopenny trash" was the strong seed whence a progeny has sprung,
manifold and thick as tlie " leaves of Vallambrosa;" and a
portion of whatever honor or shame attaches to our present
choap publications must redound to his credit or to his disgrace.  And although he was by no means a timid or a
squeamish man, we are certain that, could he now raise his
head from the dust, it were to look with withering scorn and
pity, not unmingled with remorse, upon those myriads of lowr
and loathsome publications at present pouring from the English pressn-making up for their minuteness by their mischief
-for their want of point, by their profanity-for their stupidity, by their licentiousness-absolutely monopolizing millions of readers, and reminding us of that plague of frogs
which swept Egypt, "till the land stank, so numerous was
the fry."
William  Cobbett has been often ably, but never, we think,
fully or satisfactorily criticised.  We do not refer merely to
his political creed and character: these topics we propose to
avoid, permitting ourselves, however, the general remark that
he was just as able and just as consistent a politician as some
of his most formidable opponents (such as Peel, Burdett
and Brougham) have since proved themselves to be.  Of his
literary merits, we remember only three striking pictures,
all of which, however, slide into his political aspects.  The
first is that very eloquent, though somewhat sketchy and
one-sided character by Robert Hall, ending with the words
* Since Wvriting this, we have read more carefuilly the "Last lM\an."
Though the gloomiest, most improbable, and most hopeless of books, it
abounds in beautiful descriptions, has scenes -of harrowing interest,
and depicts delicately the character of Shelley, who is the hero of the
Gory.




264                  WVILLIAM COBBETT.
-"a firebrand, not a luminary-the Polyphemus of the
mlob —the one-eyed monarch of the blind."  Hall, we imagine, however, was too different a man from Cobbett to appreciate himn  entirely-too attentive to the construction of
his sentences to relish Cobbett's easy, rambling style-too,
fastidious in his taste to bear with Cobbett's blunt picturesque expressions-too fond of the elegant abstractions of
thought to sympathize with Cobbett's passion for, and power
over, facts; still le must have often admired his vigorous
dissections of character, and often chuckled, and even roared,
over his rough native humor.  Another attempt to contain
Cobbett in a crown-piece was made by Lockhart, in what, we
think, was the last " Noctes " he contributed to- "Blackwood," appearing somewhere about the close of the year
1832.  It is put into the mouth of Jeffrey, and is very sinmart,.snappish;  and pointed, pouring out as briskly as bottled
beer, but is not peculiarly characteristic.  It is rather an inventory than a picture; and such an inventory of this
mlodern " man'Iountain" as the Lilliputians made of Gulliver when they emptied his pooceets.  It is not such a masterly full length as Lockhart could have executed, and as he
Ias executed of a kindred spirit, John Clerk.  The third
and best character is by ITazlitt in his " Table-Talk," and is
written with all his wonted discrimination.  WVe remember
that he calls him  a " very honest man, with a total want of
principle," speaks of his " Register " as a " perpetual prospectus," and draws a striking parallel between him  and
Paine.  Our object is somewhat nmore minutely and in detail to bring this brawniest of men before our readers.
And,_ first, of his personal appearance.  That was, as
generally happens, a thorough, though not an ostentatious
index to his character.  Those who expected to find in Cobbett a rude, truculent barbarian, were, as they deserved to
be, disappointed.  They found, instead, a tall, stout, imildfaced, broad-shouldered, farmer-looking man, with a spice of
humor lurking in his eye, but without one vestige of fierceness or malignity either in his look or demeanor.  His private manners were simple, unaffected-almost gentlemanly.
His mode of addressing an audience was quiet, clear, distinct,
and conversational; and the fury -and the fervor of the
demagogue alike were wanting.  The most sarcastic and




WILLIAM, COBBETT.                 265
provoking things oozed out at his lips like milk or honey.
Add to this, perfect self-possession, his usual vein of humnor
someiwhat subdued into keeping with his audience, and au
certain cajolery in his manner, as the most notable features
in his mode of public address.  We heard him repeatedly in
Edinburgh, during his visit in  1832.  He came to the
Modern Athens with as much fear and trembling as could
befall a man of his sturdy temperament.  Hle expected, he
said, ere he arrived, that the Edinburgh people would
I throw him  into a ditch," but went away highly gratified
with his reception.  The truth is, they welcomed him  as a
curiosity, and went to see and hear him as a rarde show. They
showed no genuine appreciation of his talents; and if they
did not lift from  the dirt and pelt him  with the common
calumnies, it was because they thought it not worth while.
He came, tickled their midriffs-they laughed, applauded,
and forgot him, as soon as his back was turned.
it is dangerous to seek to include a whole character in a
single epithet, otherwise we might call William  Cobbett
"the genius of common sense."  Corumon sense, possessed
in an uncommon degree, and backed by powerful passion,
often verges, in its effects and in its nature, on genius..Like genius, it works by intuition; it does not creep nor
walk, but leaps to its conclusion.  It is to genius an inferior system of shorthand —as swift, but not so beautiful;
or it may be called, genius applied to meaner subjects, and
guided by impulses as free but less lofty.  Such a homespun
but masculine spirit had perched upon the shoulder of Swift,
and came directly from him to Cobbett.
If ever man deserved, in a subordinate acceptation, the
name of " seer," it was the author of the "tRegister."  lie
did not ratiocinate or inquire; he saw, and saw at the first
opening of his sagacious eye.  Sometimes his sight was true,
and sometimes false-sometimes  healthy, and sometimes
jaundiced-but it was always sigoht, and not hearsay; and as
swell argue with the testimony of the eye as dispute with him
his convictions.  This was at once his power and his weakness; it accounted for his true and strong perception of public characters, and of the tendency and issues of public
events; it accounted for his dogmatism, his inconsistency,
and his caprice.  It was this strong personal sight which
12




266                  WVILLIAMI COBBETT.
made Cobbett maintain his ground against his many far more
accomplished and learned rivals.  While they were reading,
reflecting, deflecting, and circumspecting, he was looking
straight forward and right down into the very heart and
marrow of his theme.  Whilsf they were wasting time in
trying on pairs of spectacles belonging to others, he was
using his own piercing pair of eyes.  Thus, though taken at
tremendous odds, the old sergeant seldom  failed of a complete triumph.  We own it pleases us-it stirs our bloodto think that there has been, even in our time, native vigor
enough, in a half-taught man of talent, to neutralize the most
accomplished, to level the most learned, to 1" turn wise men
backward and make diviners mad,' to startle an age anxious
to hide its weakness under the variety of its studies and the
multiplicity of its accomplishments, by the tidings that there
is yet something better than education-that an " ounce of
mother wit" retains its original value-that genius still
claims its ancient privileges-and that the breed of intellectual Spartaci and Toussaints is not extinct, amid all the cultivated fribbles and martinets of the day.
Cobbett, if he wanted learning, possessed what was far
more valuable-he possessed experience.  How few writers
have it!   Voltaire speaks of some astonishingly wise young
hero who seemed born with experience; but, as Campbell remarks, " how few of our heads come into the world with this
valuable article!" Most authors, indeed, go through a certain
routine, which is dignified with this name.'They pass through
school and college; write their first sonnet or epigram; fall in
love-are received or rejected; publish their first volumeit is puffed or abused, according to the state of the critic's
temper or stomach; fall into a sulk or a syncope-gradually
cool and calm as they rise or fall to their proper level: and
this is called experience.  Abused, outraged term! Has an
author of almost Miltonic genius run the gauntlet of abusive
or detracting criticism for many long years, and yet retained
his integrity, his magnanimity, the calm purpose of his soul?
Then let him speak of experience, for assuredly experience
has spoken to him.  Or, has a man of whom  the world was
not worthy been driven, for his conscientious convictions,
forth from the society of men, and died gray-haired and all
tut broken-hearted at twenty-nine?  He might have spoken




WVILLIAM COBBETT.                267
of experience.  And did one who could, from native talent,
have led armies, cabinets, his country, spend years as a private soldier, visit various lands, and undergo many privations
and hardships?  What a different course of experience this
-and it was Cobbett's-from  the flea-bites of so-called criticism, or the night-mare of an unsold edition!
Our strong, burly sergeant carried his eye with hi.m into
the ranks, in all his travels-in the choice of a wife. Whereever he went, he "5 saw and conquered"-(what need, after
all, of this last word?  To see, in the true sense, is always,
in the true sense, to conquer. The want of sight is the same
thing with the want of success; and thus Cmsar, in his celebrated bulletin, "Veni, vidi, vici," was, for the first and last
time, a tautologist)-and home he came, a giant furnished
and trained, by an irregular but gigantic education, for becoming a "fourth estate" in the political and literary world.
One quality strikingly manifest in Cobbett, and which
had been nurtured by his training, is health. He was essentially a healthy man. He did not, it is true, want his peevish
and peculiar humors, but the general tone of his mind as
well as body was sound and clear.  He signally exemplified
the words, " Sana mens in sano corpore."  W ithout the border blood and the minstrel spirit of Scott, he had much of
his soundness, geniality, and broad strength. Morbidity was
a word he did not recognize as English. Mawkish sentimentalism, in all its shapes, he abhorred; and cant found in him
an inexorable foe. Hence we account for his celebrated criticisms on Shakspeare and Milton.  In his heart, perhaps, he
appreciated'both, but was indignant at the false and wholly
conventional admiration paid them by the multitude.  Or,
even granting that his taste was bad, and that, from na. tive
inaptitude, he could not feel the more delicate and spiritnal
beauties of either poet, was he not better to avow it openly
than to wear a " foolish face of praise," and pretend to what
he had not? In his nonsense of abuse there is something
infinitely more racy and refreshing than in others' nonsense
of commendation.  We prefer him making a football of tie
"Paradise Lost," and kicking at it with all his might —ira
potently indeed, and to the damage of nothing but his own
toes-than to see it shining in illustrated editions in the Ii.braries of those whose simpering imbecilities of affected eu




268                 WILLIA M COBBETT.
thusiasm  convince you that they have neither -understood
nor really read it. Much as we admire Shakspeare and Mlilton, we are not disposed to sacrifice Cobbett as a whole
burnt-offering at their shrine.
In keeping with this quality of health was that of goodhumor. He was the best-natured of political writers.  Even
when abusing his opponents, there was a kindly twinkle in
his eye, and you never were sure that he heartily hated them.
His high animal spirits, his fine constitution, and his undisturbed self-complacency, all served to carry off and qualify
his rage.  He dealt with his foes as a kitten with a mouse.
They furnished him with so much amusement, and he made
others so merry with them, that he began rather to like
them than otherwise. The most of them, besides, were so
far his inferiors in intellect, that they exerted no magnetism
sufficient to draw forth the full riches of his wrath.  If he
felt deep and deadly animosity to any, it was to the three
formerly mentioned, Peel, Burdett, and Brougham, which
might suggest, to an ill-natured person, the proverb, "Two.
of a trade," &c. How different from Junius! Cobbett at
most hates; Junius loathes. Cobbett splashes pails of dirty
water over his enemies; Junius deals in drops, but they are
drops of prussic acid.  Cobbett, with loud outcries, knocks
down his opponents; jJunius steps up and softly whispers in
their ear a sentence, an insinuation, a syllable, which withers
the very heart within them.  To express, by a change of
figure, a change of nmood and manner in both, Cobbett often
covers his enemy with nicknames, which stick but do not
scorch: such toys are beneath the deep long hate of Junius;
he scatters firebrands, arrows, and death.
From health and good-humor, blended with a keen sense
of the ridiculous, sprung his faculty of humor, one of the
most curious of all his gifts.  It is in him at one time the
power of singling out minute absurdities in the conduct,
character, style of writing, appearance, or names of his
opponents, and by endless repetitions enlarging their ridiculous aspect, till you, the reader, become a mere alias of
laughter holding both his sides. It is at another time produced by culling the oddest and lowest figures and allusions
from the barn-yard or the dunghill, and hanging those mudgarlands about the necks of dignitaries, prelates, statesenu.n,




WVILLIAM COBBETT.                 269
of majesty itself, till they look supremely ridiculous. Some
times he secures his ludicrous effects by the mere daring
effrontery of his onset, as in his celebrated chapter,' Errors
and Nonsense in a King's Spee'ch;" often by the unexpected
introduction of political or personal allusions amid serious
or indifferent subjects; sometimes, as we have seen, by the
dexterous use of nicknames -and slang; and often by the
sheer power of exuberant and dauntless egotism.
He had very little of what is strictly called wit, or the
power of perceiving unexpected resemblances and contrasts,
and no dry severe irony. Coleridge defined Swift as the
soul of Rabelais in a dry place. Cobbett may perhaps be
defined the soul of Swift in a softer, sunnier, sappier, place.
Swift was a machine of humor; he himself derived neither
good nor pleasure from  the lavish mirth he distributed to
others.  Cobbett, on the contrary,was compelled by his own
tickling sensations to tickle the whole world besides; his
humor was not a voluntary exercise of power, but a vent for
surcharged emotion.
His gift, as Shakspeare has it, of " iteration " he turned
to account for more purposes than those of humor.  His
arguments, his facts, as well as his favorite nicknames, such
as the "Wen," "Old Bloody," the "Press-gang," &c., he
repeated  again  and again.   He sat, like a " starling,"
opposite the treasury and the bank, and hallooed out what
he deemed offensive truths, and recounted untoward events,
the more pertinaciously that the truths were offensive, and
that the events had been untoward. And then, worst of
all, his crosking was so unlike that of all other croakers,
it was so funny, so far from a dull monotony, founded so
much on fact, and so widely listened to, that government,
between amusement and provocation were "perplexed in
the extreme." They durst neither openly laugh nor cry.
For here was no hunger-bitten scribbler, no lean Cassius, no
wild-eyed emaciated fanatic, but a joyous jolly prophet, six
feet high and proportionably broad, whom it was difficult
either to bribe or to kill, pouring out his endless predictions
and warnings under the sign of a gridiron, on which it was
quite as likely that they as that he should be roasted alive.
Was it from  this practice of incessant repetition that
there sprung that egotism with which he has been so often




270                ~VJLLIAMI COBBETT.
charged?  WVas it that, as he could not help talking about
other things over and over again, so he could not help,
much more, talking about himself?  Cobbett, in fact, was
not more an egotist than the majority of writers, only he
spoke of himself directly and not by implication. Some
speak of themselves while praising their idols, and others
while indulging their hobbies., But William  Cobbett, a
plain blunt man, instead of veiling his egotism under the
guise of sentimental sonnets, or working it up into imaginary conversations, or throwing  it out into imaginary
heroes, writes it down as plain "as downright Shippen or
as old Montaigne."  We must say we like this trait in his
character, believing that there is often more of the spirit
of egotism  discovered in avoiding than in using its language.  Why, the editorial word "we " contains in it the
douzle-distilled essence of egotism, modest as it looks. And
how much intolerable self-conceit is concealed under the
phrases "we humbly think," "it appears to us," and " our
feeble voice," &c. Cobbett was as great an enemy to shams
as Carlyle. He had a vast notion of himself, and he took
every opportunity, proper and improper, of declaring it. Unlike the boy Tell, "' he was great, and knew how great he
was." His opinion, at any rate, was perfectly sincere, and as
such required, nay, demanded expression. He felt himself,
and was, a reality among mewing and moping, painted and
gilded, starred, gartered, and crowned phantoms; and who
shall quarrel with him because ever and anon he touched his
strong sides and brow with his strong arms, and said, " Here
I am, this is solid, were all else the shadow of a shade."
Bulwer, our readers are aware, thought proper, many years
ago, to quarrel with the use of the anonymous in periodical
literature.  We think that Cobbett had been a worthier
champion for supporting this quarrel than Sir Edward. No
mask or visor would ever have become or fitted him. His
personality seen at every turning in the lane, every opening
in the hedge of his argument-his abuse or his humorwas his power..He was not a knight of chivalry, bearing
no device upon his shield, and covering his face in the
hollow of his helm, but a Tom Cribb or Spring, open-faced,
strong, stripped, and ready to do battle with all comers.
The anonymous seemed to him anti-English, and he re



WILLIAM COBBETT.                 271
signed it to the Italians, the "( press-gang," and the author of
Junius.
As Scott seemed to draw into his single self the last
national spirit of his country, as Byron was our last purely
English poet, so Cobbett was our all but last purely English prose writer.  He seemed, next to' Churchill, the most
striking personification of John Bull.  There were the
brawny form, the swagger, the  blustering temper, the
broad humor, the pertinacity, the variability, the dogmatic prejudice, the rudeness, the common sense, the sagacity, the turbulence, the gullosity, and the pugnacity of a
genuine Englishman as ever drank beer, bolted bacon, or
flourished singlestaff.  I-low he could upon occasion flatter
national prejudices and prepossessions! How he could stir
up into absolute springtide the English blood!  How he
used to pelt, when he pleased, the French and the Scotch!
What a chosen champion to the chaw-bacons!  It is not
too much to say that he understood his countrymen as
well as Napoleon did the French, and, had he possessed the
fighting talent, could, in the event of a revolution, have led
it and risen upon its wave. As it was, for a season he
was the real king of the masses, and even after, through
want of discretion, he lost his sovereignty, his rebel subjects, as often has happened in the history of rebellions, frequently felt their hearts palpitating, their ears tingling, and
their knees instinctively bending to the voice of their ancient
leader.
A pleasing feature in Cobbett's character was his love
for the countr-y.  WVe remember him   in one of his "Registers," expressing his wonder that one like himself, who
relished intensely all rural sights and sounds. should have
passed so large a portion of his life amid the smoke and
din and strife of cities.  It was not, indeed, the great features of nature that he admired; its more ethereal aspects,
and that mysterious symbolic relation which it bears to the
nature and history of man, he did not comprehend, and
would have laughed at any one who pretended to do. We
can fancy him  thus criticising Emerson-"- Wonders will
never cease.  Here comes a Yankee prophet-yes, a Yankee prophet-talking transcendental (query, transcendent?)
nonsense by the yard, and trying to get the gullible goose




272                 LVILLIAMI COBBETT.
John Bull to listen to him, at the rate of seven guineas for
each hour's lecture.  lHedl  better-for us, at any rate —
have stopped at homrne, and fed his pigs, or prophesied to his
henroost.  May I be roasted on a gridiron, if there's not
more sense in this one nulmber of the I Twopenny Trash'
than in all that this mnan Emerson ever wrote or ever will
write till his last breath.  And yet who'll pay me seven guineas for each of my lectures?  This half-crazy quack, I am
told, pulls down the old-prophets, Jeremy, Daniel, and the
rest, and sets himself up in their stead as prophet Ralph
Waldo. I venture to predict to prophet Ralph, that he won't
see Boston Bay again ere his gulls would rather by twventy
times have their guineas in their pockets than his lectures
in their memories. But I beg PRalph's pardon; for it's not in
the power of any mortal man, I'm told, to mind one word that
Ralph says to them, or to come off with any thing but a
general notion that they have been quacked out of their sixpences.  They say that the fellow is rather good-looking, a
glib talker, and has a smattering of the German, but never
gives his hearers one good round fcc, in all his lectures: has
no statistics or arguments either; and you would never guess,
while hearing him, whether you were in America or England,
the earth or the moon.  But enough of prophet Rac:   I
hope I have settled his hash as effectually as I did that of a
much cleverer fellow, sqinting prophet Ned, of Hatton
Garden."
Thus Cobbett would have thought and said.  Others,
with Cobbett's prejudices, but destitute of his powers and
his outspoken directness, have recently thought, but have
not courage to say the same.  And yet, while utterly incapable of feeling, and of affecting to feel, a high ideal view of
nature, he loved sincerely and passionately this green earth,
its fresh breezes, its soft waters, and its spring sky, blue, as
if newly dyed, as the bridal-curtain of the youthful season.
He cared nothing for the stars; these, which are rather like
paintings than works of nature, he disregarded nearly as
much as he did the pictures of man's pencil; he loved the
moon only as it lighted up the harvest-field; but the hedgerows, the trees, and the cornfields, of merry England grew in
his heart, and waved over, and cooled the stream of his life's
blood.  It is pleasant to come upon such passages in his




WVILLIA M-  COBBETT.              273
pages.  WYe linger and coo over themj like a breeze caught
amid the woods which surround some spot of insulated loveliness.  They raise and soften our opinion of the man; and
whenever we are disposed to think or speak harshly of William Cobbett, we are calmed by remembering his dying moments, when he requested to be carried round his farm, that
he might see for the last time the fields which he loved so
dearly.  The fact that this desire was so strong at death itself proved that it, and no lower or fiercer feeling, was his
ruling passion.
From this love of homely, English nature, and from his minute habits of observation, sprang that abundant and picturesque imagery with which his writings abound. A fresh breeze
from the "farm" is always felt passing over his driest discussions, and mingling with his bitterest personalities. It is
this which prevents him  from  being ever vulgar; for, as
Hazlitt has remarked, Cobbett is never vulgar, though often
coarse. And why? Because nature, though often coarse, is
never vulgar-though often common, is never mean; and because Cobbett is never himself, and will never permit his
reader to be, long or far away from the sweet, balmy breath of
nature.  Coleridge, in one of his little poems, speaks of trying, by abstruse research, to steal from himself "' all the natural man " —a process difficult, we suspect, in any case, but
in Cobbett's, even had he made the attempt, impossible; for
he was nothing, if not natural. Like Caliban, he seems newly dug out, and smelling strongly of the virgin earth.
W5hat shall we say of his style 2  That it was a forcible
and fit expression to his thought —little more.  It did not
pretend to be elegant; it was not so accurate as it pretended to be. It were not difficult retorting upon many
passages of his own writing the lynx-eyed system  of criticism which he directed against the slovenly compositions
of Sidmouth and Wellington.  In fact, no style can stand
minute criticism, just as the most beautiful. countenance
shrinks before the eye of the microscope.  And let Blair's
contemptible cavillings at the style of Addison-whose very
errors, like the blunders of a beautiful child, are graceful
and interesting-stand a perpetual monument of the folly
of going too near to the masterpieces of literature.  Cobbett's style is composed of the purest Saxon, and proves, as
12*




274                 WILLIAM COBBETT.
well as Bunyan's (as Macaulay has remarked), what p3urposes
that simple speech can serve.  Subtle distinctions It could
not have conveyed; but Cobbett had none such to convey.
Under certain grandeurs of thought, it might, like Charon's
boat, have creaked and trembled; but Cobbett required it
only to express clear, common sense logic, strong facts, and
strong passions; to beat down his foes, and to cut his own
way-and for such work it never failed him.  Its general
tone was that of a long rambling conversation; its principal
design seemed to be to make every smallest shade of his
meaning perfectly clear; its windings and'urnings so distinct and vivid in their variety, reminded you of the branching veins —with all the repetitions of a law-paper, it was as
lively and interesting as a novel.  You might grin over it,
or guffaw over it, or frown at it, or fling it from you in a fit
of fury; but it was impossible to sleep over it, or to yawn over
it, or to refrain from  thinking over it.  While statesmen amused themselves with the "Register" (amusement
reminding you of the games in Pandemonium!) at their
breakfast-tables; while the "press-gang," their lips the while
smacking, and their eyes glistening with delight, proceeded
to answer and abuse it, the country parson was reading it in
his after-dinner easy-chair, the Paisley weaver had it lying
on his loom, and the weary ploughman in his cottage kept
himself awake with its quaint and rich humors.  Since the
works of Burns, no writings were so much appreciated by all
ranks and conditions of men.  And the reason of this was
to be found in their corresponding qualities.  Clearness;
simplicity; picturesque description; racy, reckless humor;
big-boned, brawny strength; contempt of conventionalisms;
rugged, self-trained reason  in one word, nature-were common to both.  The "hairbrained sentimental trace," which
was the peculiar poetic differentia of Burns, of course was
wanting in Cobbett.
One curious but unquestionable cause of Cobbett's popularity we must also mention.  It was his intense sympathy
with that organ which those " masters of the mint," phrenologists, have, with their usual felicity of coinage, called
"'gustativeness."  How he expands and rejoices in describing all sorts of savory food! The droppings of Hermon's
dew or of Hybla's honey, are to him nothing compared to




WILLIAMII  COBBETT.              275
the droppings fromn the sausage-pan or the roasting-jack of
an English fireside r With what lively logic he undertakes
the quarrel of " beer versus tea!" with what a deep bass lie
trolls out the old stave-" Oh, the roast-beef of Old England!" how profound and edifying his contempt for swipes
and potatoes! how sublime he waxes over a sirloin; how pathetic his reminiscences of the good old days, when "mutton,
veal, and lamb were the food of the commoner sort of people!" what a whet his " Register" made before dinner! and
what a digestive after it! Here again he resembles Burnswho describes the homely food of Caledonia-her "souple
scones" —her "1 curny ingans, mixed wi' spice," and the other
ingredients of the haggis, "great chieftain o' the puddin'
race — not to speak of her tippenny and usqueba-with such
infinite gusto; and Scott, whose books are the best appetizers
in the world, and whose good digestion constituted, we venture to say, one-half of his physical, and one-fourth of his
mental power.
In connection with this, we notice a vital defect in Cobbett's theory of man. He scarcely seems to have rise6n
higher than the conception of himn as an animal-a beefbolting and beer-bibbing animal.  If government, and his
own strong hand, found him in those articles; and if William.Cobbett were permitted to supply him with amusement,
besides a little instruction in,grammar, in arithmetic, and in
the evil effects of priestcraft and potatoes, of gin and tea, he
might consider himself satisfied.  And this was his theory
of human life! this his recipe for human woes! this his
mode of filling the infinite cravings of the human heart!
And yet, ere laughing at this  "Gospel, according to St.
Cobbett," and calling it a piggish panacea for a race of erect
pigs, let us remember that the utilitarians of our own day
do not rise much higher. They trace man's origin from the
brutes; they, by implication, deny his natural superiority
to the brutes; and, consequently, his natural immortality.
Denying he was made in God's image, how can they conceive
he is ever to reach it?  They systematically overlook his
relation to his Maker.  They would cut-the puny insects!
— that awful tie which from the beginning has bound our
race to the throne of the Eternal! They would, with insane
but impotent hands, quench the only authentic fire of revela




2726                 WILLIA  COOBBETT.
tion which ever shone -from heaven  They would arrest, if
they could, the wheels of that coniing One, before whose
throne every knee shall bow, and whose authority every
tongue shall confess  T'hey would indeed clothe man with
more accomplishients than Cobbett's rude nature recognized;
they would teach man (on the brink of annihilation) to dance,
and sing, and play, and recite verses, and babble cf green
fields, and chatter science, as well as to cat and.to drink;
but no more than lie would they have him to expand in the
prospect, and to shine in the radiance of the future destinies
of his immortal being! In fact, we value Cobbett's theory
as the reductio ad abszGr'dcu  of the utilitarian view; and we
fancy we hear the old sergeant growling out to those bastards
of Benthain —" If you believe that man is to perish to death,
like a pig, why bother yourselves with teachinlg him  languages, music, and science? Jill hlis belly, yoz fools, and send
iZive to sleep."
But we must not part in bad humor with Cobbett, nor
with any body else.  Pity, after all, is the most appropriate
feeling to entertain towards those who judge so meanly of
man.  And for Cobbett, especially, there are many grounds
of excuse- fom his early circumstances-from  his want of
a spiritual education-from  thle sight of human nature, in
its worst forms, which he had in thle army —and from  the
scrambling and precarious life lie was compelled to lead
aiterwards.
Besides those separate works of his which are so well
known, such as his " Cottage Economy,"   "Legacy to Parsons," his "! Life " of himself, and his " English and French
Grammars," &C., we should like to see some judicious hand
employed in making selections from the "PRegister."  We
despair, indeed, of ever finding the "Beauties of Cobbett"
collected into such a nosegay as ladies would like to handle
and to smell.  Indeed, the term  "Beauties of Cobbett"'
would seem  sufficiently affected and inappropriate.  But
sonime one, surely, might give us a collection of Cobbett's
"'good, sl5o zn, and truze thing s."  Nay, let us have some of
his shadows, as well as his lights; some of his racier and
more characteristic faults, a prudent selection friom his vocabulary of slang, some of his richer passages of egotism, a
few of his predictions that have not, and others that have been




