Page images
PDF
EPUB

Manfred. In point of imagination, not only as exhibited in single passages, but in the whole conception of the book, we know of nothing among modern productions-passing by Milton whose type of imagination is very different-with which to compare it. It approaches the gorgeous theological fables of the Oriental Basilides or Valentine. The aspirations of Festus often remind us of Sophia, winging her way from the regions of matter, towards the unfathomable abyss of the primal Essence, and held back by Horus the impersonated time-spirit, the guardian of the boundary between finite knowledge and the infinite. We meet with much that is presumptuous and extravagant;-nay even preposterous. Vaulting ambition always overleaps itself. But these are the faults of a great genius.

The author's cast of imagination makes it difficult for him to put off his distinctive character. He would not make a success. ful dramatist. This is shown in his female characters. True, they always talk purely, sometimes sweetly, and often naturally. But they are perpetually betrayed into long speeches, in which we hear only the lofty tone and glowing rhapsodies of Festus himself. The versification we cannot examine minutely. It is often smooth and harmonious, and of great rhythmical beauty; but oftener it is rough and lumbering,-full of excrescenses and abnormities. Sometimes there seems to be a studied contempt of artistic effort. But it is in character with the author and the poem.

But what shall we say of the religion of the book,-or rather its theology? We have said it is the product of the religious spirit. This is evident on every page. But so were the reveries of Montanus, and the ravings of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit. So were the speculations of Manes and the Gnostics. So were the systems of Pelagius and Socinus. The reader will have observed, that the author assumes an air that looks very much like fanaticism. To say that,

"He knew himself a bard ordained, More than inspired of God, inspirited.”

is certainly pretty bold. We are aware of the almost unbounded franchise which poetry claims and requires, and this alone prevents us from assigning his spiritual consanguinity to the same class with Menander, Mark Stubner and Joe Smith. In the Proem, we are told that the religion of the book is

"Followed out from the book God writ of old;"

and much of it doubtless is. The fundamental doctrines of the

Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement are recognised. But there is much besides which evangelical Christianity pronounces to be not found in the "book God writ of old."

In the first place, the whole book is deeply pantheistic. Pantheism might be called the natural religion of poetry. It seems to be indigenous to its soil. There is something so beautiful in it, something so fascinating to the imagination, something so congenial to the religious spirit which genius has fired, that it has ever been the Scylla by which poetry has been endangered, when the charybdis of scoffing scepticism had no power to draw it. Religious genius is never safe, except when gazing full-faced, and with a teachable spirit, upon the shining orb of revealed truth. Its pantheistic tendency has been clearly seen from the denouement of the book, which we have given. We will cite a few passages from the body of the Poem:

Again :

[ocr errors]

But since now earth is as a crumb of Heaven,
And time an atom of eternity,

Neither depends upon the other, both

One essence being emanant from God,

Whose flowings forth are aye and infinite,

And radiant as the rivers of the skies."-p. 340.

"A world

Is but, perhaps, a sense of God's, by which
He may explain His nature, and receive
Fit pleasure. But the hour is hard at hand,
When Time's grey wing shall winnow all away,
The atoms of the earth, the stars of Heaven;
When the created and Creator mind

Shall know each other, worlds and bodies both
Put off for aye."—p. 377.

Still farther:

"Man shall mix with Deity

And the Eternal and Immortal make
One Being."-p. 393.

God is expressly called the "great world-soul." Mind is called pure power-pure god." Space is called a " quality of God." But enough. If this is not Pantheism, Xenophanes and Plotinus, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza, must stand acquitted. Connected, as there always is, with this pantheistic tendency, is a tendency to fatalism. This flows like a deep under-current through the whole book. Yet it rarely breaks upon the surface,

and flows so silently that you scarcely note it. Still you cannot but feel its presence, inexorable as the force which binds the

stars.

Again, there is an imperfect apprehension of the evil of sin. In a pantheistic system, indeed, the deformity of sin is always overshadowed. It is part of the universe, part of the development of God, and must be explained in some way. Lucifer calls himself "the shadow which creation casts from God's own light," and declares that he is inseparable from the universe. Hear Festus after making an apology for the sad fate of the loved ones he had deserted:

"Let us work out our natures; we can do
No wrong in them, they are divine, eterne :
I follow my attraction, and obey

Nature, as earth does."-p. 279.