JAMES'IONTGOMIERY.              277
fulfilled-such a book, in short, as he himself would have
acknowledged as a faithful likeness, and as should convey
to posterity a just impression of a great English author.
JAMIES BIONTGOTIERY.
SOaIE seven or eight years ago, the inhabitants of a large city
in the north of Scotland were apprised, by handbills, that
James Montgomery, Esq., of Sheffield, the poet, was to address a meeting on the subject of 3Moravian missions. This
announcement, in the language of Dr. Caius, " did bring -de
water into our mouth."  The thought of seeing a live poet,
of European reputation, arriving at our very door, in a remote corner, was absolutely electrifying.  We went early to
the chapel where he was announced to speak, and ere the
lion of the evening appeared, amused ourselves with watching and analyzing the audience which his celebrity had collected.  It was not very numerous, and not very select. Few
of the grandees of the city had condescended to honor him
by their presence.  Stranger still, there was but a sparse
supply of clergy, or of the prominent religionists of the town.
The church was chiefly filled with females of a certain age,
one or two stray "hero worshippers" like ourselves, a few
young ladies who had read some of his minor poems, and
whose eyes seemed lighted up with a gentle fire of pleasure
in the prospect of seeing the author of those <"beautiful
verses on the Grave, and Prayer," and two or three who had
come from ten imiles off to see and hear the celebrated poet.
When he at length'appeared, we continued to marvel at the
aspect of the platform. Instead of being supported by the
dlite of the city, instead of forming a rallying centre of attraction and unity to all who had a sympathy with piety or
with genius for leagues round it, a few obscure individuals
presented themselves, who seemed rather anxious to catch a
little eclat from him, than to delight to do him honor.  Tmhe
evening was rather advanced ere he rose to speak.  His appearance, as far as we could catch it, was quite in keeping
with the spiritual cast of his poetry. I-He was tall, thin, bald,




278                JAMES MONTGOMERY.
with face of sharp outline, but mild expression;  and we
looked with no little reverence on the eye which had shot
fire into the Pelican Island, and on the hand (skinny enough
we ween), which had written "The Grave."  He spoke in a
low voice, sinking occasionally into an inaudible whisper:
but his action was fiery and his pantomime striking. In the
course of his speech he alluded, with considerable effect, to
the early heroic struggles of Moravianism, when she was yet
alone in the death-grapple with the powers of Heathen darkness; and closed (when cdid he ever close a speech otherwise?) by quoting a few vigorous verses from himself.
We left the meeting, we remember, with two wondering
questions in our ears: first, Is this fame? of what value
reputation, which, in a city of seventy thousand inhabitants,
is so freezingly acknowledged-?  Would not any empty,
mouthing charlatan, any " twopenny tear-mouth," any painted, stupid savage, any clever juggler, any dexterous player
apon the fiery harp-strings of the popular passions, have enjoyed a better reception than this true, tender, and holy
poet?  But secondly, Is not this true, tender, and holy poet
partly himself to blame?  Has he not put himself in a false
position?  Has he not too readily lent himself as an instru-.
ment of popular excitement?  Is this progress of his altogether a proper, a poet's progress? Would Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth, have submitted to it?  And is it in
good taste for him to eke out his orations by long extracts
friom  his own poems?  Homer, it is true, sang his own
verses; but lie did it for food.  Montgomery recites them,
but it is for fame.
We pass now gladly —as we did in thought then-from
the progress to the poet-pilgrim  himself.  We have long
admired and loved James Montgomery, and we wept under
his spell ere we did either the one or the other.  We will
not soon forget the Sabbath evening —it was in golden summer tide-when we first heard his "Grave" repeated, and
wept as we heard it. It seemed to come, as it professed
to come, from the grave itself-a still small voice of comfort
and of hope, even from that stern abyss. It was a fine and
bold idea to turn the great enemy into a comforter, and
elicit such a reply, so tender and submissive, to the challenge,
" O Grave, where is thy victory?"  Triumphing in prospect




JAMES MONTGOMERY.                -279
over the sun himself, the grave proclaims the superiority and
immunity of the soul" The Sun is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky;
But thou! immortal as his Sire,
Shalt never die."
Surely no well in the wilderness ever sparkled out to the
thirsty traveller a voice more musical, more tender, and more
cheering, than this which Montgomery educes from the jaws.
of the narrow house.  Soon afterwards we became acquainted
with some of his other small pieces, which then seized and
which still occupy the principal place in our regards.  Indeed, it is on his little poems that the permanency of his
fame is likely to rest, as it is into them that he has chiefly
shed the peculiarity and the beauty of his genius. James
Montgomery has little inventive or dramatic power; he
cannot write an epic; none of his larger poems, while some
are bulky, can be called great; but he is the best writer of
hymns (understanding a hymn simply to mean a short religious effusion) in the language.  He catches the transient
emotions of the pious heart, which arise in the calm evening
walk, where the saint, like Isaac, goes out into the fields to
meditate; or under the still and star-fretted midnight; or
on his " own delightful bed;" or in pensive contemplations
of the'Common Lot;" or under the Swiss heaven, where
evening hardly closes the eye of Mont Blanc, and stirs lake
Leman's waters with a murmur like a sleeper's prayer;
whvrever, in short, piety kindles into the poetic feeling, such
emotions he catches, refines, and embalms in his snatches of
lyric song.  As Wordsworth has expressed sentiments which
the " solitary lover of nature was unable to utter, save with
glistening eye and faltering tongue," so Montgomery has
given poetic form and words to breathings and pantings of
the Christian's spirit, which himself never suspected to be
poetical at all, till he saw them reflected in verse.  He has
caught and crystallized the tear dropping from the penitent's
eye; he has echoed the burden of the heart, sighing with
gratitude to Heaven; he has arrested and fixed in melody
the "upward glancing of an eye, when none but God is
near."  In his verse, and in Cowper's, the poetry of ages of




280                JAMES BMIONTGOIERY.
devotion has broken silence, and spoken out.  Religion, the
most poetical of all things, had, for a long season, been
divorced from song, or had mistaken pert jingle, impudent
familiarity, and doggerel, for its genuine voice.  It was reserved for the bards of Olney and Sheffield to renew and to
strengthen the lawful and holy wedlock.
ilontgomery, then, is a religious lyrist, and as such, is
distinguished by many peculiar. merits.  His first quality
is a certain quiet simplicity of language, and of purpose.
His is not the ostentatious, elaborate, and systematic simplicity of Wordsworth; it is unobtrusive, and essential to
the action of his mind. It is a simplicity, which the diligent student of Scripture seldom fails to derive from its
pages, particularly from its histories and its psalmhns. It is
the simplicity of a spirit which religion has subdued as well
as elevated, and which consciously spreads abroad the wings
of its imagination, under the eye of God.  As if each
poem were a prayer, so is he sedulous that its words be
few and well ordered.  In short, his is not so much the
simplicity of art, nor the simplicity of nature, as it is tle
simplicity of faith.  It' is the virgin dress of one of the
white-robed priests in the ancient temple.  It is a simplicity which, by easy and rapid transition, mounts into
bold and manly enthusiasm.  One is reminded of the
artless sinkings and soarings, lingerings and hurryings of
David's matchless minstrelsies.  Profound insight is not
peculiarly Montgomery's forte. He is rather a seraph than
a cherub; rather a burning than a knowing one.  He kneels;
he looks upward with rapt eye; he covers at times. his face
with his wing; but he does not ask awful questions, or cast
strong though baffled glances into the solid and intolerable
glory. You can never apply to him the words of Gray.
He never has "passed the bounds of flaming space, where
angels tremble as they gaze."  He has never invaded those
lofty but dangerous regions of speculative thought, where
some have dwelt till they have lost all of piety, save its
grandeur and gloom. He does not reason, far less doubt,
on the subject of religion at all; it is his only to wonder, to
love, to weep, and to adore.  Sometimes, but seldom, can he
be called a sublime writer.  In his "Wanderer' of Switzerlnd," he blows a bold horn, but the echoes and the ava



JAMIES MIONTGOIERY.                 28 
lanches of the highest Alps will not answer or fal  to his
reveille.  In his' Greenland,;" he expresses but faintly the
poetry of Frost; and his line is often cold as a glacier. His
"'World before the Floodc" is a misnomer.  It is not the
young virgin undrowned world it professes to be.  In his'" West Indies," there is more of the ardent emancipator than
of the poet; you catch but dimly, through its correct and
measured verse; a glimpse of Bthiopia-a dreadful appellantj
standing with one shackled foot on the rock of Gibraltar,
and the other on the Cape of Good Hope, and "stretching
forth her hands " to an avenging God.  And although, in
the horrors of the middle passage, there were elements of
poetry, yet it was a poetry which our author's genius is too
gentle and timid fully to extract.  As soon could he have
added a story to Ugolino's tower, or another circle to the
Inferno, as have painted that pit of heat, hunger, and howling despair, the hold of a slave vessel.  Let him  have his
praise, however, as the constant and eloquent friend of the
negro, and as the laureate of his freedom.  The high note
struck a~t first by Cowper in his lines, " I -would not have a
slave," &c. it was reserved for Mlontgomery to echo and
swell up, in reply to the full diapason of the liberty of Ham's
children, proclaimed in all the isles which Britain claims as
hers.  And let us hope that he will be rewarded, before the
close of his existence, by hearing, though it were in an ear
half-shut in death, a louder, deeper, more victorious shout
springing froml  emancipated America, and of saying, like
Simeon of old, "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."'
The plan of "The Pelican Island" was an unfortunate
one, precluding as it did almost entirely human interest, and
rapid vicissitude of events; and resting its power principally upon the description of foreign objects, and of slow
though majestic processes of nature.  Once, and once only,
in this and perhaps any of his poems, does he rise into the
rare region of the sublime.  It is in the description of the
sky of the south, a subject which indeed is itself inspiration.
And yet, in that solemn sky, the great constellations, hung
up in the wondering evening air, the Dove, the Raven, the
Ship of Heaven, " sailing from  eternity;" the Wolf, "with
eyes of lightning watching the Centaur's spear; the Altar




282               JAMES MIONTGOMIERY.
blazing, "even at the footsteps of Jehovah's throne; the
Cross, "mneek emblem of Redeeming love," which bends at
midnight as when they were taking down the Saviour of the
world, and which greeted the eye of Humboldt as he sailed
over the still Pacific, had so huno and so burned for ages,
and no poet had sung their praises.  Patience, ye glorious
tremblers. In a page of this' Pelican Island," a page bright
as your own beams, and like them immortal, shall your splendors be yet inscribed. This passage, which floats the poem,
and will long memorize Montgomery's name, is the more
remarkable, as the poet never saw but in imagination that
unspeakable southern midnight.  Andcl yet we are not sure
but, of objects so transcendent, the " vision of our own i' is
the true vision, and the vision that ought to be perpetuated
in song. For our parts, we, longing as we have ever done
to see the Cross of the South, would almost fear to have
our longings gratified, and to find the reality, splendid as it
must be, substituted for that vast image of bright, quivering
stars, which has so long loomed before our imaginations, and
so often visited our dreams.  Indeed, it is a question, in
reference to objects which must, even when seen, derive
their interest from  imagination,  whether they be not best
seen by its eye alone.
Among Montgomnery's smaaler poems,, the finest is the
"Stanzas at Midnight," composed in Switzerland, and which.
we see inserted in Longfellow's romance of Hyperion, with
no notice or apparent knowledge of their authorship.  They
describe a mood of his own mind while passing a night among
the Alps, and contain a faithful transcript of the emotions
which, thick and sombre as the shadows of the mountains,
crossed his soul il. its solitude.  There are no words of
Foster's which to us possess more meaning.than that simple
expression in his first essay, "solemn meditations of the
night."  Nothing in spiritual history is more interesting.
What vast tracts of thought does the mind sometimes traverse when it cannot sleep! What ideas, that had bashfully
presented themselves in the light of day, now stand out in
bold relief and authoritative dignity! How vividly appear
before us the memories of the past! How do, alas! past
struggles and sins return to recollection, rekindling on our
cheeks their first fierce blushes unseen in the darkness!




JAMES 3MONTGOMERY.                 283
How new a light is cast upon the great subjects of spiritual
conmimplation! What a " browner horror" falls upon the
throne of death, and the pale kingdoms of the grave! What
projects are then formed, what darings of purpose conceived, and how fully can we then understand the meaning
of the poet,
"In lonely glens, timid the roar of rivers,
When the still nights were moonless, hlave I known
Joys that no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers
When thought revisits them!"
And when, through the window, looks in on us one full
glance of a clear large star, how startlingly it seems, like a
conscious, mild, yet piercing eye  how strongly it points,
how soothingly it mingles with our meditations, and, as with
a pencil of fire, points them away into still remoter and more
mysterious regions of thought! Such a meditation Montgomery has embodied in these beautiful verses: but then HE
is up amid the midnight and all its stars; he is out amid
the Alps, and is catching on his brow the living breath of
that rarest inspiration which moves amid them, then and
then alone.
We mentioned Cowper in conjunction with Montgomery
in a former sentence.  They resemble each other in the
pious purpose and general simplicity of their writings, but
otherwise are entirely distinct.   Cowper's is a didactic,
3Montgomery's a romantic piety.  Cowper's is a gloomy,
Montgomery's a cheerful religion.  Cowper has in him  a
fierce and bitter vein of satire, often irritating inft: invective; we find no traces of any such thing in all NMontgomery's writings.  Cowper's withering denunciations seem
shreds of Elijah's mantle, torn off in the fiery whirlwind.
Montgonery is clothed in the softer garments, and breathes
the gentler genius of the new economy. And as poets, MIontgomery, with more imagination and elegance, is entirely destitute of the rugged strength of sentiment, the exquisite
keenness of observation, the rich humor and the awful personal pathos of Cowper.
Montgomnery's hymns ( properly so called), we do not
much admire.  They are adapted, and seem  written, for
such an assemblage of greasy worshippers, such lank-haired




284                 JAMEIIS MONTGOMIERPY.
young men, such virgins wise and foolish, such children,
small and  great, as meet to lift up their " most sweet
voices " within certain well-known sanctuaries.  They have
in them  often a false gallop of religious sentimentalism
Their unction has been  kept too long, and has a savor
not of the sweetest: they abound less indeed than many of
their class, in such endearing epithets as " dear Lordcl,"
" dear Christ,'' "sweet Jesus," &c.; but are not entirely free
from. these childish decorations.  That one song, sung by
the solitary Jewish maiden in " Ivanhoe " (surely the sweetest strain ever uttered since the spoilers *f Judah did by
Babel's streams require of its captives a song, and were
answered in that melting melody which has drawn the tears
and praises of all time), is worth all the hymn-books that
ever were composed.  Mlontgomery's true hymns are those
which bear not the name, but which sing, and for ever will
sing, their own quiet tune to simple and pious spirits.
Of Montgomniery's prose we might say much that was favorable.  It is truly "Prose by a Poet," to borrow the title
of one of his works.  You see the poet every now and then
dropping his mask, and showing himself in his true character. It is enough of itself to confute the vulgar prejudice
against the prose of poets.  Who indeed but a poet has ever
written, or can ever write good prose, prose that will live?
What prose, to take but one example, is comparable to the
prose of Shakspeare, many of whose very best passages-as
Harnlet's description of man, Falstaff's death, the speech of
Brutus, or that dreadful grace before meat of Timon, which
is of misanthropy the quaintest and most appalling quintessence, and seems fit to have preceded a supper in Eblisare not in verse?  Montgomery's prose criticism we value
less for its exposition of principles, or for its originality, in
which respects it is deficient, than for its generous and eloquent enthusiasm.  It is delightful to find in an author, who
had so to struggle up his way to distinction, such a fresh
and constant sympathy with the success and the merits of
others.  In this point he reminds us of Shelley, who, hurled
down at one time, by universal acclamation, into the lowest
abyss of contempt, both as an author and a man, could look
up from it, to breathe sincere admiration toward those who
had usurped the place in public favor to which he was, and




JAMES MONTGOMERY.                  285
knew he was, entitled.  VWe are not reminded of the Lakers,
whose tarn-like narrowness of critical spirit is the worst and
weakest feature in their characters.  Truly a great mind
never looks so contemptible as when, siooping from its pride
of place, it exchanges its own high aspirations after fame for
poor mouse-like nibblings at the reputation of others.
Many tributes have been paid of late years to the "Pilgrim's. Progress."  The lips of Coleridge have waxed eloquent in its praise; Southey and Macaulay have here embraced each other; Cheever, from  America, has uttered a
powerful sound in proclamation of its unmatched merits:
but we are mistaken if its finest panegyric be not that contained in Montgomlery's preface, prefixed to the Glasgow
edition.  In it all the thankfulness cherished from  childhood, in a poet's and a Christian's heart, toward this benign
and beautiful book, comes gushing forth; and he closes the
tribute with the air of one who has relieved himself from  a
deep burden of gratitude.  Indeed, this is the proper feeling
to be entertained toward all works of genius; and an envious or malign criticism upon such is not so much a defect in
the intellect *as it is a sin of the heart. It is a blow struck
in the face of a benefactor.  A great author is one who presents us with a priceless treasure; and if we at once reject
the boon and spurn the giver, ours is not an error simply, it
is a deadly crime.
The mention of Bunyan and Montgomery in conjunction,
irresistibly reminds us of a writer who much resembles the
one, and into whom the spirit of the other seems absolutely
to have transmigrated: we mean Mary Howitt. She resembles Montgomery principally in the amiable light in which
she presents the spirit of Christianity.  Here the Moravian
and the Friend are finely at one.  Their religion is no dire
fatalism, like Foster's; it is no gloomy reservoir of all morbid and unhappy feelings, disappointed hopes, baffled purposes, despairing prospects, turning toward heaven, in their
extremity, for comfort. as it is with a very numerous class of
authors.  It is a glad sunbeam from the womb of the morning, kindling all nature and life into smiles. It is a meek, womanlike presence in the chamber of earth, which meanwhile
beautifies, and shall yet redeem and restore it-by its very
gentleness righting all its wrongs, curing all its evils, and




286                JAMBES MIONTGOMERY.
wiping away all its tears.  Had but this faith been shown
more fully to the sick soul of Cowper! were it but shown
more widely to the sick soul of earth,
I" Soon
Every sprite beneath the nioon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again."
And how like is Mary Howitt to Bunyan! Like him,
she is the most sublime of the simple, and the most simple
of the sublime; the most literal and the most imaginative
of writers. Hers and his are but a few quiet words: but
they have the effect of " Open Sesame;" they conduct into
deep caverns of feeling and of thought, to open which ten
thousand mediocrists behind are bawling  in vain.  In
"Marien's Pilgrimage " (thanks to  the kind and gifted
young friend who lately introduced us to this beautiful
poem), we have a minor " Pilgrim's Progress," where Christianity is represented as a child going forth on a mission to
earth, mingling with and mitigating all its evils; and is left,
at the close, still wandering on in this her high calling.
The allegory is not, any more than in Bunyan, strictly preserved; for Marien is at once Christianity personified and
a Christian person, who alludes to Scripture events, and
talks in Scripture language; but the simplicity, the childlikeness, and the sweetness, are those of the gentle dreamer
of Elstowe.
We return to James Montgomery only to bid him farewell.  He is one of the few lingering stars in a very rich
constellation of poets. Byron, Coleridge, Southey, Crabbe,
Campbell, Shelley, Keats, are gone; some burst to shivers
by their own impetuous motion; others, in the course of
nature, have simply ceased to shine.  Three of that cluster
yet remain, in Wordsworth, Moore, and Montgomery.  Let
us, without absurdly and malignantly denying merit to our
rising luminaries, with peculiar tenderness cherish these both
for their own sakes, and as still linking us to a period in
our literary history so splendid.




SIDNEY SMITH.                   287
SIDNEY SMITH.
IT is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, nay,
almost simultaneously, our literary luminaries are disappearing from  the sky.  Every year another and another
member of the bright clusters which arose about the close
of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is fading
from our view.  Within nineteen years, what havoc, by the
"insatiate archer," among the ruling spirits of the time!
Since 1831, Robert Hall, Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier,
Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge, Edward Irving, Sir
Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell, &c.,
have entered on the " silent land;" and latterly has dropped
down one of the wittiest and shrewdest of themn  all-the
projector of the " Edinburgh Review "-the author of " Peter
Plymley's Letters " —the preacher-the politician-the brilliant converser-the "~'uad-wag  "-Sidney Smith.
It was the praise of Dryden that he was the best reasoner
in verse who ever wrote; let it be the encomium of our
departed Sidney that he was one of the best reasoners
in wit of whom  our country can boast.  His intellectstrong, sharp, clear, and decided —wrought and moved in a
rich medium of humor. Each thought, as it came forth from
his brain, issued as " in dance," and amid a flood of inextinguishable laughter.  The march of his mind through his
subject resembled the procession of Bacchus from the conquest of India-joyous, splendid, straggling-to the sound
of f ites and hautboys-rather a victory than a mnlarchrather a revel than a contest. His logic seemed always hurrying into the arms of his wit. Some men argue in mathematical formulse; others, like Burke, in the figures and
flights of poetry; others in the fire and fury of passion; Sidney Smith in exuberant and riotous fun.  And yet the
matter of his reasoning was solid, and its inner spirit earnest and true.  But though his steel was strong and sharp,
his hand steady, and his aim clear, the management of the
motions of his weapon was always fantastic.  He piled, indeed,.like a Titan, his Pelion on- Ossa, but at the oddest of
angles; he lifted and carried his load bravely, and like a




288                    SIDNEY'MITH.
man, but laughed as he did so; and so carried it that beholders forgot the strength of the arm in the strangeness of
the attitude.  He thus sometimes disarmed anger; for his
adversaries could scarcely believe that they had received a
deadly wound while their foe was roaring in their face.  He
thus did far greater execution; for the flourishes of his weapon
might distract his opponents, but never himself, from the direct and terrible line of the blow.  His laughter sometimes
stunned, like the cachination of the Cyclops, shaking the sides
of his cave. In this mood-and it was his common one -what
scorn was he wont to pour upon the opponents of Catholic
emancipation-upon the enemies of all change in legislationupon any individual or party who sought to obstruct measures which, in his judgment, were likely to benefit the country.
Under such, he could at any moment spring a mine of laughter; and what neither the fierce invective of Brougham nor
the light and subtle railery of Jeffrey could do, his contemptuous explosion effected, and, himself crying with mirth, saw
them hoisted toward heaven in ten thousand comical splinters. Comparing him with other humorists of a similar class,
we might say, that while Swift's ridicule resembles something
between a sneer and a spasm (half a sneer of mirth, half a
spasm of misery) —while Cobbett's is a grin-Fonblanqjue's
a light but deep and most significant smile-Jeffrey's a
sneer, just perceptible on his fastidious lip-Wilson's a
strongj healthy, hearty laugh —Carlyle's a wild unearthly
sound, like the neighing of a homeless steed —Sidney Smith's
is a, genuine guffaw, given forth with his whole heart, and
soul, and mlind, and strength.  Apart from  his matchless
humor, strong, rough, instinctive, and knotty sense was the
leading feature of his mind.  Every thing like mystification,
sophistry, and humbug, fled before the first glance of his
piercing eye; every thing in the shape of affectation excited
in himl a disgust'"as implacable" as even a Cowper could
feel.'If possible, with still deeper aversion did his manly
nature regard cant in its various forms and disguises; and
his motto in reference to it was, "spare no arrows."  But
the mean, the low, the paltry, the dishonorable, in nations or
in indivicduals, moved all the fountains of his bile, and awakened all the energy of his invective.  Always lively, generally witty, he is never eloquent, except when emptying out




SIDNEY SM'AITHi.               289
h;is vials of indignation upon baseness in all its shapes. His
is the ire of a genuine " English gentleman, all of the olden
timne.' It was in this spirit that he recently explained, in
his own way, the old distinctions of iMeum and Tuunm to
Brother Jonathan, when the latter was lamentably inclined
to forget them.  It was the same sting of generous indignation. which, in the midst of his character of Miackintosh,
prompted the memorable picture of that extraordinary being
who, by his transcendant talents and his tortuous movements
-his head of gold, and his feet of miry clay-has become
the glory, the riddle, and the regret of his country, his age,
and his species.
As a writer, Smith is little mor.e than a very clever, witt:r.
and ingenious pamphleteer.  He has effected no permanent
cheSf d'czwvre; he has founded no school; he has left little
behind him that the "world will not willingly let die;" he
has never drawn a tear from a human eye, nor excited a,
thrill of grandeur in a human bosom.  His reviews are not
preserved by the salt of original genius, nor are they pregnant with profound and comprehensive principle; they have
no resemblance to the sibylline leaves which Burke tore out
from the vast volume of his mind, and scattered with imperial indifference among the nations; they are not the
illuminated indices of universal history, like the papers of
Macaulay; they are not specimens of pure and perfect
English, set with modest but magnificent ornaments, like
the criticism  of Jeffrey or of Hall; nor are they the excerpts, rugged and rent away by violence, from the dark and
iron tablet of an obscure and original mind, like the reviews
of Foster; but they are exquisite jezux d'e.srit, admirable
occasional pamphlets, which, though now they look to us like
spent arrows, yet assuredly have done execution, and have not
been spent in vain. And as, after the lapse of a century and
more, we can still read with pleasure Addison's " Old Whig
and Freeholder," for the sake of the exquisite humor and
inimitable style in which forgotten feuds and dead logomachies are embalmed, so may it be, a century still, with the
articles on Bentham's Fallacies and on the Game Laws, and
with the letters of the witty and ingenious Peter Plymley.
There is much at least in those singular productions-in
their clear and manly sense-in their broad native fun-in
18




29 0                  SIDNEY SM3ITT.
their rapid, careless, aind energetic style —and in their bold,
honest) liberal, and thoroughly English spirit-to interest
several succeeding generations, if not to secure the 1"rare
and regal " palm of immortality.
Sidney Smith was a writer of sermons as well as of political squibs.  Is not their memory eternized in one of John
Foster's most ponderous pieces of sarcasml?  In an evil hour
the dexterous and witty critic came' forth from behind the
fastnesses of the Edinburgh Review, whence, in perfect
security he had shot his quick glancing shafts at Methodists
and Missions, at Christian Observers and Eclectic Reviews,
at Owens'and Styles, and (what the muore wary Jeffrey, in
the day of his power, always avoided) became himself an
author, and, znirazbile dictu, an author of sermons.  It was
as if he wished to give his opponents their revenge; and no
sooner did his head peep forth from beneath the protection
of its shell than the elephantine foot of Foster was prepared
to crush it in the. dust. It was the precise position of Saladin
with the Knight of the Leopard, in their memorable contest
near the Diamond of the Desert. In the skirmish Smlith had
it all his own way; but when it came to close quarters, and
when the heavy and mailed hand of the sturdy Baptist had
confirmed its grasp on his opponent, the disparity was prodigious, and the discomfiture of the light horseman complete.
But why recall the memory of an obsolete quarrel and a forgotten field?  The sermons-the caztsa belli-clever but dry,
destitute of earnestness and unction-are long since dead
and buried; and their review remains their only monument.
Even when, within his own stronghold, our author intermeddled with theological topics, it was seldoml with felicity or
credit to himself.  His onset on missions was a sad mistake;
and in attacking the Methodists, and poor, pompous John
Styles, he becomes as filthy and foul-mouthed as Swift himself.
His wit forsakes him, and a rabid invective ill supplies its
place; instead of laughing, he raves and foams at the mouth.
Indeed, although an eloquent and popular preacher, and in
many respects an ornament to his cloth, there was one radical
evil about Smith;  he had imistakcen his profession.  He was
intended for a barrister, or a literary man, or a member
of parliament, or: some occupation into which he could have
fung his whole soul and strength.  As it was, but half his




SIDNEY SMITtI.                 291
heart was in a profession which, of all others, would require
the whole.  He became consequently a rather awkward medley of buffoon, politician, preacher, literateur, divine, and
diner-out. Let us grant, however, that the ordeal was severe, and that, if a very few have weathered it better, many
more have ignominiously broken down. No one coincides
more fully than we do with Coleridclge in thinking that every
literary man should have a profession; but in the name of
common sense let it be one fitted for him, and for which he is
fitted-one suited to his tastes as well as to his talents-to
his habits as well as to his powers-to his heart as well as to
his head.
As a conversationist, Sidney Smith stood high among
the highest-a Saul among a tribe of Titans.  His jokes
were not rare and refined, like those of IRogers and Jekyll;
they wanted the slyness of Theodore Hook's inimitable
equivoque; they were not poured forth with the prodigal
profusion of Hood's breathless and bickering puns; they
were rich, fat, unctuous, always bordering on farce, but always avoiding it by a hair's-breadth.  No finer cream, certes,
ever mantled at the feasts of Holland House than his fertile
brain supplied; and, to quote himself, it would require a
"forty-parson power" of lungs and language to do justice to
his convivial merits.  An acquaintance  of ours sometimes
met him in the company of Jeffrey and Macaulay-a fine
concord of first-rate performers, content, generally, to keep
each within his own part, except when, now and then, the
author of the" Lays" burst out irresistibly, and changed the
concert into a fine solo.
Sidney Smith, we never saw, and his personnel, therefore,
we cannot describe.  We always figure him, however, to
ourselves as a "round, fat, oily man of God," with a strongly
marked forehead, and an unspeakable twinkle in his eye.
How far this resembles the original, we leave others to
determine. Altogether "we could have better spared a
better man.", Did not his death'"eclipse the gayety of
nations?"  Did not a Fourth Estate of Fun expire from
the midst of us? Did not even Brother Jonathan drop a
tear when he thought that the scourge that so mercilessly
lashed him  was broken?  And shall not now all his admirers, unite with us in inscribing upon his grave-" Alas!
poor Yorick!"




292               WILLIAM ANDERSON.
WILLIABI ANDERSON, GLASGOW.
AMID our profusion of sketches, we have never yet permitted ourselves to draw a likeness of our venerable father,
Samuel Gilfillan of Comrie.  We feel at present a strong impulse to do so shortly; and we know Mr. Anderson too well
to doubt that he will stand aside gladly for a little, till we
limn a yet dearer countenance than his, and analyze a character equally upright and sincere.
Our father was indeed a very remarkable man. He was
not what this fastidious age would call a man of genius,
learning, or eloquence; but for genius he had a genial and
impulsive heart-for learning, extensive information —for
eloquence, unequalled ease of plain effective address.  His
form was erect and manly-his brow lofty and marked —his
eye quick to restlessness —is hair, as we remember it,
tinged with gray-his whole aspect denoting the utmost
activity of mind and ardor of character. Though naturally impetuous in his temper, and hasty in its expressions,
he was one of the most delightful of companions. He was
frank to excess-guile had been forgotten in his composition;
he had a childlike gayety and warmth of manner, from which
he rose gently-not, like some, rebounded violently-into
dignity; he was full of talk, and especially of anecdote and
allusion, culled from a wide extent of miscellaneous reading;
he had a nack, altogether his own, in bringing in his religious
views, not like staring strangers, but like welcome and respected guests, into any company and any conversation. He
was admirable, too, at adapting himself to all kinds of persons, and had one manner for the peasant, another for his
brother-minister, a third for the literary man, a fourth
for the religious and high-bred lady, and a fifth for the mere
man of the world-yet all natural, easy, and ranking themselves gracefully under the one idiosyncrasy of his character.
As a husband and parent, he was affectionate to indulgence.
His beaming eye betrayed his deep love-his faltering tones
in his Sabbath-evening addresses to the little circle-the
warm pressure of his welcoming hand, when any of his family
came home from the distant city-his all but last look to us




WILLIAM ANDERSON.                 293
as, a few days before his death, he met us returning from the
village-library with a precious volume of "Plutarch's Lives"
in our hand-his walks with us through the ripe corn-fields
of autumn, pouring out the while a stream of information.
and interesting comment on the objects around-the hope
and preference, but faintly disguised-even his occasional
inequalities of temper, shall all' be dear "while memory
holds a seat on this distracted globe." As a preacher, he
was plain, earnest, serious, always animated, sometimes
vehement.  All this is true of many preachers besides him;
but few possessed the inexpressible charm, the naivete, the
exquisite power of adapting his discourse to every little incident which occurred in the history of his audience, to every
smallest surge which took place in its stream.  He did not
stand up before them as a sublime orator, to fulminate, and
fiercely and contemptuously sway-as an eager aspirant for
their favorable suffrages, to tickle and to soothe-as the
primed mouthpiece of an elaborate discharge-as a being
piercing a lonely way through the thick of his bearers, wondered at, looked after, but not followed (a description this
last which some will know how to fit on); but as a plain,
honest, well-informed, warm-hearted man, conversing on the
level of his people, solemnly yet easily, about the matters of
their eternity; and, as the conversation went on, allowing
himself the widest range, now beseeching, now threatening,.gathering illustrations from every remarkable aspect of the
sky above, or any singular incident in his audience belowhere quoting a verse of poetry which evidently occurred at.
the moment, there applying an anecdote from his multifarious stores, and here again snatching a shaft from the newspapers of the day, watching the while every countenance,
and obliging every one to return the eager glance; and doing all this with such perfect mastery, and in such evident
good faith, as to secure undivided attention, when he did not,
as was often the case, awaken deeper emotions-the tears of
penitence, the thrill of conviction, the spasm of remorse, the
eager light, forning itself on the upturned countenance, of
the "joy that is: unspeakable and full of glory."
As a writer, he enjoyed more extensive and valuable
popularity than perhaps any man in his own body. His
works, consisting of papers printed in the;" Christian Ma



294                WILLIAM ANDERSON.
gazine," and occasional small volunes on religious subjects,
were read from   Maidenkirk to John o'Groat's, welcomed
in many an humble cottage as mlonthlym nessengers of gladness, and, besides passing through a multitude of impressions in this country, translated into Frenceh, Dutch, and
Russ.  Nor was their popularity to be wondered at, considering their unostentatious and pleasing merits.  They
were somewhat loosely and illogically composed; but so
easy in their style, so lucid in their meaning, so short in
their structure of sentence, so child-like and Bunyan-like in
their tone, so evidently the effusions of an earnest spirit, and
sprinkled so knackily with anecdote, and allusion, and verse,
and bits of historic lore, all steeped in genuine Gospel-savor,
that we can at once account why readers of all classes and
intellects perused them withpleasure and profit. They had
no pretension to acute argumentation, or original imagery,
or searching thought; but, full of Gospel-marrow and affectionate earnestness, won their way to thousands of pious
hearts, and liglted up a lowze of delight on many a cheek,
bending at once over the ingle-bleeze and the pleasant page
of Lemanus.  This was his favorite signature, consisting of
the letters of his Christian name reversed.
His death we do well remember, and fiequently roll over
with melancholy pleasure.  He had gone from Comrie to a
country hamlet, on a diet (as those occasions were then
called) of pastoral visitation. The good people had provided
a basket of sloes, knowing his partiality for them.  Of these
he ate largely, and had scarcely reached home till they affected iis system in the shape of severe inflammation. This was
on Wednesday, the 11th of October, 1826.  All Thursday
and Friday he was in violent anguish, absolutely shouting
for pain, expecting immediate dissolution, and giving advices to his family with all the earnestness of a dying man.
On Saturday there was a delusive pause in the tragedy; his
pains subsided, though the foundation of the disease was not
reached; and he spent the day reading in bed. It was a
quiet gray autumn day, and we see him still, self-propped on
his pillow, and with eager eye reading "Hervey's Letters,"
and the Bible.  On Sabbath the 15th the dark disease returned to his charge, and would now permit no farther delay.
Severe was the struggle, dire the tossings, deep the groans,




XVILLIAM[ ANDERSON.               295
of this strong man caught in the embrace of one stronger
than he.  The medical men did their utmost.  We remember seeing a basin of a father's blood, which they had drawn;
we remember overhearing a consultation among them, the
result of which was they could do nzo?zore; we remember the
sad silence with which they left the house; we remember the
entrance of members of the family, who had been summoned
from a distance to see him ere he died, comning in with red
eyes to swell the general grief; we remember his last exclamation to his nearest earthly relative-" You will be a widow, and a, poor widow!" and her look of calm, speechless
sorrow, like that of one seeing from the shore a friend rushing down a remorseless rapid, and his answering glance, expressing, long after he could not speak, a deep interest in her
he was leaving, as if even more than his wonted love wdre
glowing in his eye; we remember the awful hush which
reigned throughout the chamber till the presence of death
was authentically proclaimed, and the wild sobs which burst
out afterwards; we remember turning round friom the deathbed, and looking with a sick and strange emotion to the
golden autumn day, the stubble-fields, the lonely hills, the
solemn silence of the Sabbath, which seemed to lie in sympathy without; we remember our first feelings, dreary and
desolate beyond expression, on awakening the next morning,
and finding ourselvesfat/her ess; and a burst of wild grief at
the coffining, which shook our young being to its foundations; and of turning round, in our agony, and gazing
through a window northwards, and  praying for and alhnost
expecting to see his spirit appearing amid the still moonlight.`We need not record how that tumultuous grief gradually
subsided into a pensive recollection, seated in the heart as
much as in the memory, of his dear image-an image which
a thousand sunbeams, and showers, and shadows, and sorrows, and joys, have left uneffaced upon the soul-" It trembles, but it cannot pass away."
Samuel Gilfillan was a broad-minded, kind-hearted, and
thoroughly Christian  being.  To a greater extent than
almost any contemporary in his own church, he had swallowed formulas, forgotten points of distincticn, and fastened
on points of resemblance, between various bodies.  Add to
this a love of literature, then, as now, rare among Scottisb




296                WVILLIAMI ANDERSON.
dissenting ministers —a knowledge of many departments oi
the arts and sciences-an impetuous yet holy philanthropya generous, self-forgetting enthusiasm —a sympathy with the
poor, the neglected and the forgotten —the principles of a
"Whig and something more " —the head, heart, and life of
a man and a Christian, and you have the outline of LeZzmas.
The parish kirk, near where he lies, is rather a striking
object. It stands on a small knoll above the river Earn. It
is a whitewashed structure, and its churchyard  commands a
noble prospect. This churchyard, however, would be greatly
improved by a circle of trees around it; for although we do
not greatly like the modern style of taste in burying-places
-a taste transplainted from the country of Victor Hugo and
Voltaire-a taste which has converted graveyards into gardens, sought in vain to disguise death and his horrors, and
would allow Hervey, were he alive now, to carry on his M' Meditations on a Flower-Garden and on the Tombs" in the
same place, yet we do stand up for a diadem of trees as the
crown of the departed, for a living company over the congregation of the dead, for a speaking as the guardians of a silent
nultitude-their very murmur in the windc, and the ever-renewving green of their spring garniture, preaching better than a
thousand homilies the truth of resurrection, and returning to
the question, " Shall these dead live?" an emphatic and everlasting " Yea."  Would that Comrie kirkyard had its synod of
trees to whisper this over his dust, whose memory is still
cherished amid those past oral regions with an enthusiasm
which is attested by the beaming eye and kindling countenance with which his'name is uttered-of one who in all respects realized the poetical pictures of c" the good minister"
-of one to whom we feel in his sepulchre all the tenderness
of filial affection, and all the reverence of profound esteem
-of one who "l having turned many to righteousness, shall
shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars,
for ever and ever."
William  Anderson, like the author of this sketch, was
born and brought up under the roof and amiclid the influences
of a quiet coutry Dissentry    sseting   anse  with this difference,
tlihat his excellent father is still alive, and that we lost ours
while yet a boy. In Kilsyth, under the shadow of the Camp.l
sie Hills) Mr. Anderson first breathed the air of life.




WILLIAM ANDERSON.                297
Mr. Anderson is a man who has many eccentricities, but
all whose oddnesses are cognate with his nature, and do only
slenderly disguise it.  It is vain to object to the queerness
of the attitude or action by which the strong man levels you
to the dust. In'such a case, the smile of laughter might contend with the grin of death.  All Glasgow has felt and owned
in William Anderson the presence of a strong, simple-minded,
clear-visioned, and earnest man, at whom fools might laugh,
but whom cold men wondered at, ardent men admired, and
wise mnen understood.
The Germans were wont to say of Jean Paul Richter that
he was the ondly one. Among his class, connection, and contemporaries, William Anderson is the only one.  He stands
beside or collaterally-quietly, collectedly, and modestly
himself. Nor is he a mere made original, a modern antique;
he is one through whose mind all things and thoughts, as they'
pass, receive a distinct and peculiar tinge, just as light flowing through a painted window accomplishes the prophecy of
the medium, and becomes something finer than itself.  Be
it that some say that his mind is bended, it is no bend sinister-that his brain is crackced, it is neither the crack of
dzZcecdonz nor of doom —save to his opponents.
William Anderson possesses the rare quality of power.
If he does not macke) nor seek to make, he moves, often without seeking to move. There is sometimes a stormy force
about him, which seems superfluous whbnever you witness
the calm of his better and higher manner, which seems to
fold around his audience as completely, irresistibly, and tenderly as the blue sky of spring over the mountains and the
clouds. Artistic polish or beauty is not often his, but there
shines out not unfrequently a stranger and a rarer beauty,
that of holiness, from his pages. Something of the sacred
fervor, and boldness, and fierceness of the ancient Hebrew
mind breathes and burns about him. He has more of the
vehemence of the Baptist than of the charity and mildness
of the new dispensation, save ever and except when childcren
are concerned. Then the old love, which shone in the eye of
the Saviour as he said, " Suffer the little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not," sparkles in his; and lo! it is one
weaned child discoursing to other weaned children, and from
the mouths of babes and sucklings seeking to perfect praise.
13.




298                WrILLIAM ANDERSON.
WThen we speak of Anderson as having more of the old
than of the new dispensation, we refer not so much to his
views as to his spirit. His views are singularly wide and
catholic, so far as the dark and disputed questions in theology are concerned.  His heart, too, is warm and generous to
a degree.  But somehow or other, whether owing to the intense purity of his nature, or to the fervor of his temperament, he has fallen at times into outrageous and violent extremes of abuse and invective against those unfortunate men
who have been led astray by error or vice, particularly if
they have published the results of their perverted powers,
and has not unfrequently, instead of leaving them and their
sins in the hands of their "'Father and their God," burst
across the limits of the world, anticipated their dooms, and
sought to stir into fiercer energy the surge of Almighty vengeance, as if it were slow, sleepy, and reluctant in its movements.  He loves, as Charles Lamb says of Southey, " to
paint a given king in bliss, and a given chamberlain. in torment, even to the eternizing of a cast of the eye in the latter;" loves to stand by the burning bedsteads of Voltaire,
Volney, Rousseau, Burns, and Byron, and interpret the wild
Babel of their confused blasphemies and piercing lamentations, forming out of the vague clamors the treble,' tenor,
counter, and bass of the music of hell. Now, this you might
have expected in a fierce inquisitor, forgiven in the worn and
desperate Dante, pitied in the narrow and stung Southey;
but in the robust, liberal, and kind-hearted William Anderson, you, or at least we, cannot account for and cannot away
with.
Let us grant, however, that in thus dealing round damnation, he is quite impartial.  Southey's "Vision of Judgment" is just a monstrous binding up of the " Court Calendar"' with the Book of Life.  Our hero does not go over the
"IDirectory" of his city, and jot down his candidates for destruction or salvation, according to their streets or squares.
He does not spare the rich transgressor for his wealth, nor
the poor sinner for his poverty. Much as he adores genius,
he will not permit its painted screen to stand, when it would
shade the fierceness of the unquenchable fire —he hurls it
down straightway.  Since Edward Irving died, there has
not been pouring from any pulpit such a stream  of purged




WVILLIAM3 ANDERSON.                299
perd'ztiol.  "It is fire and brimstone fropez the Lord out oof
heave2.1"  Still we much prefer, what Ar. Anderson also
often distils upon his hearers, the soft-dropping dew of the
Gospel Hermon.
In many points, AndersOn bears a resemblance to Edward Irving. His rich scripturality of quotation, his antique
cast of phraseology, his long unmeasured sentences, his personal appeals, his sudden short bursts of eloquence, his fearless and sometimes fierce spirit blended with much gentleness, his mixture of ccjolerie and real simplicity, his occasional'
wildness, his sincere and burning enthusiasm, not to speak
of his millennial views, render him a striking though smaller
similitude of that "Shakspeare of preachers"-that embodied
flame of meteoric fire, who, like the wondrouts tent or temple
of electric light we saw lately suspended in the sky, hung,
broadened, fluctuated, shivered, faded, went out in darkness
-the pride, wonder, and terror of our ecclesiastical heavens.
One quality Mr. Anderson possesses, the want of which
in Irving was pernicious-we mean, strong manly common
sense.  An old divine was wont to say, that if you wanted
learning-if you wanted even the grace of God-if you
wanted any thing else, in short, you might get it; but if you
want common sense, you will never get it.  The most splendid endowments do not compensate for its want; the most
extensive and bitter experience does not communicate it.
This }9ockcet-nlcp of man Mr. Anderson always carries about
with him; and next to the inestimable divine chart, which
no man values more, it has been his most valuable directory,
and has saved him harmless where many have sunk to ruin,
either been inflated and burst by vanity, or stiffened into
salt statues of pride, or gone down the' steep places of semispiritual semi-sensual destruction.  In reading Mr. Anderson's works, and particularly his volume of sermons issued. a
few years ago, their main characteristic appears to: be akin to
this-vigorous, independent, yet cautious judgment.  The
volume contains in it, besides many artistic merits and literary
beauties, some highly finished passages,?both of reasoning, of
fancy, of sarcasm, and of practical. appeal.  There is, for example, a description of the hypocrite, which might have
come from  Foster's pen.  Passages of similar power has he
sprinkled throughout his "Good Works," on the "Duty of
OfJIIBIL~ UIIM~ll~b  LI~WVW.~IVinI




Soo               WILLIAsM ANDERSON.
loving God," on the " Evil of Sin." and on the " Reunion
of Christian Friends in the Heavenly Worlcl."  From
this last, throughout a piece of fine fancy and feeling, we
quote the following touch of real genius: —'- Many a mother
will not find her son in heaven, and yet the Saviour will
make her happy; there can be no grief in the Paradise of
God, no not even for a perished son. She could not now
endure him, and Christ will bring her some other woman's
child, who has been seeking for his mnother in vain, and He
will say,'Woman behold thy son,' and to him,'Behold thy
mother,' and the wounds of the hearts of both will be
healed." Nothing can be a simpler, yet nothing a finer
application of our Saviour's dying words.
We think, indeed, that if Mr. Anderson, in his published
works, had been less of a controversialist, and more of an
utterer of sweet, musical, and poetical thoughts, such as this
we have now quoted, his fame as a writer had been greater
than it is. How soon polemical writings die! No one seeks
to preserve them, after a certain date, any more than to prop
up a fallen thistle or thorn; but let a flower or a hedge of
roses begin to totter to its fall, every passing beggar will become its patron, and discover that there is in his heart some
dim instinct of beauty unknown even to himself. Thus
Clark's ca priori argument (supposing its credit to fall) would
fall amid utter silence, while an attack on the " Romeo and
Juliet" of Shakspeare would make thousands eloquent,
whose very tongues had been problematical before.  Many,
even of IProtestants would mourn less the want of Chillingworth's work than that of some of the sublime hymns of the
Catholic Litany, such as the Dies INre; and so we would
cheerfully have wanted some of Mr. Anderson's defences
against those who thought him heterodox on the points of
the ":organ" and the "personal reign," rather than those
numerous tender and beautiful passages, which illustrate in
an uncommon way points common to all Christians.
Mr. Anderson, as a writer, is noted for nerve, contempt
of conventionalities, and daring selection of all the words,
thoughts, and images which will serve his purpose, culled
be they from whatever quarter-from earth, air, sea, heaven,
or that "other place."  He knows that a true thought, like
a true prism, will reflect light of all kinds and from every




WILLIAM ANDERSON.                  301
quarter.  You occasionally find him r'ecollecting but never
imitating other writers.  They are in, but not on and over
his eye.  Strong and startling as he is sometimes in his expressions, he is seldom wrong in his conclusions.  We hear
of writers" Ne'er so sure our favor to create,
As when they tread the brink of all we hate."
Mr. Anderson is one of this class.  He drives his chariot
along the brink of a whole chain of precipices, with a success
as perfect as the way is perilous.  He seems to love that
border-land between truth and error.  As you are about to
call him an Arminian, he turns round and throws a blasnk of
Calvinism in your face; as you are about to charge him with
leaning to " universal salvation," he so paints perdition that
you seem to hear the roar of its sleepless fires, and the tossing of the victims on the unmade beds of despair.  He does
not consider himself bound to reconcile apparently opposite
truths, though he is bound to believe both.  fIe cannot cast
a bridge between Ayr and Arran, but he knows that some
god or giant yet may.
Mr. Anderson, as a preacher, has a great variety of styles
and manners. He can be, and is, either practical or profound-either minute or abstract-either too plain to be
pleasant, or too rich and powerful to be plain-either calm
or vehement —either commonplace or original.  We assisted
him lately, and were much interested in the whole services
of the day.  His congregation is very large, and is almostthanks to him-the best singing congregation in Scotland.
It was thrilling, almost to the sublime, to hear their morning
psalm. His prayers were minute, comprehensive, and earnest; his sermon, though not in his highest vein, was interesting anti forcible. But the most striking part was his table,
service. During the consecration prayers he holds the elements in his hand.  While holding the cup and praying for
the coming of Christ-dark, solemn, swarthy as he stoodhe reminded us of the "Kf ingm's cup-bearer."  The large assembly seemed eating and drinking consciously under the
shadow of the coming chariot; and if the morning psalm approached the sublime, the evening anthem, sung by the
whole congregation standing, exceeded it, and rose to the
sublime of dreams, when our visicn of the night is heaven.




8 02               WILLIAMI ANDERSON.
Mr. Anderson's delivery does not add at all to the impression of his matter.  It is rather slow and drawling; his
accent and pronunciation are of Kilsyth in the last century;
his tone is rather nasal, his gesture ungraceful.  WVhen he'
rises, however, into his true power, all this is forgotten in
the animation, the forceful bursts, the impassioned truth of
a genuine natural orator. The air of eld, too, which breathes
around his style, language, appearance, and address, adds a
tart peculiarity to the whole, and you are carried back
to the days of Cameron and Renwick.  What a hill-preacher
would he have made, as the enemy was coming up, or
as a thunder-storm was darkening over the heads of the
assembly!
As a public and platform man, William Anderson exerts
great power in Glasgow.  Every one believes him  sincere,
and every one knows him to be one of the ablest, readiest,
and raciest of speakers.  Here, too, all his strength,' impetuosity, and earnestness, are under'the control of discretion_
and sound judgment.  His appearance is singular, if not
fine. His features are plain, his face is slightly marked with
the small-pox, his complexion is dark, but his eye, from its
expression of blended sagacity and benevolence, redeems the
whole. In private he is homely, social, kindly, full of matter, especially of anecdote and incident illustrative of life
and character-proner to praise than blame  and, with all
his sagacity, simple as a child.  Music and infancy are the
two mild hobbies he loves to ride, and long may he ride
them! Like many other men of mark, he has had to fight
his way.  He was long a wonder unto many.  The -foolish
laughed at, the malignant defamed, the hypercritical underrated him, and from his peers he received little sympathy
or support. But, like all the brave, he struggled on, and
was rewarded with victory.  His popularity, at first excited
by the eccentricities, was at last allowed calmly to rest on
the excellence of his preaching and character.  "Those who
came to laugh remained to pray," personal and party prejudice
was gradually subdued, his oddities mellowed and softened
with time, and we may now as safely as we can conscientiously declare, that the United Presbyterian Church, with
all its host of talented men, possesses scarcely one who
equals in genius, and very few who surpass in talent, plain,
strong, -gifted William Anderson.




LEIGH HUNT.                    303
We may just add that Mr. Anderson, although not distinguished for pastoral visitation, is most exemplary in waiting on the sick-bed.  We heard recently a rather ~amusing
anecdote of him.  Some person called, complaining that he
had been eighteen years a member of his congregation and
had never been visited by his minister.' You should be
very thankful,' replied'[Mr. Anderson.  "How that, sir l"
rejoined MIr. B.  " I never visit any but those in whose
houses God has entered by alffliction.  It seems you have
been eighteen years without affliction in your family; few
are so highly privileged.  I trust other eighteen years may
elapse ere I be in your house, sir.  Good morning, Mr. B."
So may all querulous Bs or blockheads be treated!~
LEIGH HUNT.
THE present state of poetry is a subject on which a great
deal of nonsense has been written, and on which a greater
deal still of nonsense is every day spoken.  "We have no
poets now-a-days," is the chatter at many a tea-table-a
chatter which a glance at a few of the present names " flamning on the forehead "1 of our literary sky, is enough to confute.
Beside such veterans as Wordsworth, Wilson, Croly, Montgoeiery, and our present subject, Leigh Hunt, who are now
rather honorary than active members of the corporation of
Apollo, there are numerous aspirants of the laurel, of whom
high hopes may be entertained.  There is especially a little
cluster of earnest poets whom we are at all times delighted
to honor, and some of whoml we may now briefly charaoterize,
as an introduction not inappropriate to a notice of one who
long ago, and in days darker than these, set them a good
example, and who then stood almost singular in adding the
spirit of the martyr to the accomplishments of the muses'
son.
~ Mr. Anderson is just issuing a volume on "Regeneration," which
we expect to be quite worthy of him.