Hear him again when about appearing in the presence of his Judge:

Again:

"Forgiveness? Let it be so: for I know not
What I have done to merit endless pain.

Is pleasure crime ?”—p. 386.

Good

"Thou wilt not chronicle our sandlike sins;
For sin is small, and mean, and barren.
Only is great, and generous, and fruitful.

Number the mountains, not the sands, O God!"

Sin, in any form is too insignificant to merit eternal punishment. Listen to the Son of God in Hell itself:

"There is nothing final

'In all this world but God; therefore these souls
Whom I see here, and pity for their woes-

But for their evil more-these need not be

Inhelled for ever; for although once, twice, thrice,
On earth or here they may have put God from them,
Disowned His prophets-mocked His angels-slain
His Son in his mortality-and stormed

His curses back to Him; yet God is such,
That He can pity still; and I can suffer
For them, and save them."-p. 327.

It is this imperfect apprehension of the evil of sin, together with a milk-and-water conception of the goodness and benevolence

of God, that is the moving cause, in the author's mind, of the restoration of Lucifer and the fallen angels without repentance and in spite of themselves. Their sin was involved in the constitution of the universe, and so was the atonement of Christ to balance it; and destiny must have its way. 'It would be interesting and instructive to compare with these views some passages from "the book God writ of old," and see the comparative place which sin holds in the two pictures.

We feel constrained to enter this strong caveat against the theology of a book, which, notwithstanding its great faults, we have read with exhaustless pleasure; and which, we feel sure, will be transmitted to coming ages, as a monument of genius, if nothing else. That it may be made.serviceable to some minds, we are confident; that it may be deleterious to others, we are apprehensive; that it will make the world better, we are rather desirous than sanguine.

Oh! when will poetry escape from the damp fog of a vain philosophy, and spread its wing in the pure azure of heavenly truth! When will genius be baptised in "Siloah's brook which flows fast by the oracle of God," and sit and learn at the feet of him who "spake as never man spake!" When shall every Byron's head be joined with a Pollok's heart! In that day, when "HOLINESS TO THE LORD" shall be upon the bells of the horses, and when "there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts."

Carlisle, Pa.

J. C.

THE CICADAE.

THE ambrosial days of the cicadae or the tettiges are clean gone forever! They did belong to the morning of Greece; the golden age of that country. "When Music, heavenly maid, was young," the charming voices of these insectile foresters were properly appreciated. The same tasteful ears, which were capable of catching the distant music of the spheres and of being pleasured thereby, were turned also in delicate admiration towards the chirpings of these lowlier, noonday quiristers. The poets especially were taken with them. Hesiod mentions them as the dark-winged, musical tettiges, foretelling the approach of Summer; and Homer calls them the lily-voiced, borrowing his metaphor from the most delicate of flowers. The Athenians saw in them so many traits of character resembling their own, that they regarded them with fraternal affections, and believed that they were possessed of souls and, of course, of human feelings. Like themselves they were indigenous to the soil, and fond of disputation and of song, and of basking in the sunshine of the present. How beautiful is the apologue of Plato respecting them, which he represents Socrates introducing by way of episode, while discoursing apart with his beloved Phaedrus, under the plane tree, on love and philosophy!

"Socrates.-Spare time indeed we have on hands, as it seems; and now the cicadae, who, as their wont is in the heat, are chanting and disputing over our heads, it strikes me, are looking down upon us. Should they therefore behold us two, like many others, at noon-day, not discoursing but, through laziness of thought, becoming lulled with their music, justly, in sooth, would we excite their derision; they supposing us to be some loafers who had come apart hither to them in this retired spot, like sheep, to take a nap at noonday near the fountain. But, on the other hand, should they behold us discoursing and, as it were, sailing past them, as by Sirens, unseduced by their strains, highly delighted thereat they would be, and perhaps bestow upon us that boon with which the gods have entrusted them for mortals.

"Phaedrus-But what now is that boon with which the gods have entrusted them? for, as it seems, about this matter I am still uninformed.

"Socrates.-In sooth it is not proper that, at any rate, a man devoted to the Muses should, about such matters, be uninformed. It is said then that these cicadae were once men; before the

« PreviousContinue »