IS04                   LEIGH HUNT.
We may name, then, Longfellow, Emlerson, Bailey, Tennyson, and the Brownings, as the Dii 1ziajoriutm Genzttum of this
modern class.
We name first the American poet, Longfellow. We know
nothing whatever of his theoretical creed, but we are not
blind to the marks of sincerity and of high-mlinded aspiration which pervade his poetry.   He feels what Foster
uniformly forgets or denies, the worth of man.  He looks
at the ruins of the human soul in a certain rich moonlight
which softens many an asperity, fills up'many a chasm,
svmmetrizes many a disproportion, and sheds a soft golden
film, a gossamer of the night, over the whole. His eye, too,
is anointed to see innumerable fine and fairy hands repairing
the desolation, as well as beautifying its decay. "It is a little
thing to be a man."  Yes, comparativly it is; but whence
springs the smallness?  Surely from  the greatness of the
height whence we have fallen, and to which we are invited
to aspire. Life and man, like the Jura in the presence of
Mont Blanc, dwindle before a greater, which greater in this
case is the grandeur of man's ideal of himself and of God.
It is little to be, it is far less to doubt of man. Spring but
this one leak, and what a black flood of skepticism rushes in
-death is regarded with the avidity of a suicide, and it is
well if the Foster does not darken into the Swift.
Hear Longfellow:"Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our being's destined way;
But to live that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day."
And again:
"Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal;'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul."
Such manly lines, rising clear, loud, and bold, like the notes
of Chanticleer, dissipate a thousand dismal dreams and terrors of the night. They are not the day, but they are its
promise.  What we miss in Longfellow is a decided acknow
edgment of the realization which such sentiments as his
find in Christianity.  His verses are torn from their proper




LEIGH HUNT.                   305
Christian context.  Now, a few fresh leaves snapped from
the bough may tell that spring has come, but we prefer the
full tidings of the round tree itself.
In Enmerson we find, aimid more power, originality, and
perhaps equal sincerity, a more palpably vital defect. What
the "hope set before' him in his melancholy gospel is we
cannot tell.  In his " Threnody" he laments most sweetly
and plaintively the loss of a favorite son, and hints at
some obscure and mystic source of consolation, described
in the words, that his child is "Lost in God, in Godhead
found!' Alas! can he allow  his child, with his glorious
personality, to slide away into a vague, vast ocean, even as
his own dreams among the "blackberry vines" did leave
his soul, with no trace behind?  Can he part with a son as
with a thought?  Can he believe that the soul which, as it
looked through the "blue summer" of his child's eyes,
seemed to "span the mystic gulf'tween God and man,"
is henceforth an unconscious nonentity, somewhere in the
eternal spaces, but with no spring of return to him, and no
prospect of encounter with him, save in the cold commerce
of the waves of the Pantheistic deep?  Or if he has, apart
from this dreary dream, a principle of hope and comfort, is
there no word in the ample tongue of Milton and Coleridge that can exlpress this hope? and if there be, why does
lie delay to inform  us what we are to substitute for the
simple declaration, " Them that sleep in Jesus shall the
Lord bring with him?"' Indeed, over all Emerson's poels,
and over those of many of his followers, there hangs a deep
gloom.  His fun, when he attempts to be humorous, is dull
and feeble.  It is the drone of the'"humble bee," which is
quite as melancholy as it is mirthful.  He is never so eloquent as when expressing the feelings of one who, from the
pursuits of ambition, and the company of men, has sought a
sad solace in Nature, which yet without a God can only
glare and glitter about his eye and imagination, but not
touch his heart.  His personal purity, which is that of a
guarded dewdrop-has saved him from many pains and penalties; but we do think that it is the subtlety which so
strangely mingles with the simplicity of his nature, like the
eye of the basilisk looking oat from the silvery plumage of
the dove, which has veiled from many the fact that he is tzot
a happ2y mfnan.




O0G                   LEIG I-IHUNT.
No wonder although, according to a CERTAIN rumor,
Emerson does not fully sympathize with Bailey of' Festus."
Now can he?  HI-ow can a man who manages his misery so
artfully that the deep sear looks like a badge of honor upon
his bosom —who can regulate, turn, and wind his. madness
like a watch —sympathize with one who, with the power and
precipitation of a thunder-shower, expresses his whole soul
to the world in tumultuous verse?  How stiff and measured
the extravagances (ntzadcness prepenzse) of Emerson look beside Bailey's unpremeditated hallelujahs! In Emerson you
hear a man crying'c down"  to the idea of a personal deity,
which is for ever rising in his truly poetical heart; to Bailey
the universe is but a reflector for the face of a. Saviour andi
God. In Emerson you find a nature, originally poetic and
even devout, chilled and strangled by the frost of an imperfect philosophy (as though an eagle on his way to the sun
were killed by the cold of our upper atmosphere); in " Festus " faith is the philosophy, hope is the science, and love
the logic of the strain. In Emerson's verse, truth lurks like
a guilty thing in single lines, which are rather pinfolds than
panoramas; Bailey's broad nature luxuriates in long, interlinked, and magnificent passages, which rise and rise till no
wing short of that of imagination can reach and rest upon
their summit.
Leaving comparisons, we may simply say that, in the two
qualities of impulse and earnestness, we have seldom read a
work to be compared with "F estus."  We care nothing for
its theory-admit its many and monstrous faults-are not
careful to answer the charge of imitation in its plan-but
the vigor of individual thought, the amplitude of general
view, and wealth of imagery —the rough strength of language,
and, above all, the deep, sparkling, " blood-power of spirit,"
so religious and so fervidly sincere, have compelled like a
captive, our at first unwilling admiration.  It now resounds
in our ears like the Pan-pipe of a belated Titan from his
lonely rock, at once bewailing the past, and calling, in no
measured strains, for the advent of the future.
Of Browning, Mrs. Browning, and -Tennyson, we need
hardly speak, so well are they known and so thoroughly appreciated by the lovers of poetry in Britain.  Tennyson of
the three. is the most purely poetical, and perhaps the least




LEIGH HUNT.                   307
prophetic in spirit or purpose. I-He may be compared to
Ariel in the: Tempest."  Ariel can pluck up cedars by the
roots, but prefers swinging in the blossom which hangs from
the bough. Hle can back and bridle the fiery steed of the
lightning, but prefers sucking in time and tune with the
sucking bee.  He can " flame amazement" over a crowded
ship, but would rather fly on the bat's back in the still evenirgs of summer.  From  tasks at once mighty and delicate,
requiring both infinite power and infinite tact, he springs
gladly to the more congenial pursuits of an eternity of busy
and merry idleness.  So Tennyson,  with powers which, as
Carlyle once said, "might move the world," condescends
sometimes to play tricks, to sing snatches, to waver in beautiful gyrations, like the down of the thistle, instead of going
straight to his mark, like an arrow or a thunderbolt.  In
both the Brownings, but especially in the lady, we find a
more powerful and condensed purpose, united to imagination
of almost equal brilliance.  There is in her no dallying with
her theme-no drawing back from her pictures, as a painter
does to try the effect-no " staying her thunder in midvolley." She is in evident and deep earnest. Each theme
sits before her, as a ghost might be supposed to sit before- a
limner-at once shuddering and admiring; and you fancy
her, at the close, falling back exhausted and trembling, after
her faculties had been tasked to their utmost in that unearthly
sitting.  Seldom has woman had a higher or more masculine
message to deliver.  Yet sorrow hovers over the sublimity
of her strains, "like the soft shadow of an angel's wing,"
and the knowledge she has gained, and the power of moving
us she exerts, have been bought at their weight, not in gold,
but in fire.
It is pleasant, in some moods, to pass from these poets,
with their passionate, or fierce, or heroic attitudes, to the
blended ease and earnestness of Leigh Hunt. He stands
among them like an oak amidst the surrounding pines, or
birches, or sensitive plants, less tremulous, dark, drooping,
or defiant, to every breath of heaven, but greener, ampler,
calmer, albeit ready always to resist strong aggression, as
well as to shade unassuming merit.  If they aspire to the
rank of prophets, he is a patriarch, seated and' uttering
e~'ntle yet profound responses at his tent-door.




308                   LEIGH HUNT.
The highest compliment ever paid to Hunt is, perhaps,
that of Byron, who, after a furious and vulgar diatribe
against him, owns him to be a "' good man." This may seem
poor praise, but a cold shower-bath from Hecla were less
astonishing than the acknowledgment of any human virtue
from the mouth of a man who had set himself elaborately
to erase each vestige of goodness from his own character,
and had well nigh succeeded-who had nearly completed an
exchange between his heart and the "nether millstone,"and whose praises of all but his personal friends came forth
rare and reluctant, as do the audible groans of his proud
spirit.  Hunt's goodness and talent he always admittedand with regard to the charge of vulgarity, which now, at
this distance of time, is the vulgar person of tlhe two 2
Hunt's vulgarity is that of circumstances and education,
Byron's was ingrained in his nature-and neither the Highlands, with their grandeur, nor Holland House, with its varied
and brilliant converse, nor Italy, with the reclzechbe society of
its better classes, were able to erase the original stamp of the
degraded and blackguard lord, which had been transmitted
from generations downwards, till it was fortunate in his
countenance to meet and contend with the blaze of genius
and the pale impress of coming death.
In our notion, Thomas Macaulay is an infinitely more
vulgar person than Leigh Hunt or even Lord Byron —if
vulgarity mean the want of all those qualities which go to
constitute a gentleman.  Our readers, in illustration of this,
may take the following anecdote, which we know to be
correct.  A writer who had, some year or two.aago, lrather
severely, although with a friendly feeling, criticised Macaulay
in one of our leading periodicals, chanced to read Croker's
assault upon his "History of England " in the " Quarterly."
Struck with its unfairness and with the anbimes which pervaded it, lie wrote Mr. Macaulay a note, couched in the most
respectful terms, not retracting his former statements, but
expressing a manly sympathy with him under an unjust
attack. He was not a little surprised to receive an extremnely
harsh and contemptuous reply, in which the Edinburgh ex.
member told his correspondent that he cared neither for his
blame nor his praise. Had the writer been a clamorous
petitioner for his pelf or his praise-had he approached him




LEIGH HUNT.                   309
in an unfriendly guise, and with unfriendly language, or had
he been base enough to have flattered the nman whom he had
criticised, he could have accounted for such treatment; as it
was, he was forced to regard it as a breach of the laws of common courtesy, as a specimen of the wretched airs of aristocracy
which upstarts often assume-as the action of a coxcomb,
not a gentleman-and we understand told the historian so
in language which he is not likely soon to forget or to forgive.  Leigh Hunt is incapable, both from  geniality and
gentlemanly feeling, of such conduct as this.  He always
dips his pen in a reservoir compounded of warm blood and
of the milk of human kindness.  This element, indeed,
bathes his whole being and person. It swims in his restless
eye-it throbs in his hot hand-it. and not age's winter, seems
to have whitened his locks-it gushes out in the jets and
sparkles of his conversation, which is yet evidently only the
relic of what it was in earlier times-and it is the mild or
mirthful inspiration of his various writings.
Had Huint been a less sincere and simple-minded person
than he has been, he might, we think, have been quite as popular a writer as Tholmas Moore.  He has the chamlcpagne
qualities of that writer, without, indeed, so many or such
brilliant bubbles of wit and fancy upon the top-and has a
world more of body, solidity, and truth. It is his assuming
the fairy shape, that has made some (ourselves at one time
included) to underrate his powers. But why did he assume
i'?  Why did he, like the devils in Milton, shrink his stature to gain admission to the halls of Pandemonium? WVhy
did he r ot rather, in dignified humility, wait without as ke
was till the great main door was opened, and till in full size
and panoply he entered in, and sat down a giant among
giants, a god amidst gods?  In such figured language we
convey our notion at once of Hunt's strength and weakness.
IIe has been, partly owing to circumstances, and partly to
himself, little other than a glorious trifler.  He has smiled,
or lounged, or teased, or translated, away faculties which,
with proper concentration and a perpetual view toward one
single object, had been incalculably beneficial to the general
progress of literature and of man.
Moore again seems made for trifling.  It is his element.
The window pane being his world, may we not call him the




310                   LEIGH HIUNT.
fly?  His love is skin-deep; his anger, too, is a mere itch
on the surface; his patriotism is easy, beginning and ending
at the piano; his friendship all oozes out in a memoir of his
departed friend; his hatred is exhausted in a single satire;
and even his melody, while suiting the ivory keys of Lady
Blessington's harpsichord, shrinks from the full diapason of
the organ or the terrible unity of the fife; he has no powers
which earnestness would much care to challenge as her own.
Hunt, on the contrary, has put martial faculties upon perpetual parade-they have walked to and fro to beautiful music,
but they have rarely mounted the breach, or even seen the
enemy.  This has not sprung either from the want of power
or of courage; but from a kind of amiable ease of temperament, and, perhaps, also from  a defect of constitutional
stamina. A soul of fire has been yoked to a nervous and
feeble constitution.
We can hardly charge the author of forty volumes with
having written little, but, perhaps there is not one among
all those volumes to which you can point as entirely worthy,
and fully reflective, of the powers which are visible in all.
Throughout them all you have a beautiful diffusion —over
many of them hangs a certain weary languor-in some you are
saluted with an explosion of wit like the crackers of a birthnight-and the others are full of a pensive poetry, tremulous
with sentiment, and starred with the strangest and most expressive epithets. Heart, geniality, humanity, and genius
pervade the whole.
Altogether, we cannot but look upon Hunt's present position as an enviable and fortunate one. IHe is in the evening of his days, but at evening time it is light with him; he
has outlived many a struggle; he has survived a storm in
which many larger ships were wrecked; he has not now a
single enemy; his name is a household word throughout the
world; his fame is dear to every lover of poetry and of liberty; the government of his country has appreciated and
rewarded his services. Whatever of the fierce or bitter circumstances had infused into his mind has now been extracted. Above all, milder and juster views of Christianity, its
claims and character, seem  entering his mind.  We will
not, therefore, close by wishing him happiness-it is his, we




TI-tO1TIAS MIOORE.                311
trust, already —but by wishing him  long life to enjoy the
meek and bright sunset of his chequered and troublesome
day.*
THOMAS MOORE.
To be the poet pair excellence of Ireland, the cleverest man
in the eleverest nation in the world, is to hold no mean posi
tion, and that position we claim for Thomas Moore.  We do
not of course mean that he is by many degrees the greatest
poet at present alive; but for sparkle, wit, and biilliance, his
country's qualities, he is unsurpassed.  The bard of the
butterflies, he is restless, gay, and gorgeous as the beautiful
creatures he delights to depict.  It would require his own
style adequately to describe itself.  Puck putting a girdle
round about the globe in forty minutes-Ariel doing his
spiriting gently-the Scotch fairy footing it in the moonlight,
the stillness of which seems intended to set off the lively and
aerial motion-any of these figures may faintly express to us
the elegant activities of Moore's mind and fancy.  We are
never able to disconnect from  his idea that of minuteness.
Does he play in the " plighted clouds?"  It is as a " creature
of the element," as tiny as he is tricksy.. Does he flutter in
the sunbeam? It is as a bright mote. Does he hover over,he form  and face of beauty?  It is as a sylph-like spriite,
his little heart surcharged and his small wings trembling
with passion.  Does be ever enter on a darker and more
daring flight? It is still rather the flight of a fire-fly than
of a meteor or a comet.  Does he assail powers and potentates?  It is with a sting rather than a spear-a sting small,
sharp, bright, and deadly.
Thomas Moore is a poet by temperament, and by intelleet a wit.  He has the warmth and the fancy of the poet,
X We owe our readers an apology for the brief notices this article
contains of authors elsewhere in the book characterized at large. They
belonged to the article, and we could not prevail on ourselves to erase
them.




312                 THOMAS MOORE.




TIHOMIAS MOORE.                  313
It were needless to dilate upon the beauties which he has
scattered around him in this unprofitable career. His fancy
is prodigious in quantity and variety, and is as elegant as it
is abundant.  Images dance down about us like hailstones,
illustrations breathlessly run after outrun illustrations, fine
and delicate shades melt into otifers still finer and more delicate, and often the general effect of his verse is like that of
a large tree alive with bees, where a thousand sweet and minute tones are mingled in one hum  of harmony.  Add to
this his free flow of exquisite versification, the richness of his
luscious descriptions, the tenderness of mlany of his pictures,
and the sunny glow, as of eastern day, which colors the
whole, and you have the leading features of his poetical idiosyncrasy.
But it is as a wit and a satirist that Moore must survive.
There is no " horse play in his raillery." It is as delicate as
it is deadly. He carves his foenman as a "' dish fit for the
gods; not hews him as a carcass meet for hounds."  Such a
gay gladiator, such a smiling murderer as he is  How small
his weapon-how elegant his flourishes-how light but sinewy his arm —and how soon is the blow given-the deed
done-the victim prostrate   His strokes are so keen that
ere you have felt them you have found death.  IHe is an
aristocratic satirist not only in the objects but in the manner of his attack.  Coarse game would not feel that fine
tremulous edge by which he dissects his highbred and sensitive foes to the quick.  We notice, too, in his sarcastic vein,
and this very probably explains its superiority, a much deeper and heartier earnestness.  When he means to be serious
he trifles, when he trifles it is that he is most sincere.  His
work is play, his play is work.  All his political feeling-all
the moral indignation he possesses-all the hatred which as
an Irishman and a gentleman he entertains for insincerity,
humbug, and selfishness in high places-come out through
the veil of his witty and elegant verse.  Of a great satirist,
only one element seems wanting in Moore, namely, that cool
concentrated malignity which inspires Juvenal and Junius.
He hates, they loathe.  He tickles his opponent to death,
they tear him to pieces. His arrows are polishedl, theirs are
poisoned.   his malice is that of a man, theirs is that of a
demon.  His wish is to gain a great end over the bodies of
14




314                  THIlOiIAS MOOR00.
his antagonists, their sole object is to destroy or blacken the
persons of their foes. His is a public and gallant rencounter,
theirs a sullen and solitary assassination.
Moore may be regarded under the four phases of an am
atory poet, a narrative poet, a satirical poet, and a prose wri
ter.  As an amatory poet lie assumed, every one knows, the
nonz-cde-tgzer're of Tommy Little, and as such do not his merits and demerits live in the verse of Byron and in the prost
of Jeffrey?  These poems, lively, gay, shallow, meretricious,
were the sins of youth; they were not, like "]Don Juan,"
the deliberate abominations of guilty and hardened manhood, Their object was to crown vice, but not to deny the
existence of virtue.  They were unjustifiably warm in their
tone and coloring, but they did not seek to pollute the human heart itself.  It was reserved for a mightier and darker
spirit to make the desperate and infernal attempt, and to
include in one;" wide waft " of scorn and disbelief the existence of faithfulness in man and of innocence in. woman.
Little's lyrics, too, were neutralized by their general feebleness; they were pretty, but wanted body, unity, point, and
power.  Consequently, while they captivated idle lads and
lovesick misses, they did comparatively little injury.  It is
indeed ludicrous, looking back through the vista of forty
years, and thinking of the dire puddle and pother which
such tiny transgressions produced among the critics and
moralists of the time; they seem  actually to have dreamed
that the morality of Britain, which had survived the dramatists of Queen Elizabeth's day, the fouler fry of Charles
II's playwrights, the novels of Fielding and Smollett, the
numerous importations of iniquity from the Continent, was
to fall below a few madrigals and double-entendres.  No,
like " dew-drops from the lion's mane," it shook them off, and
pursued its way without impediment or pause.  Whatever
mischief was intended, little we are sure was done.
As a narrative poet, Moore aimed at higher things, and,
so far as praise and popularity went, with triumphant success.  His "Lalla IRookh" came forth amid a humn of general
expectation.  It was rumored that he had written a great
epic poem; that Catullus had matured into Homer.  These
expectations were too sanguine to be realized. It was soon
found that "Lalla -Rookh" was no epic-was not a great




THOLTAS MOORPE.                 315
poem at all-that it was only a short series of Oriental tales,
connected by a slight but exquisite framework.  Catullus,
though stripped of many of his voluptuous graces, and much
of his false and florid taste, remained Catullus still. And
the greatest admirer of the splendid diction, the airy verse,
the melodramatic incident, the lavish fancy of the poem,
conld not but say, if the comparison. came upon his mind
at all-" Ye critics, say how poor was this to HRomer's style!"
The unity, the compactness, the interest growing to a climax,
the heroic story, the bare and grand simplicity of style-all
the qualities we expect in the epic, were wanting in " Lalla
Rookh."  It was not so much a poem, indeed, as a rhymed
romance.  Still its popularity was instant and boundless. If
it did not become a great, still, steadfast luminary in the
heaven of song, it flashed before the eye of the world brief,
beautiful, gorgeous, and frailA tearless rainbow, such as span
The unclouded skies of Peristan."
And even yet, after the lapse of twenty years, there are
many who, admiring the fine moral of "Paradise and the
Peri," or melted by the delicate pathos of the "Fireworshippers,". own the soft seductions of "Lalla RIookh," and
in their hearts, if not in their understandings, prefer it to
the chaster and more powerful poetry of the age.
The "Loves of the Angels" was a bolder but not a
more successful flight.  It was a tale of the " Arabian heaven;" and there is nothing certainly, in these wondrous
"thousand and one nights," more rich, beautiful, and dreamlike in its imagination and pathos, as in those impassioned
stories.  But it was only a castle in the clouds after allone of those brilliant but fading pomps which the eye of the
young dreamer sees "for ever flushing round a summer's
sky." Its angels were mere winged dolls compared to the
"celestial ardors"' whom Milton has portrayed, or even to
those proud and impassioned beings whom Byron has drawn.
In fact, the poem was unfortunate in appearing about the
same time with Byron's'" Heaven and Earth," which many
besides us consider his finest production as a piece of art.
Mere atoms of the rainbow fluttering round were the pinions
of Moore's angels compared to the mighty wings of those




316                 TI-IOMAS MOORE.
burning ones who came down over Ararat, drawn by the
loadstars which shone in the eyes of the "daughters of
men.' and for which, without a sigh, they "lost eternity."
And what comparison between the female characters in the
one poem and the two whom we see in the other, waiting
with uplifted eyes and clasped hands for the descent of their
celestial lovers, like angels for the advent of angels? Aynd
what scene in Moore can be named beside the deluge in
Byron; with the gloomy silence of suspense which precedes
it-the earnest whispers heard among the hills at dead of
night, which tell of its coming-the waters rising solemnly
to their work of judgment, as if conscious of its justice and
grandeur-the cries heard of despair, cf fury, of blasphemy,
as if the poet himself were drowning in the surge-the milder
and softer wail of resignation mingling with the sterner exclamations-the ark in the distance-the lost angels clasping their lost loves, and ascending with them from the doom
of the waters to what we feel and know must be a direr
doom 2
We have spoken already of Moore's character as a witty
poet, and need only now refer to the titles of his principal
humorous compositions, such as the "Fudge Family in
Paris;" the " Twopenny Post-Bag;" "Cash, Corn Currency,
and Catholics," &c. They constitute a perfect gallery of fun
without ferocity, without indecency, and without more malice
than serves to give them poignancy and point.
From Moore's " Life of Sheridan" we might almost fancy
that, though he had lisped in numbers, and early obtained
a perfect command of the language and versification of
poetry, yet that he was only beginning, or had but recently
begun to write prose. The juvenility, the immaturity, the
false glare, the load of useless figure, the ambition and effort
of that production, are amazing in such a man at such an
age. It contains, of course, much fine and forcible writing;
but even Sheridan himself, in his most ornate and adventurous prose, which was invariably his worst, is never more
unsuccessful than is sometimes his biographer.  Perhaps it
was but fitting that the life of such a heartless, faithless,
though brilliant charlatan, should be written in a style of
elaborate falsetto and fudge.
We have a very different opinion indeed of his "Life of




THOMAS MOORE.                    317
Byron."  It is not, we fear, a faithful or an honest record
of that miserable and guilty mistake-the life of Byron.
We have heard that Dr. MacGinn, by no means a squeamish
man, who was at first employed by Murray to write his
biography, and had the materials put into his hands, refused, shrinking back disgusted at the masses of falsehood,
treachery, heartlessness, malignity, and pollution which they
revealed. The same materials were submitted to Moore, and
from them he has constructed an image of his hero, bearing,
we suspect, as correct a resemblance to his character as
the ideal busts which abound do to his face. When will
biographers learn that their business, their sole business, is
to tell the truth or to be silent? How long will the public
continue to be deceived by such gilded falsehoods as form
the staple of obituaries and memoirs? It is high time that
such were confined to the corners of newspapers and of
churchyards.  We like Moore's "Byron," not for its subject
or its moral tone, but solely for its literary execution.  It is
written throughout in a clear, chaste, dignified and manly
manner; the criticism it contains is eloquent and discriminating, and the friendship it discovers for Byron, if genuine,
speaks much for its author's generosity and heart.
We must not speak of his other prose productions-his
"Epicurean," " History of Ireland," &c. The wittiest thing
of his in prose we have read is an article in the'" Edinburgh
Review'" on " Boyd's Lives of the Fatherr," where, as in
Gibbon, jests lurk under loads of learning, double-entendres
disguise themselves in Greek, puns mount and crackle upon
the backs of huge folios, and where you are at a loss whether
most to chuckle at the wit, to detest the animus, or to admire
the erudition..We had nearly omitted, which had been unpardonable,
all mention of the " Irish Melodies "-those sweet and
luscious strains which have hushed ten thousand drawingrooms and drawn millions of such tears as drawing-rooms
shed, but which have seldom won their way to the breasts of
simple unsophisticated humanity-which are to the songs of
Burns what the lute is to the linnet-and which, in their
title, are thus far unfortunate that, however melodious, they
are not the melodies of Ireland.  It was not Moore but
Campbell who wrote "Erin Mavourneen."  "I He," says




318                  ISAAC TAYLOR.
Hazlitt, "has changed the wild harp of Erin into a musical
snuff-box."
Such is our ideal of Thomas Moore.  If it do not come
up to the estimate of some of his admirers, it is faithful to
our own impressions, and what more from a critic can be
required?  We only add, that admired by many as a poet,
by all as a wit, lhe is as a man the object of universal regard;
and we believe there is not one who knows him but would be
ready to join in the words"' Were it the last drop in the well,'Tis to thee that I would drink;
In that water as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Would be peace to thee and thine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore."
ISAAC TAYLOR.
(JHRISTIANITY has been much indebted to its lay supporters
and defenders.  Without professing to give a complete list
of the illustrious laymen who have either advocated its
evidences or expounded its doctrines, we may simply remind
the reader of the names of Milton, Newton, Boyle, Locke,
Addison, Lord Lyttelton, Charles Leslie, Soame Jenyns, Dr.
Johnson, and Cowper, which belong to other ages than the
present; while, as respects our own times, it may be enough
to mention Coleridge, Southey, Douglas of Cavers, Robert
Ainslie, Thomas Erskine of Linlathan, Bowdler, Wilberforce,
and Isaac Taylor. Of this latter list, Coleridge, partly in
his other writings, but chiefly in his " Table-talk," illustrated
the general and more remote bearings of Christianity, the
points where it touches upon the other sciences.  Southey
has stood up bravely for its external bulwarks, and exemplified its consistent morals. Douglas, touse the language
of another, "eagle-eyed and eloquent, has anticipated time,
and, surveying the world, has laid down the laws of general
amelioration."   Ainslie has broken down the great leading




ISAAC TAYLOR.                   3-19
principles of religion into simple, portable, and pathetic
forms, and from  the "'strong' has educed "sweetness."
Erskine has admirably expounded the internal evidences of
Christianity.  Bowdler has strewn chaste flowers and Addisonian graces around its softer and more spiritual aspects.
Wilberforce has laid bare its deep practical bearings.  And
Isaac Taylor has applied to the exposure of its corruptions
and counterfeits, the vigor of a more original genius, and
the splendor of a richer, more varied, and more dazzling eloquence, as well as entered with a firm yet gentle tread on
some of its more mysterious provinces.
Isaac Taylor styles himself in the title of onc of his own
chapters, the "RPecluse."  He has long ago retired from the
world into the sanctuary of his own family and his own soul.
There aloft, but not aloof-apart, but not askance-separate,
but not utterly secluded-regarding the distant crowd mole
in sorrow than in anger, and more in fove than in sorrow-he
passes the " noiseless tenor" of his serene and busy days.
" He hears the tumult and is still. " His mind dwells habitually in a lone and lofty sphere. The cell of his soul is curiously
constructed, elaborately adorned, hung with antique tapestry,
decked with the rich paintings of the past, and steeped
through its gorgeous windows in a dim religious light. There
seated, he now muses with half-shut eye upon the history
of bygone ages —n1ow erects himself to lift the large
folios of the fathers-now swells with righteous indignation  as he remembers  the  corruption and  degeneracy
which so soon and so long supplanted the first faith and
love of the primitive age-now analyzes the palpitating heart
of the enthusiast, and now turns to the sterner task of baring
the flinty spirit of fanaticism-now maps out the future history of the church and world-and now sinks into sublime
reverie, and in the trance of genius sees
" Hell, hades, heaven-the eternal how and whereThe glory of the dead, and their despair."
The leading power of Taylor's mind is not argument,
though he reasons often acutely and energetically-nor
is it imagination, though he has much of this faculty too
-nor is it original and native thought, though he strikes
out many sparkles of intuition on his way-nor is it elo



320                  ISAAC TAYLOR.
quence, though his words are often quick and powerful:
it is meditation-tlhat refined action of the mind which
is softer than ratiocination, more sublime than thought.
calmer than passion, and cooler than genius. He is inspired,
not by the muses nor by the furies-is neither full of the
demon nor of the god; but above him hangs the "cherub
Contemplation," and over him broods for ever her still but
radiant wing.  He evidently emulates that serene motion,
or rather, rest of intellect, in which Plato, under the skies
of Greece, rejoiced, and which, beneath the profounder firmanment of Palestine, "unloosed its golden couplets" over
the head of the Essenes and the earlier Christian mystics.
While keenly alive to, and indignant at, the errors and
abuses of mysticisln, he has very strong sympathies with
its better spirit-with its voluntary solitude-its abnegation of self —its habits of still, spiritual communion with
its own soul, and with the works and word of God.' He
is, above most modern writers, an orientalist.  That "land
of the east-that clime of the sun," is the country of his
adoption.  His learning has been collected in the gardens
of eastern literature. His imagination has an oriental vastness and brilliancy npon its wings, and he strings his sentences with' "orient pearl." His style, too, seems dyed in
the colors of a hotter sun than that of his native land.  His
-views of divine truth, often clear and definite, not unfrequently shade away into the dim, the unformed, and the obscure-into "regions where light glances at an angle only,
without diffusing itself over the whole surface."  He loves to
linger, and it is only a stern sense of duty which prevents
him  from lingering always, in the dubious and debatable
tracts which surround the clear and firm territory of Scripture truth.  His piety, too, is peculiar.  Though true and
sound, it is not the simple, fervid devotion of his father or
sister. It is more that of the burning seraph than of the
kneeling saint; it is the rapt contemplation of the divine attributes, rather than the awful abasement of a spirit overwhelmed in the view of its own guilt and misery. Blended,
however, with this native tendency toward the lofty, the enthusiastic, and the dangerous realms of speculation-a tendency fostered, besides, by the course of his studies and the
circumstances of his lot-there are counteracting and ba



ISAAC TAYLOR.                  321
lancinrg elements in his mind, habits of deep submission to
the divine testimony, a strong basis of solid judgment and
varied knowledge, a distinct though not very deep vein of sarcastic observation, added to all the advantages which natural
good sense must ever derive from English blood, birth, and
training.
It is a curious fact in literary history, that many writers
have surpassed themselves, both in power and popularity,
while writing under the shelter of the anonymous. Swift's
"Tale of a Tub," which he never acknowledged, so far
surpasses his other writings in fertility of invention, richness of humor, and force of style, that Dr. Johnson refused to believe it his. Junius was strong only within
the circle of that mysterious shadow which even yet rests
on his name. Pascal's "Provincial Letters," the best of
his works, were issued anonymously,  So were those of
Peter Plymley.  The admirable newspaper criticisms of
"Jonathan," and the eloquent diatribes of 0. P. Q., owed
not a little of their zest to the obscurity which rested on the
names of the authors. Even the Waverley tales lost nothing
from the doubt in which their authorship was for a season
involved. We cannot tell how much of their power reviewers owe to their position-how much the masking adds to
the momentum of their battery. And within a twvelvemonth
we have witnessed a book, written indeed in an easy and
agreeable style, but developing an absurd theory, and swarming with blunders (the." Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation"), rising into popularity upon the twin wings of the
mischief of its intention and the mystery of its authorship.
Whether this be owing to the greater liberty an anonymous
writer enjoys-to the ideal position which, projected as it
were out of himself, he for a season occupies-or to the twofold effect of mystification, in stimulating the mind of the
writer and provoking the curiosity of the reader-we do not
stop to inquire. And perhaps it was in order to take advantage of this principle, that the subject of the present sketch,
after having to little purpose wooed the attention of the
world in proplria persona, determined to disguise himself,
and walked forth at length in the graceful mask of the author of the " Natural History of Enthusiasm."  The issue
justified his most sanguine hopes of success. The book was
14*




322                  ISAAC T-AYLOtI
fortunate in the time of its appearance. It came forth when
the rage of Rowism and Irvingism was at its height-when
in every corner of the land, our old men, and women too,
were seeing visions, and our young men and maidens were
dreaming dreams.  To analyze the subtle steam of enthusiasm when it was rushing from the boiler-to detect and expose its distinct proportions of false and true —was an attempt daring, hazardous, but useful, and loudly demanded by
the urgencies of the time.  It required, too, peculiar qualifications, which seemed all possessed by the anonymous author: learning-he was manifestly a ripe and good scholar;,piety-his work glowed with it; eloquence-it heaved in
every sentence; a vantage-ground lifting him above sectarian
bias-the most acute were unable to tell to what denomination he belonged; soundness of religious sentiment-the
strain of the whole work was strictly evangelical; and last,
not least, a sympathy with true enthusiasm, while he exposed
and reprobated the false-and the book was no cold analysis, no stern and callous'anatomy. The work, besides, was
written in an elaborate and ornate style; and though some
of the more fastidious objected to its taste, and some of the
more lynx-eyed detected marks of a manner affected and a
diction studiously disguised, yet, on the whole, the exclamation of the Christian church was-'" Behold, a master risen
in Israel!" And straightway the question rose and ran,
"Who is he?"  Some bethought themselves of Douglas of
Cavers as the probable author, in despite of the most marked
difference in sentiment, style, manner, and cast of, thought.
Others, even less acute, fancied that here was Foster shalking
off his giant sleep, and arising a new man-a new man indeed —with a new intellect, a new learning, a new temperament. and a new vocabulary.  In certain circles, there were
frequent rumors of some great Christian unknown —some
gentler Junius —somle wondrous young Titan —who was to
astonish, if not revolutionize the religious world. And if
here and there a solitary finger pointed to the " Recluse" of
Stamford Rivers as the real author, the scornful rejoinder
was, "' What has he done hitherto —what proportion is there
between the' Elements of Thought' and the' History of Enthusiasm?' Such a lion-like man of God could never have is.
sued from the still parsonage of Ongar."  Popular mean



ISAAC TAYLOR.                    323
while the book became, particularly among students, who did
their best to imitate its style, or with greater success to imbibe its spirit. Its main leading proposition, that the difference between true and false enthusiasm  is a difference of
kind, not of degree —its rich and racy illustration-its familiarity with the primitive and darker ages of the Church —
its grand insulated pictures, as of the Rlomish hierarchy and
the monastic system —its cheerful, sanguine, religious spirit
— the rose-colored glow which rested on its every page —and
not less, with some, its blazing faults and deliberate innovations of language —were among the elements of its first success; and even yet, we believe, in popular estimation, retain
it at the head of its author's works.
Dearer to us, however, we confess, is his second work, the
" Saturday Evening."  It is a series of sublime meditations,
bound together by a certain shadowy tie, involving a multitude of topics nearest and dearest to the author's heart, and
tinged with the sweet and solemn hues of the approaching
Sabbath.  " Dreams " they will be, they have been called by
the skeptical and the cold; but such an epithet, while it fails
fully to express, fails entirely to damage their character.
They open up, to the pious and imaginative, tracts of thought,
like golden furrows in an evening sea, or like those glorious
vistas which endlessly expand in an evening heaven.  They
are dreams, but dreams of night, of heaven, of immensity,
and eternity; and if the dream  be there, the ladder whose
top reached unto the sky is not far off.  Philosophical views
of the present and of the past are not wanting; but the mind
of the contemplatist is perpetually, as if on the wings of the
evening, borne away up through the wilderness of worlds
above his head-or on to those bright pages of the earth's
story which remain to be read-or in amid the starry circles
of the heavenly hosts —nay, at times, a step or two, but no
more, up towards
"The sapphire throne-the living blaze,
Where angels tremble as they gaze."
And yet, from the most daring of his excursions, he returns
undazzled, and with lessons of practical truth, to his native
homestead of earth.  We like especially his glimpses of the
coming Sabbath of the world, which, like a red western




324                   ISAAC TAYLOR.
heaven seen through trees, perpetually interposes its splendid
boundary to the stages of his thought. Next to this, we like
his " Vastness of the Material Creation," where to " him the
book of night is opened wide "-and where he finds that a
page thick with suns is not more true or glorious than one
leaf of his Bible, where "voices from  the depths of space
proclaim a marvel and a secret;" but he discovers the marvel to be the old mystery of godliness, the secret to be only
that of the Lord, which "is with them that fear him."
By a strange association, this book of "Saturday Evening"
suggests to us the Saturday papers of the; "Spectator." They
are "alike, but oh, how different!"  Their subjects are the
same; night, the stars, immortality, God, and heaven.  But
since Addison's time, how  much nearer have the stars
approached! and yet, in another sense, how much farther off
have they receded! At what a ratio of more than geometric
increase has the universe been multiplying to our eyes! And
with regard to the other topics, in what deeper channels do the
modern's thoughts flow than those of the gentle" "Spectator 1"
Their language is the same; but how different the classic
coolness, the careless but inimitable graces, the modest but
inestimable ornaments, the ease and sweet simplicity of
Addison's English, from the feverish heat and the rich tropical exuberance of Taylor's! Their religion is the same; but
how different the faint though true glow of Christianity in
Addison's page from  that seraphic flame which burns in
Taylor's! In what different ages written! The one a low
and languid age-feeble in faith, feebler in love, feeblest of
all in hope-in which Addison's sanctified genius shines as
a sweet solitary star; the other a "juncture of eras "-a
period of bustle, and heat, and hope; and progress, and
anxious uncertainty, and listening silence; for do not all
men expect, sooner or later, the crisis of the earth to be
coming-and do not "all creatures sigh to be renewed 2"
We must permit ourselves a few, observations upon " Fanaticism" and the "Physical Theory of a Future Life."
"Fanaticism" was unfortunate in its subject.  From  the
black and malevolent passions, even when portrayed by the
hand of a master, men in general shrink.  To dissect deformity is a thankless task.  And although it is said that the
laws of disease are as beautiful as those of health, yet few




ISAAC TAYLOR.                 325
have the patience or courage to wait till they are initiated in
to that terrible kind of beauty.  Fanaticism, also, was a topic
too like enthusiasm to be susceptible of much novelty in the
mode of treatment.  And here and there you could detect
traces of that mannerism, and self-imitation which betray in
authors their fear at least that their vein is nearly exhausted
-a fear reminding us of the reluctance of the mariner to
take soundings in a suspected shallow. The style too had
not improved from the date of his former work, nay, it bore
marks of great effort, was uneven and uneasy, and sinned
often against the laws of clearness, simplicity, and good taste.
Something of the cloudy character of the theme seemed to
have infected the writer; and the language was swollen, as
if under the "fanaticism  of the scourge."  Still the book
had bold bursts and splendid sweeping pictures; and it were
worth while contrasting its estimate of Mahometanism with
that of Carlyle, and wondering by what strange possibility a
system which appears to the one a vast and virulent ulcer
should appear to the other a needful volcano, and through
what transfiguring magic MIahomet the monster of the one
becomes IMahomet the hero of the other.
We hinted a little before, that there was in Taylor's mind
a strong but subdued tendency toward the mystic and supernatural. In all his works, he seems standing on the confines
of the spiritual world, leaning over the great precipice, and,
with beseeching looks, essaying to commune with the tremendous secrets of the final state.  Entirely satisfied with
the declarations of Scripture, that there is immortality for
man, he yet must " ask'that dreadful question at the hilly
which look eternal " -at the streams which "lucid flow for
ever "-at the stars, those bright and pure watchers-at the
deepest metaphysics of the human mind-and find in them
something more than a faltering perhaps, in addition to the
loud, confident, and commanding, " Thus saith the Lord."
Nay, in the " Physical Theory of Another Life," he fairly
bursts across the barriers, enters like a "'permitted guest"
within the mighty curtain which divides the living and the
dead, and with infinite ingenuity maps out the dim provinces
and expounds the mysterious conditions of that strange world.
The intention of the work has been often misapprehended. It
is no dogmatic dream, like the visions of Swedenborg-no




326                 ISAAC TAYLOR.
" rushing in where angels fear to tread." INor is it the more
nmechanical fancy disporting itself on the theme, as in the reveries of Tucker (to whom Taylor, however, is considerably
indebted;) it is a long philosophical, modest and earnest conjecture-a trial, as it were, how far the human mind can go
in that shadowy direction, and how far it is possible, by combining psychological principles with Scripture hints, to build
up a probable and lifelike scheme of the future existence.
How far he has been successful in this attempt we shall, of
course, never know till we enter on that solemn state ourselves. But, in the mean time, it is curious to think of this
writer's spirit, from the height of eternity, looking back and
comparing the continent of glory he has reached with the
meagre yet memorable map he drew of it, in the infancy of his
being.  And yet more curious it were to imagine an actual
denizen of that sublime world smiling a gentle smile over
this effort of the unborn child to conceive of the green earth,
the gay sun, and the ever burning stars!
The reader would be richly rewarded who should sit
down and compare the Visions of heaven and hell ascribed
to Bunyan with Taylor's theory of a future life. Both are
rich, eloquent, and imaginative dreams-but how different
in spirit, manner, style, and scientific construction! Between
the two, what an interval has the religious mind traversed!
What a difference between the ":melted gold" and coarse
material torments of the one author, and Ariel-like agonies
of Taylor's supposed spirit, thrust out naked amid the quick
agencies of an angry universe, where the silent night surrounds it as in a sea of fire, and where, through a thousand
avenues rushes in upon it the wraVh of Heaven. And yet
the author of these visions (Bunyan he certainly was not)
was not only a man of high genius, as some magnificent passages prove, but a thorough scholar; for its frequent literary
allusions and use of scholastic terms sufficiently evince that
he was quite up to, if not before, the spirit and learning of
his times. How little, after all, do the revolutions of time
and the advancement of the human mlind add to our real
knowledge, however they may modify our feelings and language, in respect to the awful futurity before us! The path
of human progress, on one side so free and boundless, on an



HENRY WMADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.           327
other is soon met by its uttermost confine on earth, as by a
wall of black, solid, and frowning marble i
Isaac Taylor is, as before hinted, of "virtuous father,
virtuous son."  The praise of Taylor of Ongar was in "all
the churches."  Hiis daughter, Jane Taylor, a woman of a
highly cultivated and most feminine intellect, authoress of
several well known works, has long been dead. Isaac, at first
designed for the Dissenting pulpit, became a barrister in
preference, but has for many years resided in retirement at
Stamford Rivers, educating his family, and prosecuting his
own delightful and holy studies. A writer in the " Edinburgh Review" has given a description of his early feelings
and his present habits of life, displaying at once the warmth
of personal friendship and the sympathy of kindred intellect
and kindred sentiments.  We learn with interest from  it,
that Taylor is an expert and eager angler as well as the farfamed author of the "Natural History of Enthusiasm;" that
he spends his Saturday mornings in directing the sports of
his dear children; while his Saturday evenings are devoted
to the loftiest meditations which can engross the soul of
mortal.  He is, moreover, a person of animated bearing,
brilliant eye, and incessant and eloquent talk. Altogether,
we deem him among the most accomplished of modern religious authors, and heartily wish him life and strength to
fulfil that great work of his life, from which the tractarian
controversy has for a season drawn him  aside-the history
of the various corruptions of Christianity, which, if worthily
completed, as it has been worthily commenced, shall more
assuredly and honorably preserve his name, " than though a
pyramid formed his monumental fane."
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
AMERICA has been long looking for its Poet, and has
been taught by many sages to believe, that hitherto it
has been looking in vain. Each new aspirant to the laurel
has been scanned with a watchfulness and jealousy, pro



328        IIENRY WADSWORTIH LONGFELLONW'.
portioned to the height of expectation which had been excited, and to the length of time during which that expectation has been deferred; and because the risen Poet did
not supply the vacuum of centuries-did not clear all. the
space by which Britain had got the start of her daughter
-did not include in his single self the essence of Shakspeare,
Spenser, Milton, and Byron-his genius was pronounced a
failure, and his works naught. Tests were proposed to him,
from which our home authors would have recoiled.  Originalities were demanded of him, which few of ourselves, in
this imitative age, have been able to exemplify.  As in Macbeth, not the " child's," but the " armed head" was expected
to rise first from the vacant abyss. American literature
must walk before creeping, and fly before walking. Not
unfrequently, our British journals contained programmes of
the genius and writings of the anticipated Poet, differing
not more from common sense, than from each other. " He
must be intensely national," said one authority. " He must
be broadly Catholic-of no country," said a second. " He
must be profoundly meditative, as his own solitary woods,"
said a third.  " Ie must be bustling, rapid, and fiery as his
own railways," said a fourth. One sighed for an American
Milton; another predicted the uprise of another Goethe,
"' Giant of the Western Star;" and a third modestly confined his wishes within the compass of a second Shakspeare.
Pernicious as, in some measure, such inordinate expectations must have proved to all timid and vacillating mlinds in
America, it did not prevent its bolder and more earnest
spirits from taking their own way,-by grafting, upon the
stock of imported poetry, many graceful and lovely shoots
of native song.  In spite of the penumbra of prejudice
against American verse, more fugitive floating poetry of real
merit exists in its literature than in almost any other.
Dana has united many of the qualities of Crabbe to a por
tion of the weird and haggard power of Coleridge's muse
Percival has recalled Wordsworth to our minds, by the pensive and tremulous depth of his strains. - Bryant, without a
trace of imitation, has become the American Campbell,
equally select, simple, chary, and memorable.  In reply to
Mrs. Hemans, have been uttered a perfect chorus of voices



HEN~Y WVADSWORTIt LONGFELLOW.            329
"Sweet and melancholy sounds,
Like music on the waters."
Emerson has poured forth notes, sweet now as the murmur
of bees, and now strong as the roar of torrents; here cheerful as the pipings of Arcadia, and there mournfully melodious as the groans of Ariel, from the centre of his cloven
pine.  And with a voice of wide compass, clear articulation,
and most musical tones, has Longfellow sung his manifold
and melting numbers.
The distinguishing qualities of Longfellow seem to be
beauty of imagination, delicacy of taste, wide sympathy,
and mild earnestness, expressing themselves sometimes in
forms of quaint and fantastic fancy, but always in chaste and
simple language.  His imagination sympathizes more with
the correct, the classical, and the refined, than with that outer
and sterner world, where dwell the dreary, the rude, the
fierce, and the terrible shapes of things.  The scenery he
describes best is the storied richness of the Rhine, or the
golden glories of the Indian summer, or the environs of the
old Nova Scotian village, or the wide billowing prairie; and
not those vast forests, where a path for the sunbeams must be
hewn, nor those wildernesses of snow, where the storm and
the wing of the condor divide the sovereignty. In the midst
of such dreadful solitudes, his genius rather shivers
and cowers, than rises and reigns.   He is a spirit of
the Beautiful, more than of the Sublime; he has lain on
the lap of Loveliness, and not been dandled, like a lioncub, on the knees of Terror.  The magic he wields, though
soft, is true and strong.  If not a prophet, torn by a
secret burden, and uttering it in wild, tumultuous strains,
he is a genuine poet, who has sought for, and found inspiration, now in the story and scenery of his own country,
and now in the lays and legends of other lands, whose native vein, in itself exquisite, has been highly cultivated and
delicately cherished.
It is to us a proof of Longfellow's originality, that he
bears so well and meekly his load of accomplishments and
acquirements.  His ornaments. unlike those of the Sabine
maid, have not crushed him, nor impeded the motions of his
own mind.  I-Ie has transmuted a lore, gathered from many
languages, into a quick and rich flame, which we feel to be
the flame of Gen;is.




33 0        HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
It is evident that his principal obligations are due to
German literature, which over him, as over so many at the
present day, exerts a certain wild witchery, and is tasted with
all the sweetness of the forbidden fruit.  No writer in America has more steeped his soul in the spirit of German
poetry, its blended homeliness and rorance, its simplicity
and fantastic emphasis, than Longfellow.  And if he does
not often trust himself amidst the weltering chaos of its
philosophers, you see him, lured by their fascination, hanging
over their brink, and rapt in wonder at their strange, gigantic, and ever-shifting forms. Indeed his "Hyperion" Qontains two or three most exquisite bits of transcendentalism.
Longfellow is rather a romantic and sentimental, than a
philosophical poet. IHe throws into verse the feelings, moods,
and fancies of the young or female mind of genius, not the
mature cogitations of profound philosophy.  His song is
woven of moonlight, not of strong summer sunshine.  To
glorify abstractions, to flush clear naked truth into beauty,
to " build" up poems slowly and solidly, as though he were
piling pyramids, is neither his aim nor his attainment.  He
gathers, on the contrary, roses and lilies, —the roses of the
hedge and lilies of the field, as well as those of the garden,and wreathes them into chaplets for the brow and neck of
the beautiful. His poetry is that of sentiment, rather than
of thought.  But the sentiment is never false, nor strained,
nor mawkish.  It is always mild, generally manly, and sometimes it approaches the sublime.  It touches both the female
part of man's mind and the masculine part of woman's.  He
can at one time start unwonted tears in the eyes of men, and
at another kindle on the cheeks of women a glorious glow of
emotion, which the term blush] cannot adequately measure;
as far superior to it as is the splendor of a sunset to the
bloonm of a peach.
We have been struck with the variety of Longfellow's
poems.  He has written hitherto no large, recondite work.
His poems are all short-effusions, not efforts.  He has exhibited no traces of a comic vein.  His sphere is that of
sentiment, moralizing elegantly upon many objects.  And
yet within that sphere there is little mannerism, repetition,
or self-imitation.  His sentiment assumes a great variety of
aspects. Now it is tender to tears, and now heroic to daring;




HENRY WADSWVORTH LONGFELLOW.              331
now it muses, and now it dreams; now it is a reverie, and
now a rapture; now it is an allegory, now a psalm, and again
a song; every thing, in short, save a monotony. Nor is this
the many-sidedness of a mocking-bird.  The sentiment of
the varied song, as well as the song of the varied sentiment,
is ever his own.
One of the most pleasing characteristics of this writer's
works is their intense humanity.  A man's heart beats in
his every line. His writings all
Take a sober color from the eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mL ortality."
He loves, pities, and feels with, as well as for, his fellow
human mortal."  Hence his writing is blood-warm.  He is
a brother, speaking to men as brothers, and as brothers are
they responding to his voice. Byron addressed men as reptiles or fiends; Wordsworth and others soliloquize, careless whether their voice be listened to or not.  But no poet
can be loved, as well as admired, who does not speak from
the broad level of humanity. If we dare apply the language, " he must be touched with a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, and have been tempted in all points as we are."
He must have fallen and risen, been sick and sad, been joyful and pensive, drank of the full cup of man's lot, ere he
can so write that man will take his writings to his heart, and
appropriate them as part of the great general human stock.
A prophet may wrap himself up in austere and mysterious
solitude; a poet must come " eating and drinking."  Thus
came Shakspeare, Dryden, Burns, Scott, Goethe; and thus
have come in our day Dickens, Hood, and Longfellow.
Besides this quality of generous, genial manhood, Longfellow is distinguished by a mild religious earnestness.  We
do not vouch for the orthodoxy of his creed, but we do vouch
for the fine Christianity of his spirit. No poet has more
beautifully expressed the depth of his conviction, that life is
an earnest reality-a something with eternal issues and dependencies; that this earth is no scene of revelry, or market
of sale, but an arena of contest, and a hall of doom.  This is
the inspiration of his "Psalm of Life," than which we have
few things finer, in moral tone, since those odes by which
the millions of Israel tuned their march across the wilder



332           HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
ness, and to which the fiery pillar seemed to listen with corn
placency, and to glow out a deeper crimson in silent praise.
To man's now wilder, more straggling, but still God-guided
and hopeful progress towards a land of fairer promise, Longfellow's'" Psalm " is a noble accompaniment:
"Life is real t Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;' Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time, —
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor, and to wait."
Glancing again critically at Longfellow's poems, we find that
his genius is essentially lyrical. Neither the severity of epic
power nor the subtlety of the dramatic genius are his. But
how swiftly and surely does he respond to those passing impulses which come upon his soul, like winds from the forest,
and which, like sudden gusts, are brief, musical,-'now swelling into high rapture, and now dying away in tremulous pa



HENrRY WADSWORTI LONGFELLOW.            333
thos! Mrs. Hemans and Sir Walter Scott once coincided in
remarking, that each tree gives forth a peculiar cadence to the
wind; and we have ourselves noticed, that from the willow
there issues a dry, hissing eery sound; from the sycamore a
full murmur, as if the tree were one vast bee-hive; from the
pine a deep, mellow, lingering tone, as though each cone were
an ivory key; and from the oak a strong, sturdy, reluctant
rustle as if it were an unwilling instrument in the hand of
the blast. Thus do Longfellow's finer poems play themselves off upon the autumn trees of the Western forest. as
upon harps of gold-one being sad and Etern-another quiet
and full, as of many murmurs rounded into one calm-a
third, soft and long-drawn-and a fourth, rough, abrupt, and
tormented into music.
Ere speaking of some of his poems in detail, we must permit ourselves a word on the only prose work of his with
which we are acquainted-" Ityperion."  We shall never forget the circumstances of its first perusal. We took it as
our pocket companion with us, on our first walk down the
Tweed, by Peebles, Inverleithen, Clovenford, Ashestiel, and
Abbotsford. It was fine, at any special bend of the stream,
or any beautiful spot along its brink, taking it out, and finding in it a conductor to our own surcharged emotions. In
our solitude we felt " we are not alone, for these pages can
sympathize with us."  The course of "Hyperion," indeed,
is that of a river, winding at its own sweet will, —now laughing and singing to itself, in its sparkling progress, and now
slumbering in still deep pools,-here laving cornfields and
vineyards, and there lost in wooded and sounding glens. Interest it has much —incident, little; its charm  is partly in
the " Excelsior " progress of the hero's mind, partly in the
sketches of the Great German authors, and principally in
the sparkling imagery and waving, billowy language of the
book.  Longfellow, in this work, is Jean Paul Richter, without his grotesque extravagances, or riotous humor, or turbulent force. He seems a lesser and more simple form of the
samle genus, sprung from him, as the elephant from the mammoth.
We have just alluded to "Excelsior," one of those happy
thoughts which seem to drop down, like fine days, from some
serener region, or, like moultings of the celestial dove, which




334         HIENRY iWADSWORTI-I LONGFELLOWv.
meet instantly the ideal of all minds, and run on afterwards,
and for ever, in the current of the human heart. We can
now no more conceive of a world without'" Excelsior,;' than
of a world without the " Iliad," the " Comous," or the'" lidsummer Night's Dream."  It has expressed in the happiest
and briefest way what many minds in the age had been trying in vain to express. Thousands, therefore, were ready
to cry out,' That's my thought; that's my desire; that's
myself; I bear that banner; I fear not to die that death!"
4' Excelsior" is the L-edyard of intellectual travellers.  He
typifies all that is heroic, and high, and disinterested in the
age.  " Excelsior!" cries the student, as he climbs the steep
ascent of science.  "Excelsior!" cries the poet, who takes
up Parnassus as but a little thing.  " Excelsior!" cries the
thinker; " I have passed the transcendental, let me have at
the divine."  "Excelsior!" cries the liver; let me reach
virtue, not merely as a law, but as a life."  " Excelsior'!"
cries every where the young time; "let us onward and up
ward; though it be into the regions of the storm; we are
weary of the past, let us try what the future will do for
us."  "Excelsior!" cry the dying, who feel that death is but
a door into the infinite; "let us up and breathe the atmosphere of the stars."  More than one brave spirit has departed
singing this noble battle-burst of "Excelsior!"
"Excelsior" is Life and its Psalmn  personified.  Longfellow has written in it his glowing hopes of the future, as
well as his theory of the past.  That figure, climbing the
evening Alps, in defiance of danger, of man's remonstrance,
and the far deeper fascination of woman's love, is a type of
man struggling, triumphing, purified by suffering, perfected
in death. And it insinuates strongly the poet's belief in
that coming era in human history, when the worth and grandeur of man's regenerated life will cast a calm and beauty,
at present inconceivable, around his dectth, and when the
roses and chaplets and premature rejoicings of his bridal,
shall'more worthily await his marriage with the infinite.
Who pants and prays not for the arrival of such a day, when
the sting of death shall thus be taken out-when its grand
meaning and porch-like position shall be fully disclosed and
vividly realized?
Next to " Excelsior," and the " Psalm  of Life," we are




iENRY  AVADSWORFTH LONGFELLOW.           335
disposed to rank "Evangeline."  Indeed, as a work of art,
it is superior to both, and to all that Longfellow has written
in verse.  Save " Hyperion " it is his only piece of pure and
elaborate art:  We began to read it under a certain degree
of prejudice at the measure, which ias been so vulgarized
by Southey, in his lamentable "Vision of Judgment."  But
soon Southey, "Vision of Judgment," and all were forgotten.  Acadia-Arcadia it might be called-and the sweet
moonlight of Evangeline's face, crowded the whole sky of
our imagination.  Nothing can be more truly conceived, or
more tenderly expressed, than the picture of that primitive
Nova Scotia, and its warm-hearted, hospitable, happy, and
pious inhabitants.  We feel the air of the "Fore-world "
around us. The light of the Golden Age,-itself joy, music,
and poetry,-is shining above.  There are evenings of summer or autumn tide so exquisitely beautiful, so complete in
their own charms, that the entrance of the moon is felt
almost as a painful and superfluous addition; it is like a
candle dispelling the weird darkness of a twilight room.  So
we feel at first, as if Evangeline, when introduced, were an
excess of loveliness-an amiable eclipser of the surrounding
beauties.  But even as the moon, by and by, vindicates her
intrusion, and creates her own "holier day," so with the
delicate and lovely heroine of this simple story-she becomes
the centre of the entire scene.  She is that noblest of characters, a latdy il gfrcain.  She has borrowed her motions and
attitudes from the wind-bent trees; her looks have kindled
at the stars; her steps she has unwittingly learned from the
moving shadows of the clouds.  On her way home from
confession, "when she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing
of exquisite music." Thus should all lives be led, all steps
be tuned; and thus they shall, whenever Love, instead of
Law, shall lead the great dance of human life. Purest of
virgins, art thou to be sacrificed! Finest of vessels, art thou
to be dashed in pieces! It seems almost cruel in the poet
to try her so painfully, and to send her to seek her sole
redress in heaven.
We think every reader must feel that the first part of
"Evangeline" is far superior to the second.  Evangeline's
search after her lover is beautifully described, but becomes
at last oppressive and painful.  We cry out, in our sorrow




336           HENRY WADSWORTIH- LONGFELLOW.
and disappointment, for Acadia, with its crowing cocks,
bursting  barns, flowery meadows, and  happy hearts back
again.
The descriptions of American scenery in " Evangeline"
are in general extremely picturesque and beautiful.  Witness
this for example:" Now had the season returned, when the nights grew colder and
longer,
Anid the retreating Sun the sign of the Scorpion enters;
Birds of passage sail'd through the leaden air from the icebound
Desolate northern bays, to the shores of the tropical islands.
Harvests were gathered in; and, wild with the winds of September,
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel."
The picture of the Indian summer is finer still, with the
exception of the conceit with which it closes:" Array'd in its robes of russet, and scarlet, and yellow;
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest
Flash'd like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and
jewels."
This last line contains a poor and forced memory. What
an injury to the glorious forest-tree to compare it to the
foolish and contemptible freak referred to.  The simile is
alike far-fetched and worthless.  " I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed  like one of these."
By a similar conceit (a mode of writing quite unusual
with him) has he spoiled one of his finest passages:" Meanwhile apart in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure,
Sat the lovers, and whispering together, beholding the moon rise
Over the pallid sea, and the silvery mist of the meadows,
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossom'd the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."
Next to the spectacle of a man destroying a noble constitution, or marring fine faculties, is that of an author deliberately spoiling a passage which  otherwise had  touched  or
trembled on perfection. It is a case of literary felo de se.
What business had the idea of a forget-me-not at such a
moment.  Gabriel Lajeunesse himself, we are certain, enamored as he was, and even in that most imaginative bour,




HENRY VWADSWVORTHT  LONGFELLOW.            337
never could dream of seeing an angel with a knot of stars on
his breast while visiting his true love.
Such faults are rare in this writer.  Once or twice, indeed, he approaches the brink of the bathos, and snatches
one of those few, perilous, and precious flowers which bloom
along it.  Thus, in " Hyperion," he compares a glacier to a
gauntlet of ice, thrown down by winter, in defiance of the
sun; a thought so beautiful, that you forget the'danger
which he has encountered and escaped in finding it for you.
A  striking little copy of verses he has entitled " The
Light of Stars."  His "bright particular star" is not the
"star of Jove, so beautiful and large," nor the star of lovers,
Venus, nor the star of suicides, Saturn.  It is the star of
warriors, "the red light of Mars."  We share with him  in
his feelings.  Mars has, to men, more points of interest and
sympathy than almost any other planet. One frozen band at
least binds us to it. One white signal has been hung out by
this near vessel; snow and winter are there.  And if, as
analogy would plead, there be inhabitants, these inhabitants
must be somewhat like ourselves.  There arefires, there are
heartths, there are homes in Mars! There is struggle, there
may be sin, tliere may be death-there is contest, there is
mystery, there may be victory! What home sounds, what
thrilling tones. what an array of signals, what a sheaf of telegraphic rays, from that red planet! Hear Longfellow"Earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my breast there is no light,
But the cold light of stars;
I gave the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars."
We must not overlook a poem  entitled "Footsteps of
Angels."  Who are the angels who visit and imprint his
15




338 H. ENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
heartZ  No cherubim-clim  to him  amid all their blaze
of intelligence. No strange seraphs-cold to him amid all
their flames of fire.  They are the friends of his youth —the
loved of his early heart —now sons and daughters of the
grave.  The eye of his heart sees them; the ear of his heart
hears their soft footsteps, and their voices so low and sweet.
Have all of us not at times such angel visits! Are we not
at this moment summoned to look up, and see and hear
them? Ah! we know that strong deep-furrowed face, that
lofty brow, those locks sprinkled with gray, that eye, restless with the fire of intelligence, and with the light of paternal affection. WVe know too, too well, that young form,
that step light as the roe's upon the mountains, that clear
blue eye, that brown curling head, that forehead so high,
that face so pale and beautiful, over which, ere her ten
winters had passed, death had spread a ghastlier paleness —
-it is our Agnes, at once sister and child'! And we cry
"0  God! if it be thus, and thou
Art not a madness and a mockery,
We yet might be most happy."
Longfellow's writings are in general prophetic of, and
preparatory for, the grand reconciliation of man, both as
regards man the individual, and man the species. In his
"Arsenal," and his " Occultation of Orion," he shadows forth
the "coming of the milder day," when there is
"Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise."
And both in "Hyperion" and "Evangeline," the agency of
sorrow, in purging the eye, subduing the senses, watering all
the stronger plants in the soul's garden, is abundantly recognized. Perhaps still another's 1" Pilgrim's Progress," cut
out through rougher ways, darkened by deeper shadows, and
exhibiting more the teaching of error than either "' Hyperion"
or " Sartor," is still desiderated by the age.
We cannot linger much longer with this delightful writer.
He has scattered many other delicious drops of song along
his course.  Such are-" Rain in Summer," " To a Child,"




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.             339
"To the Driving Cloud," and " The Old Clock on the Stairs."
These are all amiable carols, inspirited with poetic life, decorated with chaste image, and shadowed with pensive senti-.ment, like the hand of manhood laid gently upon the billowing head of a child.
The character of a translator's own genius may be gathered with considerable accuracy from his selection of pieces to
translate. In general, the graceful bends to the graceful, the
pensive sighs back to the pensive, and the strong shadows
the strong. Longfellow has not dared any lofty heights, or
sounded any dark hollows, of foreign poetry.  The exquisite
patriarchal simplicities of the Swedish ballad have attracted
his kindred spirit.  It is not "deep calling unto deep."  It
is one corn-field responding to another, across the hedge,
under one soft westerly breeze.  Need we do more than
allude to "! The Children of the Lord's Supper," which, both
in verse and spirit, is the model of " Evangeline." Thus he
characterizes himself as a translator:-" The translation is
literal, perhaps to a fault. In no instance have I done the
author a wrong, by introducing into his work any supposed
improvements or embellishments of my own. I have preserved
even the measure, that inexorable hexameter in which, it
must be confessed, the motions of the English muse are not
unlike those of a prisoner dancing to the music of his chains;
and perhaps, as Dr. Johnson said of the dancing dog,'the
wonder is not that she should do it so well, but that she
should do it at all.' "
We close our paper with feelings of gratitude and respect
for our transatlantic author  It is pleasant. in this melancholy world, to " light upon such certain places," where
beautiful dreams, and lofty, generous aspirations, lift us up,
on a ladder, into ideal regions, which are yet to become real;
for every such aspiration is a distinct step upwards to meet
our expected New Jerusalem  of man, "coming down as a
bride adorned for her husband." Every volume of genuine
poetry, besides, constitutes a cool grotto of retreat, with the
altar of a bloodless sacrifice standing in the midst. We love,
too, even better than the poetry of this volume, its sunny,
genial, human, and hopeful spirit. Perhaps there are more
depth and power, certainly there are more peculiarity and
strangeness, in Emerson's volume, but over many parts of it




340                PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.
is suspended a dry, rainless cloud of gloom, which chills and
withers you. You become, it may be, a wiser, but certainly
a sadder man.  Longfellow sheds a chequered autumnal
light, under which your soul, like a river, flows forward,
serene, glad, strong, and singing as it flows"Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.
TIHESE sketches are by no means intended as a complete
literary history of the age; yet we believe that in our two
Galleries" few names of great note will be found altogether omitted.  We have not, indeed, analyzed at length such
writers as Dickens, Thackeray,. Horne, Robert Browning, or
our admirable friend Marston, partly because we are not fully acquainted with their works, and partly because they have
been thoroughly treated by other writers. To omit, however
a distinct, notice of such a phenomenon as " Festus" were un
pardonable, and to this we now address ourselves.  " Festus "
is, indeed, a phenomenon.  "  When I read'Festus,'" said
poor David Scott to us, "I was astonished to find such work
going on in a mind of the present day."  It seemed to him,
as Edinburgh on first view was called by Haydon, a " giant's
dream."  Indeed it much resembles one of Scott's own vast
unearthly pictures, the archetypes of which he may have recognized now in that world of shadows, of which he was
born and lived a denizen; for surely, if ever walked;" phantom amongst men," it was the creator of " Vasco" " Sarpedon," and the "Resurrection of the Cross."
The first feeling which affected many besides us at the
perusal of "Festus" was a shock of surprise, mixed with
pain, and not free from a shade of disgust. If we did not
(I believe," we trembled; if we did not sympathize, we shud



PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.             341
dered. Every thing was so strange that the whole seemed
monstrous. We can compare our feelings to nothing else
than Cain's flight with Lucifer through the stars.   We
found ourselves caught up on dark and mighty wings, through
wildernesses of dim and shadowy objects, worlds unpeopled,
worlds half-created, worlds peopled by forms so monstrous
that solitude seemed sweet in the comparison-" gorgons,
and hydras, and chimeras dire."  But just as disgust and
terror were about to drive us away from this weltering chaos, a
light appeared, softer than sunlight, warmer than moonlight
-the light of genius —which beckoned us on, and in which,
at last, all the abortional shapes and unearthly scenery became beautiful as the landscapes of a diream. It was an angel
after all, and not an eccentric demon, who was our conductor,
and we yielded ourselves gladly to his gentle guidance, although the path lay over all prodigious and unspeakable regions. We want words to express the wonder which grew
upon us, as each page opened like a new star, and we fei;
that the riches of thought, and imagery, and language scattered through the poem, were absolutely" fineless," and that
the poet's mind was as vast as his theme.  That vague but
thrilling wonder has subsided into a calm but profound sense
of the various elements of power and beauty which compose
the " one and indivisible " " Festus."
It is, first of all, an original production. Some, indeed,
have called it a mere cento from Goethe, Byron, and. Sflelley.  We grant at once that it bears a striking iesemblance to some of the productions of those great three;
but the resemblance is only that of a kindred subject and a
kindred elevation. It is a new comet in an old sTy. As
well call "Manfred" a copy of "Faust," or "Faust" of
Job, as trace "Festus" to a slavish imitation of any preceding poem. It takes its place instantly as the lawful
member of a family of sublime eccentrics, who have pierced
more or less boldly into forbidden regions "beyond the
solar path and milky-way," and whose fiery tresses tell on
their return that they have neared the ardors now of the
light that is full of glory, and now of the flames that shall
never be quenched.  In all these, however, the argument
and object are different. Job, as we mean to show elsewhere, contains a solution of the grand problem of the re



342               PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.
conciliation of individual man to God, and to the difficulties
of the universe, through a divine medium.  "Faust" is a
fragmentary attempt to settle the same question, apart
from  supernatural aid. "Manfred" howls back to both,
that such reconciliation is impossible, and that the riddle
of the universe is absolutely illegible by man. Shelley's
"Prometheus" is the argument of the "Faust" extended
from  man the individual to man the species; while Bailey's " Festus" is the argument of Job applied, in like manner, to the whole human family. He takes a similar view
to that which Blake has so beautifully developed in his
illustrations of the book of Job. ":Festus" is to the one
as Job to the other —a type of the fall and recovery of
all men. The scene of "Faust" and of "Prometheus" is
in earth; that of Job and of "Festus" is (essentially) in
eternity.
That the book of Job is intended to teach universal
restoration we do not, notwithstanding Blake, believe.  But
one principal object of "Festus" is to promulgate this
dream. A lovely dream, verily, it is. That the surprise of
a final deliverance should pierce into the darkness of the
second death-that heads bowed down on the pillows of
despair should be raised up to look and be lightened by the
THIRD ADVENT of a more glorious " star of Lethe" than was
ever Mercury as he descended into the Pagan shades-that.
"faces faded in the fire" should glow with the freshness of
eternal youth-that the prey should be. taken out of the
hands of such mighty ones, and the captives from a fate so
terrible-that the spring of a sublimer resurrection should
reach the remote iHecla of hell, substituting flowers for
flames, and for ice sunshine-that the words of the " Devil's
Dream" should be fulfilled even in the case of the eldest
born of Anarchy and Sin, —
" Thou shalt walk in soft white light with kings and priests abroad,
And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the hills of God"is a most captivating notion, and might be credited, had it
the slightest ground in the Word of God, or any where but
in the poetic fancy or the wild wish of man. As it is, it
rises up before us, a brilliant but unsubstantial and fading
pomp, like a splendid evening sky; or if it die not altoge



PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.              343
ther away, it must be from its connection with'the imperishable fame of " Festus."
We could have wished that the author of this poem had
severed its masses of beauty from a moral or theological
system.  All such unions are dangerous to poems.  Milton, indeed, has surmounted the difficulty; and while we
spurn Shelley's assertion that the system of Christianity
shall by and by only be remembered in Milton's poem,
we grant that the "Paradise Lost" is a subordinate evidence of its truth, as well as a rich halo around its central
and solid greatness.  To Pollok's work, again, his high
Calvinism has proved partly a blessing and partly a bane
-inwrought, as it is, into the entire structure of the poem,
it has created either blind partisans or bitter enemies; only
a few have been able to look through the " fire-mist" into
the poetical beauties which are hid beneath it. In like
manner, while Festus has been adopted and fondled by the
large sect (large at least in America) calling itself Universalists, its doctrines have repelled many of the orthodox, who
otherwise would have rejoiced in the "wilderness of sweets"
and the forest of grandeurs, which its circuit includes. Nor
must 3Mr. Bailey imagine that he has, by his notion of a nniversal restoration, in any effectual way, recommended religion to the skeptical of the present day. Eternal punishment,
fifty years ago, was a great stumbling-block to unquiet spirits.
Such have generally now travelled on so far towards Naturalism or Pantheism, that they will not return at the voice of
the charmer, charm he never so wisely-they will laugh at
the fine dream, as a man would at the offer of sugar-plums
for food-and walk on their own ungovernable way.  They
will ask, must not the reason for a hell at all be an infinite
one, and if so, is it not likely to be an ete'znal reason too?
In every great house is there not a furnace for the dross, as
well as a light in the drawing-room? If sin be of an expansive character, will not punishment expand along with it?
or, if God means to destroy sin hereafter, why does he not
begin by abolishing it here?  And what need, they will ask
again, of any hell afterwards, when justice is done now?
And, again, your theory may prove the book ztmann, but
does it prove it divine?
Thus innocuously will the milk and rose-water of Bailey's




344               PHILIP JAMIES BAILEY.
doctrine drop upon the iron scales of modern skepticism,
which seeks now not so much to object to our special form of
revelation, as to deny revelation altogether.
Bailey's originality'is not merely that of plan, but of
thought and style.. Hle " hath a demon."  He speaks as immediately told fi'om behind. All conventionalisms are spurned-all opposites paired-all contradictions reconciled-all
elements mingled-all tenses lost in the holy and glorious
hubbub of "Festus."  He is evidently a boy at blood-heat,
but an inspired boy. We have been as much amazed to find
critics treating  "Festus"-sometimes with praise, sometimes
with blame-as an elaborate piece of art, as Byron was to
find his "Don Juan"-the child of gin and sin-treated
by the Germans as an artistic work.  But Bailey's book is
the effect of the intoxication of youth-a powerful and lawful
stimulant, which the poor jaded hack of the "Spectator" or
" Literary Gazette," or any such small critic, is as incapable
of sympathizing with as he is now of imbibing.
These miserable effigies of critics, when they approach
books like "Festus," should really read the ~" Riot Act;" for
certainly such works do rebel against all arbitrary authority,
and do stir the air and load the wind with extravagant, liberties of thought and word, which neither they nor their fathers (Rymer, Dennis, &c.) were able to bear.  We have.
within the last few years, witnessed (through such critics)
the strange phenomena of a Dickens deified and a Christopher North (save in Scotland) forgotten, a Warren's " Now
and Then" in its third edition, and Aird's "Poems" scarcely
out of their -first, Macaulay crowned with the richest laurels
of the historic muse,. and Thomas De Quincey, with a genius,
an intellect, and a learning qualifying him for an historian
as far superior to the ex-Edinburgh member as was Tacitus
to Suetonius, having "' nowhere to lay his head" —a " Course
of Time" and a I' Silent Love" in their teens of editions, and
": ZFestus," after ten years, in its third; phenomena somewhat substantiating the assertion of an old clever clergyman
about the miarch of'intellect, "It has certainly been very
rapid of late-it has 2marc/eed out, of sight.
The poem of "' Festus," however, has by no means lost its
reward. Its evident earnestnfess-its holy yet charitable
spirit-its inexhaustible fountain of imagery-its individual




PHILIr JAMIES BAILEY.             345
thoughts of splendor, like spots of sunshine lost yet living,
amid the dark forests around —its long sweeping passages,
which seem to grow  visibly and audibly before you —its
infinite variety-the spirit and music of its songs-the living aspect of its characters —the bold but striking generality of its descriptions —the simplicity, or force, or beauty,
or languor, of its language —the broad picture of life it presents-prove it, apart from its theological pretensions, the
poem of the age's hope, even as "Sartor Resartus" is the
prose record of the age's experience. We should, perhaps,
forbear to add, that besides the wvarm verdict of the thinking youth of the country, it has gained the praise of Bulwer, Montgomery, Wilson, Tennyson, Binney, David Scott,
Professor Nichol, Samuel Brown, and others of equal note.
Partial, or insincere, or interested praise (although we by no
means apply these terms to the above), and also malicious
censure, may be told here to stand aside, inasmuch as" Festus" has written its own indelible impress upon a very broad,
true, and responsive section of the intellectual world.  " You
may know it by its fruits."
"The young mind of the age!"  What a multitude of
thoughts crowd on us when we utter these simple words!What mingled hope and fear-what tremulous anticipations
rush in, as we think of what it is, and of what it may beconme-of the work it has to do, and the sufferings it has to
endure. Never was there an age when there were so many
young, ardent, and gifted spirits-never was there an age
when they more required wise guidance.  The desideratum
may be thus expressed, " Wanted, a tutor to the rising age;
he must be a creedless Christian-full of faith, but full of
charity —wise in head and large in heart-a poet and a priest
-an' eternal child,' as well as a thoroughly furnished man."
This advertisement has not yet been fully answered.
The work of Carlyle and Emerson has been principally negative, and it seems now nearly perfected. We wait a new
teacher, who, by uniting the spirit of Christianity to that of
philosophy, shall present us with a satisfactory whole-with
nothing less than which our eager inquirers will rest contented.  May all the quick and cunning forces of nature combine in forming such an august spirit! Yet are we not at all
sanguine of his speedy advent.  Things, we fear, must be
l5*




346                 JOHN STERLING.
worse ere they are better. And, perhaps, the deepest hour
of the darkness may be cloven by no earthly radiance, but
by the wide wings of that advent for which the weary Church
and the wearier world, are beginning to pant, with unutterable groanings.  Meanwhile, many gifted spirits, besides
Bailey, are working a good work. Some poets of uncommon
promise are ever and anon appearing. Among these we may
mention the author of "Nimrod," a work containing much
fine description and exquisitely developed character. Aytoun has given us one admirable ballad on "Montrose," although his vein is not of the deepest; Henry Sutton, A. J.
Symington, Strype, and William Allingham, are all gifted
and promising persons. But our greatest hope is fixed on
Sidney Yendys, of Cheltenham; this young gentleman has
written a drama entitled, " The Roman," still in MS.. of
which Shelley himself would not have been ashamed. With
something of the diffusion and exaggeration of youth, it has
a richness of thought, a felicity of language, a copiousness of
imagery, a music of versification, not easy in any first effort
to be paralleled. It contains passages of beauty, of power
which absolutely startle you, and specimens of every variety
of excellence, from the lofty declamation to the melting ballad. We stake whatever critical reputation we have on the
prediction, that no recent poem, save'C Festus," shall make
a profounder impression upon the lovers of poetry when it
appears than " The Roman."  It is a very conflagration of
genius, as well as in many parts a high triumph of art."
JOHN STERLING.
THE removal of a young man of high performance and still
higher promise, is in all circumstances melancholy. It is
more so, if with the youth has expired either a new vein of
poetry or a new view of truth; and it is scarcely less so
when the youth has been unconsciously the type of a large
* Bailey's theorly is said to be derived, in a great measure, from the
writings of that extraordinary man, David Thom of Liverpool.




JOHN STERLING.                  347
class of cultivated and earnest minds, and when his partial
successes, baffled endeavors-his admitted struggles, and his
premature fate-have been in some measure vicarious.
These three short and simple sentences appear to us to
include, positively and negatively, the essence of the late
John Sterling, and shall form the leading heads in our after
remarks on his genius and character.  He was, in the judgment of all who knew or had carefully read him a person of
very distinguished abilities, and of still more singular promise.
He did not, in our view of him, exhibit indications of original
insight or of creative genius.  But he has, from his peculiar
circumstances, from his speculative and practical history,
from his exquisitely-tuned and swiftly-responsive symphonies
with his age and its progressive minds, acquired a double
portion of interest and importance; his experience seems
that of multitudes, and in that final look of disappointed yet
submissive inquiry which he casts up to heaven, he is but the
foremost in a long, fluctuating, and motley file.
The external evidences of his powers and acquirements
are numerous and irresistible. In his boyhood he discovered
striking tokens of a mind keen, sensitive, and turned in the
direction of those high speculations from which his eye, till
death, was never entirely diverted.  While barely eight, " he
distinctly remembered having speculated on points of philosophy, and especially on the idea of duty, which presented
itself to him in this way-If I could save my papa and
mamma from being killed, I know I should at once do it.
Now, why?  To be killed would be very painful, and yet I
should give my own consent to being killed." The solution
presented itself as " a dim awe-stricken feeling of unknown
obligation." When about nine, " he was much struck by his
master's telling him that the word sincere was derived from
the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence
sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up."  This explanation, he said, gave him great pleasure, and abode in his
memory, as having first shown him that there is a reason in
words as well as in other things.  When a boy, he read
through the whole "1 Edinburgh Review," of which his biographer says, " a diet than which hardly any could yield less
wholesome food for a young mind, and which could scarcely
fail to puff it up with the wind of self-conceit." We doubt




348                 JOHN STERhLING.
the validity of this dictum.  We conceive that, to a fresh
elastic mind, the crossing of such varied territories of thought,
the coming in contact with so many vigorous minds, the acquiring such stores of miscellaneous information, the mere
reading of such a mass of masculine English, as the perusal
of the entire "' Edinburgh Review " implies1 must have been
beneficial; and tended to awaken curiosity, to kindle ambition,
to stifle mannerism of style, and, as the likely result of the
many severe criticisms in which the book abounds, to allay
instead of fanning the feeling of self-conceit.  Who but commends the industry of the boy who reads all the English
essayists-a course of reading certainly much more dissipating;  or the youth who reads all Bayle's " Dictionary "a course of reading much more dangerous than the " Edinburgh Review.?"  Let the boy'read at his pleasure-the
youth will steady, and the man lthiyik/ and act.
At Cambridge, Sterling did not greatly distinguish him
self, nor did he bear any violent affection to his alynza mater.
For mathematics he had little taste; the classics he rather
relished than thoroughly knew.  He early commenced the
study of philosophy, deeming it at once the k6y to a scientific theology and to a lofty literature, although latterly he
all but left the cold and perilous crags of speculation for the
flowery meadows of poetry and Esthetics. At the feet of
Coleridge no one ever sat with a feeling of more entire and
childlike subniission; the house at Highgate was to him the
shrine of a god, and his biographer regrets that he " did not
preserve an account of Coleridge's conversations, for he was
capable of representing their depth, their ever-varying hues
their sparkling lights, their oceanic ebb and flow."  Hle began soon to empty out his teeming mind, in the forms both
of verse and prose. In the course of his short life we find
him connected, more or less intimately, with the following
periodicals, the " Athenieumi,  " Blackwood's Magazine,"
the "Quarterly," and the London and Westminster "'Re
views."  At a peculiarly dull period in the history of " Maga "
he appeared, amid a flourish of trumpets, as a " new contributor," and did succeed in shooting a little new blood into
her withered veins.  In the "Quarterly" he wrote a paper
on Tennyson, which was attributed at the time to Henry
Nelson Coleridge.  Differing as he did in many material




JOHN STERLING.                   349
points from the new school of Radicals who conducted the
"Westminster," he seemed more at home in their company
than in that of the knights of the Noctes; and his contributions to their journal are all characteristic.  These articles
have been reprinted by Dr. Hare, and, along with the poems,
his tragedy of "Stafford," a few letters, and other remains,
constitute all his written claims to consideration.
He has certainly in them raised no very great or compact
basis for future fame; but we are entitled to adduce, in addition, the testimony of his friends, who &li speak with rapture of the possibilities of his mind-of his talent as a debater-and of his ready, vivid, and brilliant talk.  In him
alone Thomas Carlyle met his conversational match; he
alone ventured to face him in single combat, and nothing
like their rencontres seems to have been witnessed since
those of Johnson and Burke.  Even in his "Remains " we
may find faint yet distinct indications of all the principal
features of his intellectual character. These, we think,
may be classed under the three general characteristics of
syzmpathy, sinzcerity, and culture.  We do not mean that
these sum up the whole of his idiosyncrasy, but simply
that they are the qualities which have struck us most forcibly in the perusal of his works.  He had, besides, as a
writer, a fine inventiveness,'a rich and varied stock of figures,
a power of arresting and fixing in permanent shapes the
thinnest gossamer abstractions, and the command of a diction remarkable more for its copiousness, flexibility, and
strength, than for grace, clearness, or felicitous condensation.
Perhaps his principal claim to reputation rests on his criticisms, and their power and charm  lie in genial and self-forgetting sympathy;  It is too customary to speak of this as
a subordinate quality in a critic, as a veil over his eyes, and
nearly inconsistent with the exercise of analytic sagacity.
Those who talk in this manner are not so much guilty of a
mistake as of a stupid blunder. Sympathy is closely connected with sight. It is a medium, which, like water poured
into a bowl, enables you to see objects previously invisible.
It, and it alone, opens a window into the breast and the
brain of genius, and shows the marvellous processes which
are going on within.  It is not merely that the heart often
sees farther than the intellect, but it is that sympathy




350                 JOHN STERLING.
cleanses and sharpens even the intellectual eye. Love, and
you will understand. Besides, the possession of powerful
sympathy with intellect and genius, implies a certain similitude of mind on the part of the sympathizer. The blind
cannot sympathize with descriptions of scenery, and the
lively motion and music of a mountain-stream sound like
a satire to the lame who limp beside it. To feel wzith, you
must always jfind yourself in, the subject or the person.
Adam Smith doubtless was wrong when he explained every
moral phenomenon by sympathy; it were a more probable
paradox to maintain that a man's intellectual power entirely
depends upon the depth, width, and warmth of his sympathics, and that Shakspeare was the greatest of men because
he was. the widest of sympathizers.
Waiving, at this stage of our paper, such speculations,
we claim a high place for Sterling, as possessed of catholic
and clear-headed sympathy. Merely to copy the names of a
few of the characters whom he has analyzed with justice, and
praised with generosity, is enough to prove this. He has
painted Alexander the Great and Wickliffe, Joan of Are and
Gustavus Adolphus, Milton and Burns, Columbus and Coleridge, Simonides and Carlyle, Napier and Tennyson. We
find him, too, on friendly terms at once with "Blackwood's
Magazine " and the " Westminster Review; " writing in the
"Quarterly," and calling Shelley a "generous heroic being; "
and in his " Tales " and " Apologues " imitating the imaginative
peculiarities, now of the G-othic, now of the Grecian, and now
of the German school. We love this spirit much, not merely
as proclaiming a warm hmSart, but as evincing a wide, keen,
and open intellect. We contrast it favorably with a portion of
the very class to whom Sterling belonged, whose fastidiousness
is fast becoming frantic, who are loathing literature itself,
although it is by it alone that themselves have risen, and
whose hasty, splenetic, and contradictory. judgments tend to
exert a damping and discouraging influence upon youthful
aspirants, who will ask, if such authorities tell us that nothing
has yet been done, how can we expect ever to do any thing? 
Sterling, on the contrary, loved literature for its own sake,
and had a true appreciation of its infinite worth and beauty.
He was not like Byron, and one or two others we might name,
who looked upon literature partly as a means for gratify



JOHIN STERLING.                 351
ing an ambition to which other avenues were closed, and
partly as an outlet for the waste energy and superfluous
fury of their natures, when their passions had not entirely
exhausted them, and who, upon the first disappointment and
chagrin were ready to rush into another field; nor did he
resemble a class who have mistaken their profession, and expended powers, which might.ave led them to the highest
distinction, in action, in travelling, parliament, or arms, on
gaining a dubious literary success, which is despised by themselves; nor did he rank with the men whose love to literature
is confined to an appreciation of those who resemble, or who
follow their peculiar style.  His circumstances saved him
from the'miserable condition of a hack author, and from all
the heart-burnings, jealousies, and disgusts which degrade
the noble pursuit of literature in his eyes, and turn its beautiful moon into the clouded lantern of a low, lurid, precarious life. Sterling, in his wide and trembling sympathies
with literary excellence, and in his devoted enthusiasm for the
varied expressions of the beautiful, as well as in the hectic
heat and eagerness of his temperament, bore a striking likeness to Shelley, although possessing a healthier, happier, and
better balanced nature.
While freely conceding him such qualities, we protest
against some of his critical commissions as well as omissions.
We are astonished at his silence in reference to John Foster,
whose sturdy genius ought to have been known to him, and
whose mind was moving more slowly and uneasily through the
same process of speculative change with his own. We cannot
at all understand his admiration for Montaigne, who appears
to have been a very slight sublimation of sensual-indifference, and not more honest than the sensual-indifferent wealthy usually are.  How grossly unjust he is to Rousseau and
Hazlitt, when he calls them " declaimers and dealers in rhetorical falsehood! QGrant that Rousseau was personally a poor
scrannell, tortuous, and broken pipe, who can deny that a
power, call it his genius or his demon, discoursed at times
upon'him sweet and powerful music, to which nations listened because they could not refrain, and which no term like
rhetoric, or even oratory, nor any inferior to poetry, touching
the verge of prophecy, can at all measure?  No such utterances have conime from  Hazlitt; but if he resembled Rous



352                   O-IN STERLING.
seau in occasional bursts of vanity, he was certainly, on the
whole, a sincerer man; he egotizes at his proper cost-his
absurdities seem given in on oath.  For downright honesty,
and for masses of'plain sense, and native acuteness, we are
not afraid to compare and prefer many of his essays to those
of the old Gascon, and, with all his faults and deficiencies,
his match as a masculine and eloquent critic has yet to be
made.  What verbose affairs do even Jeffrey's criticisms,
when collected, appear.beside the lectures of Hazlitt, who
often expresses-the essence of an author by the scratch of his
pen, and settles a literary controversy by an epithet.
Initiation into the mysteries of German philosophy and
literature produced in Sterling a considerable degree of indifference towards the English classics. To Addison's essays
-rthose cool, clear, whispering leaves of summer, so native
and so refreshing-he never alludes, and we cannot conceive
him, like Burke; hushing himself to his last slumber, by hearing read the papers in the "'Spectator " on the immortality
of the soul.  And against Dr. Johnson he has committed
himself in a set attack, of which we must speak more particularly.  An author of celebrity maintains that no person can
be a man of talent who does not admire " Dr. Johnson, and
that all men of eminent ability do admire him."  Without
pressing the application of this assertion, we do think that
those who, in the present age, find in him a hero, discover
both candor and penetration-candor to admit and pass by
his bulky faults as a writer, and penetration to see his bulky
though disguised merits as a writer and a man.  For one to
call him a mere "prejudiced emphatic pedant," is simply to
write down one's self an ass. For Coleridge to call him the
"overrated man of his age " (how could the age avoid rating
him highly, since he was, save Burke, the greatest man it
had?) is for Coleridge to prove himself a privileged person,
who said whatever he chose. Sterling's charges may be classified thus: Dr. Johnson's productions are " loud and swollen "-he could say nothing of poetry, and has said nothing
of Shakspeare "worth listening to" —he had no "serene
joy,"-and he wanted it because he had no " capacity for the
higher kinds of thought."  To the proof.
1st, His language was " loud and swollen." Granted. So
is a torrent, or a river in flood. So are Thomson's "Sea



JOHN STERLING.                   353
sons," Young's " Night Thoughts," Schiller's " Robbers,'
Coleridge's "Hymnn to Mont Blanc," and "Religious Musings," Sterling's " Lycian Painter " and'" Last of the Giants."
all productions of genuine merit and meaning, and yet all
stilted either in style or manner, or both. Johnson is often
loud, but seldom boss —he can beat the drum, but he can
shiver the castle-gate with his axe too. If his arm be sometimes "swollen" with indolence, it is as often swollen with
heavy blows aimed, and not in vain, at the heads of his enemies.  His very yawn is thunder-he swings in an easy
chair, which many that mock him could not mzove. You may
laugh at the elephant picking up the pin, but not ejaculating
you, brained and battered, toward the skies.
2cd/ly, He has said nothing of Shakspeare or poetry
worth listening to.  What! Is his dissertation in Waller on
sacred poetry, be it true or false, not worth listening to?
or his panegyric on the "Paradise Lost?" or his character
of the "Night Thoughts?" or his comparison between Pope
and Dryden? or his picture of a poet in " Rasselas?"
or his unanswered overturn of the unities in his essay on
Shakspeare? or several other portions of that "ponderous
mass of futilities?'" or his famous lines on Shakspeare?
Mark, we are not asserting that all,uch passages are of the
highest order of philosophical criticism, but we are asserting
their intrinsic value, and their immeasurable superiority to
the vague, empty, pointless, misty, and pseudo-German disquisitions which stuff many of our principal magazines and
reviews in the present day. We are not prepared to sacrifice the poorest passages in the " Lives of the Poets "-nay,
not even his notes on Shakspeare (which make Fanny Kemble swear —off the stage), for such a piece of elaborate and
recondite nonsense, as recently was permitted to appear in a
celebrated Scottish review, as a paper on Tennyson's c" Princess," and was yet not the worst specimen of the kind of
criticism referred to.
But Sterling accuses Johnson of wanting"  serene joy;"
an accusation, alas! too true.  But, how could he have
attained this, in the first place, under the pressure of that
"vile body " —that huge mass of disease, bad humors, and
semi-blindness, which he carried about with him, and under
which he struggled and writhed like a giant below Etna?




354                 JOHIN STERiLING.
In the victim  of old, yoked consciously to a putrefying car
cass, we may conceive stern submission, but hardly serene joy.
We can account for a man like William Cobbett, high in
health, clear in eye, and with a system answering, like the
crystal mirror of a stream, to every feature of his intellectual
faculties, reproaching Johnson with gloom, but must think it
a sad mistake, if not an affectation, on the part of a philosophic valetudinarian like John Sterling. Besides, as it has
been said that the laws of disease are as beautiful as those
of health, the intuitions of disease are as true as those of
Izealth. In none of them is the whole truth found; but even
as the jaundiced view is only a partial rendering of the creation and of man, so the view of one in perfect health and
strength, with a sanguine temperament, and in circumstances
of signal prosperity, is equally imperfect.  The one may be
called a black or yellow, the other a white lie. Surely the
Cockney we have elsewhere commemorated as sitting with
Carlyle in a railway carriage, rubbing his hands, and saying
to the grim stranger-" Successful world this, isn't it, sir?"
was as far astray as the author of Sartor glaring through the
gloomy bile-spotted splendor of the atmosphere which usuaIly surrounds his spirit. And whether are more trustworthy
the feelings of the man standing before his fire watching the
parturition of a pudding, and the simmering of a pot of
mulled porter, and exclaiming " How comfortable!" or those
of a traveller perishing among the midnight snows 9  There
is truth, and equal truth, in all such angular aspects,-there
is the whole truth in none of them, nor even in any conceivable mixture of them all.  And it were difficult to imagine
a man in temperament like Johnson forming essentially another view than what rushed in on him from every orifice of
his distempered system.
There is a cant in the present day-a cant which Sterling was above —about health, healthy systems, healthy views,
healthy regulation of body, as producing a healthy tone of
mind, as if the soul and stomach were identical, as if good
digestion were the same thing with happiness, as if all
gloomy and distressing thoughts sprung from bile, as if one
had only to lie down under the " wet sheet " to understand
the origin of evil, to solve all the cognate, tremendous problems of the universe and to obtain that C. reconciliation"




JOHN STERLING.                 355
after which all earnest spirits aspire. Easy the process now
for obtaining the "-peace which passeth understanding!"
Poor John Bunyan, why didst thou struggle, writhe, and
madden, wade through hells of fire and seas of blood, to gain
a result to which cold bathing and barks would have led thee
in a month?  Foolish Thomas Carlyle, why all that pother
about everlasting noes and yeas, instead of anticipating Bulwer in the baptismal regeneration of the cold-water cure?
This is a free translation of the doctrines propounded by our
modern utilitarians, who hold that if they had had Dante
and Byron in their hands, they would have made them happy men, and writers so sweet and so practical, and who can
hardly credit you wh en you tell them that John Foster observed all the " natural laws," and was a gloomy " son of
thunder," and that others break them  daily, and are as
merry as the day is long. It is vain to speak to them of
temperament, of hereditary melancholy, of mental penetration so piercing as to amount to distemper, of visions of evil
so vivid as to haunt every movement of the spirit, of hectic
sensibility, of doubts so strong as to threaten to strangle
piety and render devotion at times a torment-let the man
but give up tobacco, and he will and must be happy? Foster
evidently did not take enough of exercise, Carlyle smokes,
and Cowper went to excess, it is well known, in the "cup
that cheers but not inebriates." Ilinc illae lachrymae!
Now, it is of course conceded that a well-regulated
physical life will in some measure modify both mental views
and mental happiness. But, in the first place, there are
constitutions for whom a well-regulated means a generous
mode of living. Such was that of Shelley, who, according
to the testimony of his friends, was never so well or happy
as when, at rare intervals, he departed from his usual fare
of vegetables and water.  Secondly, "Because thou art
virtuous," is there no more vice in the world, no more
misery-is every dark problem solved-are the old enigmas
of death and sin made one whit plainer? nay, in proportion to the degree of personal purity, is not the feeling of
sorrow and disgust at the follies and foulnesses of the world
likely to gain strength?  Ah! the utmost that the cleanest
outward life can do is to produce in some minds a feeling
that they have evaded, although not met, the grand diffi



356                 JOHN STERLING.
culty, to produce in others a selfish self-complacency and
forgetfulness,. springing from a state of health so unnaturally constant as to be in reality a disease, and on minds
of the higher order to produce little per'naicent effect at
all.  From another source must help come. From  above,
from the regions of spiritual truth, must descend that baptism of fire which confers ardent hope, if not happinessthat blessedness which is higher and better, even in its imperfection and chequered light, than the'unthinking calm
or mechanical gladness of the best regulated animlalism.
But Johnson, according to Sterling, wanted serene joy,
not merely from  the peculiarity of his temperament, nor
merely from the state of his age and the degree of his culture, as affecting his impressions, but from his incapacity
for the higher kinds of thought-as if all possessed of this
capacity, as if Coleridge, for instance, or Schiller, or Carlyle, whom Sterling always ranks in the first class, have
been serene, and as if this explanation of Johnson's want
of peace, were not disproved by a hundred instances of men
who, less entitled than he to the praise of the highest original or inventive genius-for example, Hall, Southey,
Chalmers, and the lately deceased Hamilton of Leeds-have
been distinguished by buoyant and child-like felicity. No;
we are persuaded that from no defect in Johnson's intellect,
but from constitutional causes, sprung his morbid melancholy; nay, that the strength of his intellect was proved by
the control which it exercised over' his temperament.  A
giant maniac required and obtained a giant keeper.  Had
he possessed the culture and shared in the progress of our
age, we are not sure, if more than three or four of its literary heroes would have equalled him. Peace to his massive
shade! He was one of the best, greatest, wisest, and most
sincere of men.
While we are engaged in finding fault, we may notice
our author's opinions on the connection between intellect
and heart.  Carlyle had maintained that a truly great intellect must always be accompanied by a noble moral
nature; he had not asserted the converse, that a noble
moral nature implies a great intellect.  Sterling, in his
reply, commits, we think, two mistakes. First, imagining
that Carlyle had asserted this untenable converse, he presses




JOHN STERLING.                  357
hirn %ahh the names of Newton of Olney, Thomas Scott,
Calamy, Swartz, and Jeanie Deans, and asks if these were
people of high intellect?  But although the day includes
the hour, the hour does not include the day. Carlyle's idea
is, that while the moral nature has been found high and the
intellect smull, the intellect has never come to its true
elevation without the correspondence of the heart.  It is a
question of facts. In the second place, Sterling and Carlyle
attach different mneanings to the word intellect.  With fhe
one it signifies the anderstanding, and he shows triumphantly
how it has wedded wickedness or heartlessness in Tiberius,
the Duke of Guise, Lord Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Talleyrand.  With Caitiyie it means the higher power of intuition, genius, or reason, which, according to him, while
often attended by a traia of error-imlps, or even big, burly
vices, never exhibits profotud and radical depravity, and is
never unattended by a sense of the good, the true, the generous, and the just.  It is obviously impossible to settle a
controversy where there is t preliminary misunderstanding
as to the terms, but we certainly incline to Carlyle's opinion
-holding it, however, only as a general rule, and noting two
distinct species of exceptions wieoh we may call the mad
and the monstrous case. There is first the m,,Zad, in which,
as with Rousseau, and perhaps lIirabeau arid Byron, a
diseased organization has divided those principles of head
and heart; which are usually joined in the marriage chamber
of the brain of genius.  There is secondly, the inonstrous
case, where, as in Bacon, the moral sense, if not omitted
entirely, seems to exist in an inverse proportion to the intellectual power-where an intellect vast, varied, and weighty
as the globe, is balanced by a heart, hard and small as a pinpoint.  Ought we to add Napoleon as another instance of
this second most rare and appalling formation i
We mentioned as the second general quality of Sterling
his sincerity.  Those much abused and deseerated terms,
truth-seeker and beauty-lover, assumed too often by the selfish and the vain to distinguish them from the common
crowd, came of their own accord and rested on his head.
And if he did seem toward the close to relax somewhat in
his devotion to truth, and to be smit with a fonder affection
for the beautiful, it was because, while the latter melted into




358                 JOHIN STERLING.
his embrace, the former fled ever before him into her awful
shades.  He turned from the haughty Rosalind of truth to
the fair young Juliet of beauty. But his love, in both
instances, was as pure as it was ardent. You do not see in
him the death-wrestle of Arnold, who like Jacob at Peniel,
appears panting as he cries to the mysterious form, " I will
not let thee go except thou bless me; rather crush me by thy
weight than tell me nothing." For such painful and protracted struggle Sterling was unfitted by temperament and
by illness; but if not a rugged athlete, he was a swift runner
in this great chase. His mind wrought less than Arnold's
by research —more by rapid intuition. With less learning
and perseverance, he had incomparably more imagination
and more philosophic sagacity. Health and cirqumstances
prevented him from effecting so much as Arnold, or leaving
on the age the same impression of fearlessness, truthfulness,
and moral power. More than even Arnold was he caught
in the meshes of uncertainty, and to both death seemed the
dawning of a light which they had yearned after, but never
reached on earth. Both died too early for the world, but in
time for their own happiness. It is clear that Arnold could
not have remained much longer connected with the English
Church, nor probably with any. Whither the restless progress of Sterling's mind would have led him we cannot tell,
but it had conducted him to quaking and dangerous ground.
Both, while in deep doubt upon many important questions,
exhibited on the verge of death a child-like Christianity of
spirit and language which it is delightful to contemplate;
and both, through their moral likeness to each other, through
their position and the progress of their thought, will, notwithstanding many mental dissimilarities, be classed together
by posterity as two of the most interesting specimens of the
enlightened minds of our strange transition period.
Sterling's culture was of a peculiar kind. His mind was
not ripened under the scorching sun of science, but under
the softer and more genial warmth of philosophy and literature. We are not sure if he had ever thoroughly mastered
the original works of the German philosophers, or if his metaphysical reading was of an extensive range; we incline to
think that he had acquired much of his knowledge of Kant
and his brethren from the extempore versions of Coleridge,




JOHN STERLING.                   359
and that it was with the poets and such moral and religious
writers of Germany as Schleiermacher that he was familiar.
His historical knowledge was rather wide than accurate, and
from severe personal research he shrunk with all the reluctance of a sensitive and nervous nature.  With the classics
of all polite literature he was intimately conversant.  His
theological attainments were respectable-there is no evidence that they were more, and latterly, indeed, he became
deeply prejudiced against the present pretensions, and forms,
and modes of investigating that science. His culture, altogether, was rather elegant than strict, rather recherche than
profound; and from this we think, in part proceeded the
uncertainty of his theological views.  His clerical profession
and his early feelings created an intense interest in theological subjects, and a yearning for deeper insight into them,
but his tastes and his powers adapted him for a different
pursuit. Theology, if we would find aught new in it, requires
digging.  Sterling could not dig, he could only fly; his
verdicts, therefore, are valuable principally for their sincerity; they are rapid first impressions, not slow, deliberate, last
judgments. The very power which rendered him a consummate critic of the fine arts, and often an exquisite artist, disqualified him for those laborious and complicated processes
which go to build up the great idea of God's relations to
mankind. Here he is a tongueless orator, a blind painter,
a dumb musician, his powerlessness of execution being pro.
portionate to the strength of his desire.
A man of genius John Sterling has often been called, not
are we disposed to deny him the precious but indefinite term.
His sympathies, his temperament, his mode of thinking, all
the moods and tenses of his mind, were those of genius. If
not a man of genius, he was a most startling likeness or bust
of one. Nevertheless, we have our doubts as to the originality or greatness of his vein.  We argue this not, as some
would absurdly, from  his wide and generous sympathies;
great genius implies a great genial nature as necessarily as
a great river a great channel for its waters, and a broad
nature, like. a broad river, must reflect many objects.  We
argue it not from finding no extensive or profound work in
the list of his writings-this his short life and his long due]
with death sufficiently explain; and still less from his non




360                 JOHN STERLING.
popularity (in the popular sense) as an author; as he never
spoke to the empty echo of popular applause, he never expected to receive a reply.  But we imagine that we notice
in the various productions he has left a sort of ten-tative process as of a mind distracted by various models and attempting different styles.  We observe this not merely in his
earlier but in his later works. We never from the beginning
to the end of his career, find him in a path so peculiar and
lonely that we cry out, "Let him prosecute this if he can till
death."' He never gives the impression, amid all his individual brilliancies of thought, invention, and figure, of a new,
and whole, and undivided thing, leaving such influence on us
as is given by the sight of a new comet in the heavens, or of
a Faust, a Festus, or a " Rime of the Anciente Marinere "
upon the earth.  His genius rather touches, dances on a
brilliant and shapeless fire-mist, than constructs it into fine
or terrible forms. IHe has all the variety, vividness, truth,
and eloquence which constitute an artist who has genius, but
not the possession, the self-abandonment, the gigantic monotony, slowly evolving itself out of the wide circle of early
sympathies, and wielding them all to its purpose-the one
great thing in nature to tell-the one great thing toward
man to do, which distinguish a prophet whom gezius has.
There are two lights in which to regard Sterling's writings-either as trials of strength or as triumphs of genius.
It is in the former light that we are disposed to regard
them. They are of almost every variety of style, subject,
and merit.  We have poems, apologues, allegories, a tragedy, criticisms, novels, and fiagmentary relies. Seldom
do we remember the steep of fame scaled on so many
sides by one so young. He resembled a captain who waiting for the ultimate order of his general, keeps his troops
moving hither and thither in what seems aimless and endless ubiquity. So Sterling hung around all the alleys and
avenues of thought, tarrying for the word "mlarch and secure this or that one" —a word which never came.  Yet
assuredly his talent, tactics, and earnestness were of no
ordinary kind.  How much mild pathos has he condensed
into the "Sexton's Daughter!"' What fine though dim
condensations many of his poetical lines are!  How tenderly and truly does he touch what we might deem the




JOHN STERLING.                 361
yet sensitive and shrinking corpse of WTentworth! Napoleon, too, lie has resuscitated; and it is at the touch of
no earthworm that he springs aloft, gigantic, if not triumphant, from the tomb.  And throughout the tales and apologues, which principally compose the second volume of
his " Remains," there are sprinkled beauties of thought,
sentiment, and expression, for which forty volumes of modern novels might be searched in vain.
On his " Thoughts " and " Letters," as in some respects
the most interesting of his writings, we propose to pause
for a little. Always are such writings, if from a sincere
nman, the most direct and genuine issues of his spirit-they
are just the mind turned inside out. The naked man that
can bear inspection must be handsome; the naked thought
which delights must be beautiful and true. A very good
and  very clever divine has written  "Adam's Private
Thoughts."  We are thankful to him; but what would we
give for the private thoughts of Shakspeare, Milton, and
especially of Burke, since he, less than most men, "hung his
hleart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at."  Were but some
one wiser and greater than Rousseau to shrive himself as
honestly as he! An honest account of his inmost sentiments and his entire history, held up in the hand of any
intellectual man, not insane, would stop almost the motions
of society till it had been read and pondered. Autobiographies being in general the falsest of books, the exception would be the more prized. And thus. too, we should
find that one fearless man had uttered feelings and thoughts
participated in by the whole human race, and was the mouth
of a dumb humanity.
Sterling's " Thoughts " are evidently sincere, but as evidently a selection. They are the collected cream of his mind.
He does not open his soul ad aperturanz li5ri.  He gives
us elegant extracts, and some of them might have been better entitled " How I ought to have thought at such and such
a time."  The whole collection is not so much of " thoughts"
as of "after-thoughts."  They were published, let us remember, before his death, in "Blackwood's Magazine."
Had they been thorough-going utterances and written in
blood, no periodical would have printed them. As it isj
16




362                      JOHN STERLING.
many of them  are very beautiful anl profound.  We quote
a few: —," There is no lie that many men will not believe; there is no man
who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only
lies.
One dupe is as impossible as one twin.
To found an argument for the value of Christianity on external evidence, and- not on the condition of man and the pure idea of God, is to
hold up a candle before our eyes that we may better see the stars.
The religion of all Pagans indiscriminately has often been written of
by zealous Christians in the worst spirit of Paine and Voltaire.
Lies are the ghosts of truths, the masks of faces.
The firm foot is that which finds firm footing. The weak falters
although it be standing upon a rock.
Goethe sometimes reminds us of a Tihan in a court dress.
The prose man knows nothing of poetry, but poetry knows much of
him.
No man is so born a poet but that he needs to be regenerated into a
poetic artist.
There are countenances far more indecent than the naked form of
the Medicean Venus.
Those who deride the name of God are the most unhappy of men,
except those who make a trade of honoring him.
An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot
be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.
There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings,
and at the same time cut the sinews at the wrist.
Better a cut finger than no knife.
The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best
which teaches every thing else, and not that."
Sterling's letters are plain, unexcited, and unpretending.
Their style, so much simpler than that of his essays and
tales, suggests the thought that he must have elaborated the
latter.  They interest more from their good sense and information than as discoveries of character. They are full of
generous and quiet criticism.  Thus, of Lamb, he says" I have been looking over the two volumes of his letters,
and I am disposed.to consider them the pleasantest in the
language, not excepting the best of Cowper's, nor Horace
Walpole's. He was a man of true genius, though on a small
scale, as a spangle may be gold as pure as a doubloon."
Speaking of his own poems, he says —" When I think of
Christabel, and Herman, and Dorothea, I feel a strong persuasion that I deserve the pillory for ever writing verses at




JOHN STERLING.                  363
all. The writings of Schelling, Fichte, and some others, give
the same uneasy belief as to prose." Again-" Lately I have
been reading some of Alfred.Tennyson's second volume, and
with profound admiration of his truly lyric and idyllic ge,
nius.  There seems to me to have been more epic power in
Keats, that fiery, beautiful meteor; *but they are two most
true and great poets.  When one thinks of the amount of
recognition they have received, one may well bless God that
poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by
all mankind or left alone in its own magic hermitage. It is
true that what new poetry we have is little cared'lor; but
also true that there is wonderfully little deserving any honor.
Compare our present state with twenty years ago, when
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Scott as a novelist:
were all vigorously productive. Carlyle is the one great star
that has arisen since, and he is far more prophet than singer."
Hle gives a striking anecdote of Thorwaldsen:;" Did you
ever hear the story of his being at a party at Bunsen's,
whose house was on the Capitolian Hill, on the site of the
temple of Olympian Jove, and where the conversation, as
often, under Bunsen's guidance took a very Christian turn,
till Thorwaldsen remarke', through the window commanding
a noble prospect of Rome, the modern city, the planet Jupiter in great glory, and, filling his glass, exclaimed,' Well,
here's in honor of the ancient gods!'"
We mentioned at the commencement that we conceived
John Sterling's progress was typical of that of a large and
interesting class of intellectual persons in the present day.
We proceed now to explain what we mean. It is an extremely important and serious aspect of his history at which
we must now look. It is at his religion.
So far as religion can be called constitutional, John
Sterling was constitutionally religious. The union of ardent temperament, high intellect, and pure morals, generally in this country generates a strong religious appetency,
which was manifest in him. Dr. Hare has not traced so
minutely and clearly as had been desirable the entire progress of his thoughts and feelings on this momentous topic.
Indeed, there is, throughout all his memoir a shrinking,
skulking, and want of plain speaking on the subject, unworthy of such a man writing on such a man, and this, we know,




364                  JOHN STERLING.
some of Sterling's warmest friends feel; but we think we
can map it out with considerable accuracy, and in very few
and very plain words.  From the early piety of genius, he
seems to have  iassed into the early skepticism of genius.
While sounding on his dim and perilous way in those troubled waters, the great beacon-light of Coleridge attracted
and seemed to save him. He became in theory, as he had
been in feeling, a Christian.  Influenced by his marriage and
other circumstances, disciplined by various grave events, and
not, he trusts, unguided by the Holy Spirit, he entered the
workl of the Christian ministry, labored for six months with
exemplary diligence, and was only prevented by illness from
prosecuting the calling. Afterwards, a change began gradually to pass over his mind.  Loosened from professional ties
-burning with a hectic speculation-impatient of the oant,
and common-places, and bigotry of ordinary theologianssick of the.senseless controversies of his church-and attracted ever more and more by the learning and genius of
Germany, his orthodox belief in Christianity was shattered,
though his childlike love for it remained the same. At last
he died, it must be told, more than doubtful of the divine
origin of Judaism, unsatisfied of the evidences of Christianity, and yet ravished with the unutterable beauty and
moral grandeur, of the latter; and his almost last words
were a request to his sister to hand him the old Bible he was
wont to use in Herstmonceux (where he had been curate)
among the cottages.
Such is the plain unvarnished tale of Sterling's religious
career. It is a very painful, very interesting, and very instructive narrative. We must be permitted to methodize
our impressions of it under the following remarks:-First,
It is not, alas! a singular case. Secondly, Its causes are
not very recondite. And, thirdly, It teaches some momentous lessons.
1st, The case is not uncommon. Without alluding to
innumerable private instances, the process through which
Sterling was passing:is almost the same with that less fully
undergone by Foster and Arnold, and which, in Newman and
Parker, in Carlyle and Emerson, may be considered perfected. In Shelley, it was different. In the first place, he
unfortunately never enjoyed, we fear, the opportunity of see



JOHN STERLING.                  065
ing real religion incarnated in living examples; with that
noble moral poem, sublimer far than a "Paradise Lost," a
meek and humble disciple of Jesus, he seems never to have
come in contact.  2dly, He was early repelled from just
views of the subject by the savage stupidity of university
tests and treatment.  And, 3dly, The motion of his mind
was accelerated by that morbid heat and misery which made
his life an arm of Styx, and rendered his entire character
and history anomalous. Shelley is the caricatatre of the unsatisfied thinker of the times; and while, as a poet, admired
by all for his potential achievements, his creed, which creed
was ione, unless a feverish flush on the brow be a fixed
principle of the soul, has only influenced those who are
weak and -morbid through nature, or raw and ineondite
through youth.: Sterling, on the other hand, was the express
image of such a thinker, in its highest and purest form.
Ere inquiring into the causes of that strange new form of
skepticism, which has seized so many of our higher minds,
let us more distinctly enunciate what it is not, and does not
spring from.  It is not, as some imagine, a mere disguise
which the skepticism of iHume and Voltaire has assumed, better accommodated to the tastes and the progress of the present age. It is: not the same with it, even as Satan towering to the sky was the same with Satan lurking in the toad.
It differs from it in many important respects.  1st, It admits
much which the unbelief of Paine and Voltaire denied; it
grants the beauty, the worth, and the utility of our religion
-nay, contends that, in a sense, it is a divine emanation, the
divinest ever given to man.  It:does not sheathe, but tosses
away the old poisoned terms imposture, fraud, priestcraft,
cunningly devised fable.  2dly, It approaches religion with
a different feeling and motive.  It desires to find its very
highest claims true.  It has no interest that they shoula be
false. The life of such an one as we describe is modelled on
the life of Christ; his language. is steeped in the Bible vocabulary, as in burning gold. Prayer and its cognate duties
he practises, and his heart is ever ready to rise to the swells
of Christian oratory and feeling, as the war-horse to the
sound of the trumpet. He teaches his children to prattle of
Christ, and weeps at eventide as they repeat their little
hymns. He gives to the cause of the Gospel, and his cheek




366                   JOHN STERLING.
glows at the recital of the deeds of a Williams or a Wad.
dell. The skeptic of the eighteenth century first hated religion, because it scowled on his selfishness —then wished it
untrue-and then, generally with the bungling haste of overeagerness, tried to prove it untrue. Thus Paine felt the
strong right hand, which, in the "Rights of Man " had coped
worthily with the giant Burke, shivered to splinters when he
stretched it forth, in the " Age of Reason," against the " ark
of the Lord."  The doubter of our day (we speak, of course,
of one class) loves religion, wishes it true, reverences every
pin and fringe of its tabernacle, tries to convince himself and
others of its paramount and peculiar divinity, and if, ad last,
the shadow of a cloud continues to hang over his head, it
fails to disguise the fast-flowing tears wrung from his disappointed spirit. 3dly, It approaches religion, not only with a
different feeling, but from a different direction. The skeptic
of the eighteenth century approached it from the platform
of matter-a platform  in itself mean, even when including
the whole material universe; the doubter now looks at it
friom the lofty ground of the ideal and the spiritual.'" It
contradicts the laws of matter," said the one.  "I cannot, in
all its parts," says the other, " reconcile it with the principles
of mental truth." "It is something greater than matter,"
said the one.  "It is something less than mind," says the
other.  " I cannot grasp it," said the one.  " I can but too
easily account for much,Tf it," says the other.  " It surpasses my standard," said the one.  " It does not come up to
mine," says the other.'Its miracles to me seem monstrous
things which I cannot swallow," said the one.  "To me,"
says the other, " they appear petty tricks, not impossible to,
but unworthy of, a G-od."  "Its'prophecies seem  to me all
written after the event," said the one.  " To. me," says the
other, " the objection is that they tell so little that is really
valuable.  What comparison between the fate of a thousand
empires and one burst of pure truth?" ~" The whole thing,"
said the one, "is too supernatural and unearthly for me.w
"To me, says the other, " it bears but too palpable marks
of an earthly though unparalleled birth-God's highest, it
may be, but not his only or ultimate voice."'' I wish I could
convince every body that it was an imposture," sktid the one.
" I wish," says the other, "that [ could convince myself that




JOHIN STERLING.                  367
it is what the -world professes to believe it.  " It is strange,"
said the one, " that, superstition as it is, it won't die."  "It
is far stranger," says the other, " how, if it be Ipar excellence
true, it is dying, and has become little else than a calput
nortZnum.'  "L But, then, it must be confessed," said the
one, " that its external evidences are imposing, though not
irresistible."  "To  ne," says the other, " these seem  its
weakness, not its strength; and as to its vitals-its internal
evidences-is it not; like Cato, day after day, tearing them
out with its own suicidal hands-is it not rapidly becoming
a worldly and mechanical, if not a carnal, sensual, and devilish thing."
Such is a fair statement of the difference between the
two skepticisms. As we proceed, we shall have occasion to
refute the conclusions of the second variety.  We now come
to its causes.  1st, WVe may name the over stress which was
long laid by the defenders of Christianity upon its external
evidences. The effects of this have been pernicious in various ways.  It could not, in the first place, be disguised that
many who defended with the most success the external evidences were, if not secret skeptics, strangers to the living
influence, and disbelievers in the peculiar doctrines of the
Gospel.  Such were Lardner, Watson, Priestley, Wakefield,
and Paley. They first threw away the kernel of Christianity, and then did desperate battle in defence of the empty
shell. Never were walls and bulwarks, containing nothing,
more heroically defended.  The school of Warburton and
Hurd, indeed, were of a more Christian class, but their polemical bitterness and personal arrogance were intolerable.
2dly, Even the successful defence of the evidences seemed a
poor exploit, when it was confessedly considered inadequate
to impress the vital principles of Christianity upon the mind
-stopping, it might be, the mouths, but not opening the
hearts of its adversaries, whom it drove away from, instead
of drawing into, the city of God; and the loud cheers, which
followed each victory over a desperate but unconvinced foe,
sounded harsh and horrible, as were one to encore the plunge
of a lost spirit into the abyss. 3dly, If external evidences
were the principal, if not sole proof of Christianity, what became of the belief of the majority of Christians, to whom
these evidences were unknown, or who, at least, were quite




368                  JOHN STERILING.
incapable of estimating the true nature and"'weight of the
argument foundedl upon them?  If their belief was worthless, must not their Christianity be baseless and worthless
too?  If it was not, what a slur on those elaborate evidences, which in no instance could reach a result which was
daily attained by thousands without any external evidence
at all! 4thly, W~hat was the gutmzost value of external evidences?  Not to produce demonstrative conviction of the
truth of Christianity, but only a very high degree of probability. But is the soul, with all its eternal issues, to depend
upon a question of degree, of less and more, of a few grains
above or scruples below? Is there no straighter, higher,
nobler road to conviction?  May there not be a voice within
us, corresponding with a voice in Christianity, changing a
faltering " perhaps" into a loud, confident, and commanding
"it is, it must be so?" Thus felt Pascal, and this is the true
history of his faith. He did not, as Cousin pretends, in
order to avoid the gulf of universal skepticism, to which his
thoughts and researches were leading him, and where he
knew perdition weltered at the bottom, turn back and throw
himself into the arms of implicit faith, which, like a nurse a
child, had followed him to the brink.  No, but dissatisfied
with the common evidences of Christianity, as clemonstrative,
he leaned down and listened to the hidden river of his own
spirit, as echoing the voice of inspiration, and it became to
him an oracle-a proof unutterable, an argument unstateable in human terms, only to be fully written out in soulcypher, and to be'fully read by the eye of the soul.
Pascal, we must observe. felt the utmiost value of external evidence; he believed that it made the truth of Christianity highly probable —nay, probable in the highest degree,
though the highest degree of probability is still, of course,
remote from absolute mathematical certainty.  But there
are others who look upon the evidences 2)ro and conZ as nearly balancing each other, and what for them is to turn the
scale?  Nay, there are some who conscientiously think that,
after all Paley and Watson have written, the evidences con
outweigh the evidences pro; and what can our boasted external argumentations do any more for them?
Thus has external evidence in a great measure failed of
securing its object, and has by this felt failure produced in




JOHN STERLING.                 369
many of our present thinkers the form of skepticism-we
now describe and deplore. In our humble judgment, instead of miracles being the principal proof of Christianity1
Christianity is a much stronger proof of miracles.  A
Book intrinsically so divine, so simple, so far superior to
all others, and so adapted to the wants of human nature,
cannot be imagined to be deceived or to deceive others in
the relation of facts.  The quantity and singularity of such
facts is itself an additional circumstance in their favor.
A wise imposture would have sprinkled them more sparingly and artistically, and brought down in no case save
in that of necessity, its Deus ex qachina.  The great purpose of miracles at first was to compel attention to the new
system -by the glare of grandeur it threw around it-a
finger of supernal light must touch the head of the bashful
boy-God, and mark him out: to the world; their main use
now is to corroborate a belief which has been formed
upon quite independent grounds.  " Culture," cries Strauss,
"cannot believe in miracles."  Culture, however, can and
has believed in Christianity, and will not recal its belief,
because she wears on her breast and forehead those mysterious ornaments which speak, not more forcibly than her
whole dress and bearing, of a foreign and unearthly origin.
Miracles must not be considered as splendid tricks-as
mere mighty bravados, which whoso could not equal or
explain was compelled to believe, as well as to believe
whatever was said in the lecture that should follow or accompany those experiments. They were rather, in Foster's
grand thought, the simple tolling of the great bell of the
universe, to announce the great sermon that was to follow;
and as the sermon continues after the bell has rung out, and
becomes of its sound a memorial and testimony, so the marvellous words have outlived and do testify of the marvellous
works.
A second cause of our recent refined skepticism may be
found in the narrow, bigoted, and unworthy notions of
Christianity which prevail, in the obstinacy with which
they are retained, in the fury with which they are defended, and in the contrast thus presented to the liberal and
fluent motion of the general age. This is a large text, and
opens up a field which we have not at present time to era



370                   JOHN STERLING.
brace.  Religious authorship may be taken as a correct in.
dex of the general state of religious culture and progress,
Now this has decidedly improved since John Foster wrote
his first essays, where he so sternly characterizes a large
proportion of its writings, where he speaks of " one writer
who seems to value religion as an ussassin his dagger, and
for the same reason —of another, who in all his motions is
clad with sheets of lead-of a third, from whose vulgar illuminations of religious themes you are excessively glad to
escape into the solemn twilight of faith —and of a fourth,
who represents the Deity as a dreadful king of furies, whose
dominion is overshadowed by vengeance, whose music is
the cries of victims, and whose glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of his creation."  For such, perhaps, we
may now search our religious literature in vain; but we
could point out some curious specimens still extant: here
a writer who would sacrifice all the records of creation to
the arbitrary interpretation of a Hebrew particle; there
another, who, in order to prove Christianity the most excellent of the sciences, raves like a maniac against all
science, and cares less for the sun, moon, and stars, than
for a farthing candle glimmering in the corner of a conventicle; a third, propounding the horrible doctrine, that
if you are not immersed in water you must be immersed in
everlasting fire; a fourth, turning the Bible into a padlock
on the chains of the slave; a fifth, seeking to excommunieate from fire and water here, and from water hereafter,
one of the most gifted and amiable, albeit misled men of
the age, who came an invited and unassuming stranger to
our shores; a sixth, hanging around the majestic form
Of Christianity a dirty finery, picked up from the cast-off
clothes of second-rate poets, and sinking the mother-tongue
of heaven into the sickly whine of a mendicant, as though
Isaiah had become an old Jewish clothesman; a seventh,
indulging, while defending religion, in the worst of human
passions and language, as if rancor, and want of charity,
and spleen, could be baptized and consecrated to Christ's
service —as if the raven perched in Noah's ark were not a
raven, a bird of foul feeding and bad omen still; an eighth,
peppering bad poems with religion to make them sell; and a
ninth, talking of the fearful secrets of future punishment as




JOHN STERLING.                 371
coolly as if he were not also in danger of the judgment, and
who perhaps goes smacking his lips from  the side of the
great universe-darkening sacrifice to the Lord Mayor's feast!
Add to this the deluges of commonplace, issuing in the form
of religious pamphlets and periodicals of the day, and the
thousand narrow and fierce controversial productions which
each month spawns, and conceive of the three-piled disgust,
which in so many of the refined and intellectual darkens
into a deeper feeling, and provokes the cry, "If this be
religion, better skepticism, pantheism, atheism itself."
This, indeed, thank God, is not religion. But it must
bear the reproach of having turned away many who otherwise would have come near and seen this great sight, and
found how vast the difference between those crackling,
whizzing, empty, and transient fireworks, and the low light
of the wilderness, uneclipsed by the noonday ardors, clear,
innocuous, but piercing as the eye of the Inspired, kindled
from, and pointing above-the bush ever'burning and never
consumed.
Thirdly, The divided and unhappy state of the Church
must bear its full share in accounting for the evil, and this
the more especially when at present both letters and science
are approaching closely the ideal of a commonwealth-when
associations of the scientific and literary are the order of the
day-when rancorous personalities and jealousies are dying
out-when an appeal made in behalf of the family of a deceased poet is responded to with such promptitude by men
of all politics and creeds, as to show that an electric cord of
communication is fast binding the literary world into one.
And yet alas! alas! for the divisions of Reuben, and the
rents in the seamless garment of Christ.  Where any real
love between various parties?  Where aught but hasty
and ill-considered armistices?  Where any broad comprehensive plan of union? Where, a genuine esprit de corps
among Christian churches?  Where any actual unions consummated, except in cases where the parties had come so
near before, that their union lost much of its romancewhere it seemed more a shaking of hands in the marketplace, than a marriage, and where, as at the peace of Amiens,
every body on both sides was glad, but nobody proud?
What philosophical examination of principles, conducted by




372                 JOHN STERLING.
wise and impartial men, such as should precede a great
scheme of permanent Union, has ever been even talked of
and are even the meanest and basest of old arts of polemical
depreciation and abuse altogether obsolete? It were long
to trace the causes of this sad spectacle, which just amounts
to-the church inferior to the world, in culture and gentlemanly feeling, in Christian charity; but such is the fact, and
prodigious the mischief which is springing from it. There
are other causes which might have been illustrated, such as
the contempt and prejudice entertained by many Christians
for science and letters-the piece of well or ill adjusted mechanism to which the office of the ministry has been reduced
-the superiority which the press has acquired over the pulpit
-the political spirit which our churches of all kinds have
been led to cherish-and the infection of German, and, in
general of Continental modes of thought and speech. But,
prominent above all, stands the enemy within the camp —
the ghastly fact that Christianity has not the vital hold
over men which it formerly possessed-that we are now
rather haunted by its ghost than warmed by its presencethat formality, mechanism, and a thousand other evil influences have crushed and choked it-and that its extension,
however wide and rapid, will in all probability extend its
evils at even a greater ratio than its advantages-propagate
more tares than wheat.'We unite our feeble voice with that
of Chalmers, and James, and Thomas Binney, in proclaim-.
ing this alarming state of matters.  It cannot now be concealed that a great proportion of the mind of the countryof those who make our laws, who distribute our justice, whose
eloquence fills our courts, whose talent informs our press,
whose energy inspirits our business, whose genius animates
our higher literature, whose benevolence supports our chari
ties, and whose beauty, taste, and accomplishnmezts decorate
and refine our society, have travelled away from churches, and
resigned faith in creeds, and that this they have done principally because the charm and the power which were wont to
detain them there have departed. Were a dance of the living suddenly turned into a dance of the dead, though there
remained the same splendor in the decorations, and the same
lustre in the lamps, and even the same grace in the move.
ments, would there remain the same delight in the specta



JOHN STEPLING.                 373
tors?  Would not they rush forth in confusion and shrieking
dismay at the sight of this ghastly mimicry of life, enacted
where its pulse was beating highest, and where its stream
most richly and tumultuously ran? Thus feel many to our
deserted churches-deserted not of the dead but of the living, not of worshippers but of God.  Pathetic the unseen
Ichabod inscribed on the fallen cathedral-more pensive
still the " Here God once dwelt," visible through the m-oonlight of meditation on the chambers of'the soul in ruins;
but, most sorrowful of all, the sight of a large assembly of
professing Christians, where all the elegance, splendor, light,
decency of deportment, eloquence of speaker-where sympathetic thrill, awful shadow, heaving breasts, and bursting
tears themselves, will not disguise the fact that one is absent,
and that this place is no more " dreadful " with his presence,
nor glorious with his grace.
The statements thus made must be somewhat qualified.
In the first place, we must not be understood to hold that all
our modern skeptics are actuated by such motives, or influenced by such causes.  Many,:we fear, like their brethren in
times past, just "hate the light because their deeds are evil,"
while others are stimulated to skepticism by vanity, pride, or
ignorance. There is another class still, very intelligent but
very inconsistent, of whom Miss Martineau may stand as a
specimen, who, not merely doubting, but absolutely denying
all the supernaturalism of Scripture, express their respect
and reverence for the writers, although, on their own showing, those writers were either fools or rogues. But the class
whom Sterling typified, while sorely perplexed about the
supernatural part, and even the genuineness and authenticity of many of the documents, are smit to a passion with
the grandeur and heavenliness of the system, even to its pe —
culiarities of atonement, spiritual influences, &c.
Secondly, We must not be understood to homologate the
train of thought which we have ventured to put into the
mouth of the Sterling-skeptic, except so far as that relates
to the insufficiency of external evidence, nor to insinuate that
the causes we have mentioned excuse his skepticism. Prophecy, as well as miracles, we look on as powerfully corroborative of the divinity of religion, and the fate of nations, besides, not being the sole subject of prediction, is very im.




374                 JOHN STERLING.
portant when taken in connection with that system which
they opposed, and which proclaimed their destruction, as
well as in itself. The internal evidence of Christianity
seems complete, notwithstanding the fact of a partial decline; and the genius of our religion seems absolutely to
forbid its contentedly taking its place at the head of other
faiths; it must be all or nothing-a devil's lie or divine.
And if it does not answer to the skeptic's idea of a unique
and solitary emanation from heaven, may not the blame lie
not with it, but with the nature of his idea-with himself?
Thirdly, We do not wish, from these giddy heights, to
" waft a lesson of despair" to any one. We are sorry for
the position of such men as Sterling, but it were to be
weaker than old Eli, on their account to tremble for the ark
of God.  The lessons we do mean to draw are as follows:
Istly, of charity; 2dly, of warning; 3dly, of shame; and,
4thly, of courage.
1st, We have need of much charity at the present crisis.
It will not do now to skulk from the field under a flight of
nicknames. It will not do to call our opponents miscreants
and monsters. There never were many in the world really
deserving these names; fools only can believe that there
are many now.  Here, at least, in Sterling, Arnold, Foster,
we have to do with mist-severed brethren upon one great
common march, with sincere lovers of mankind, with practisers of the Christian virtues, with men who diligently
discharged the duties of the Christian ministry, and whose
latest deathbed murmur was of Christ.  W-hile we state
their doubts, let us pity the pain and sorrow, amounting
almost to distraction and despair, which attended them,
and let us inquire, if we have no difficulties, may it not be
because we have never thought at all? and let us envy
them the resolution of their doubts, to which they have
now attained, we trust, in that land where the strength of
light is not measured by the intensity of shade-where,
amid all the constellations which may garnish that upper
firmament, that of the "c Balance" vibrates no more-where
the inhabitants bask in spotless love, and see in perfect
vision. No such charity, however, can we or dare we extend to those half-fledged children of impudence and conceit, or else of pride and profligacy, in whom this age abounds,




JOHN STERLING.                  375
who, at the finding of each new difficulty (one, perhaps,
resolved for centuries), raise a noisy Eureka, as they rush out
with their filthy treasure-for those who cull from such writers as Shelley the blood-red stones of his blasphemy, that
they may wreathe them into a necklace of ruin for themselves —nor even for those miniatures of Giant Despair, who
seat themselves in we know not what " churches of doubters "
or Doubting Castles, to confirm those misconceptions which
they cannot or seek not to cure.  The charity which would
extend to such must verily be of that sort which covers a
multitude of sins, and of sinners too.
2dly, ~We must take up anew a voice of warning-the
voice of him  who saw the Apocalypse.  There is coming
up the church a current of doubt, deeper far and darker
than ever swelled.against her before-a current strong in
learning, crested with genius, strenuous yet calm in progress. It seems the last grand trial of the truth of our
faith. Against the battlements of Zion a motley throng
have gathered themselves together.  Unitarians, atheists,
pantheists, doubters, open foes, secret foes, and bewildered
friends of Christianity, are all in the field, although no
trumpet has openly been blown, and no charge publicly
sounded. There are the old desperadoes of infidelity-the
last followers of Paine and Voltaire; there is the soberer
and stolider Owen and his now scanty and sleepy troop
there follow the Communists of France-a fierce but disorderly crew; the commentators of Germany cone, too, with
pickaxes in their hand>, crying, "1 aze, raze it to its foundations!"  Then you see the garde qmmobile-the vicious and the
vain youth of Europe; and on the outskirsts of the fight
hangs, cloudy and uncertain, a small but select band, whose
wavering surge is surmounted by the dark and lofty crests
of Carlyle and Emerson.  "Their swords are a thousand"their purposes are various; in this, however, all agree, that
historical Christianity ought to go down before advancing
civilization.  Sterling and some of his co-mates the merciful
cloud of death has removed from the fields, while others
stand in deep uncertainty, looking in agony and in prayer
above.
3dly, Of shame.  While thus the foeman is advancing,
what is Zion about? Shame and alas! her towers are well




376                 JOHN STERLING.
nigh unguarded; her watchmen have deserted their stations,
and are either squabbling in her streets with each other, or
have fallen fast asleep.  Many are singing psalms few are
standing to their arms. Some are railing at the enemy from
the safest towers.  The watchman who first perceived the
danger and gave the alarm, almost instantly fell back in death.
4thly, Of confidence. Shall, then, these old and glorious
battlements be trodden down?  Between the activity of
their foes and the supineness of their friends must they
perish?  No; vain is perhaps the help of man, but we too,
will look above. We will turn our eyes to the hills, whence
our aid is expected.  Our grand hope as to the prospects of
the world and the church has long lain in the unchanged
and unchangeable love of Christ. As long as his great,
tremulous, unsetting eye continues, like a star, to watch her
struggles as the eye of love the tossings of disease, we shall
not fear. And whenever the time arrives for that "Bright
and- Morning Star" starting from his sphere to save his
church, he will no longer delay his coming, whether in power
or in presence. To save a city like Zion, there might fall
the curtain of universal darkness.  That curtain shall not
fall, but there may, in lieu of it, burst the blaze of celestial
light; and who can abide the day of that appearing?
THE END.




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" The receipts, which comprise Fish, ilesh, Fowl, and Fruit, are "mne
the less practicable from the abundance of anecdotes with which] thk9 ~e
varxiJshed."-CINciNNATI GAZETTE.




D. Appleton & Co.'s Publications.
NEW  AUERIC"A  CYCLOPEDIA.,       Vr  pdav  9ictfrfary  nff fDTE   B X              T
EDITED BY
GEO. 3RIPLEY and C. A. DANA,
ASSISTED BY A NUMEROUS BUT SELECT CORPS OF WRBITERS.
The design of THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOP=EDIA is to furnish the great body
of intelligent readers in this country with a popular Dictionary of General
Knowledge.
THE NEW AnERICAN CYCLOPHEDIA is not founded on any European model;
in its plan and elaboration it is strictly original, and strictly American. Many of
the writers employed on the work have enriched it with their personal researches,
observations and discoveries; and every article has been written, or re-written,
expressly for its pages.
It is intended that the work shall bear such a character of practical utility as
to make it indispensable to every American library.
Throughout its successive volumes TILE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPEDIA will
present a fund of accurate and copious information on SCIENCE, ART, AGRICULTURE,
COMMERCE, MANUFACTURES, L&W, MEDICINE, LITERATURE, PHILOSOPIHY, MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY, HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY, RELIGION, POLITICS,
TRAVELS, CITlEMISTRY, MECHANICS, INVENTIONS, and TRADES.
Abstaining from all doctrinal discussions, from all sectional and sectarian argu
ments, it will maintain the position of absolute impartiality on the great controrerted questions which have divided opinions in every age.
P R I C  E.
This work is published exclusively by subscription, in fifteen large octave
volumes, each containing 750 two-column pages. Vols. I. to IX. are now ready.
Price per volume, cloth, $3; library style, leather, $3 50; half morocco, $4; half
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