Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

of valuable essays-which give a view of different sides of important questions, like the articles of the Edinburgh, but without the alloy which the inconsistency of the writers of the last mingle with their discussions. It has, we believe, on one or two occasions, suggested valuable hints to the legislature-especially in its view of the effects arising from the punishment of the pillory-which, although somewhat vicious and extravagant in its style, set the evils of that exhibition in so clear a light, that it was shortly after abolished, except in the instance of perjury. As the subject had not been investigated before, and the abolition followed so speedily, it may reasonably be presumed that this essay had no small share in terminating an infliction in which the people were, at once, judges and executioners-all the remains of virtue were too often extinguished -and justice perpetually insulted in the execution of its own sentences.

of rural scenery-whose timid and delicate soul shrunk from the slighest encounter with the world-whose very satire breathed gentleness and good-will to all his fellows-was agonized by its unfeeling scorn. Kirke White, another spirit almost too gentle for earthpainfully struggling by his poetical efforts to secure the scanty means of laborious study, was crushed almost to earth by its pitiable sentence, and his brief span of life filled with bitter anguish. This Review seems about twenty years behind the spirit of the times; and this, for a periodical work, is fully equal to a century in former ages.

Far other notice does the Eclectic Review require. It is, indeed, devoted to a party; and to a party whose opinions are not very favourable to genial views of humanity, or to deep admiration of human genius. But not all the fiery zeal of sectarianism which has sometimes blazed through its disquisitions-nor all the The Retrospective Review is a bold experiment strait-laced nicety with which it is sometimes in these times, which well deserves to succeed, disposed to regard earthly enjoyments-nor all and has already attained far more notice than the gloom which its spirit of Calvinism sheds we should have expected to follow a periodical on the mightiest efforts of virtue-can prevent work which relates only to the past. To unveil us from feeling the awe-striking influences of with a reverent hand the treasures of other honest principle-of hopes which are not days-to disclose ties of sympathy with old shaken by the fluctuations of time-of faith time which else were hidden-to make us feel which looks to "temples not made with hands, that beauty and truth are not things of yester- eternal in the heavens." The Eclectic Review, day-is the aim of no mean ambition, in which indeed, in its earliest numbers, seemed resolved success will be without alloy, and failure with- to oppose the spirit of its religion to the spirit out disgrace. There is an air of youth and of intellect and humanity, and even went to inexperience doubtless about some of the arti- the fearful excess of heaping the vilest abuse cles; but can any thing be more pleasing than on Shakspeare, and of hinting that his soul to see young enthusiasm, instead of dwelling was mourning in the torments of hell, over on the gauds of the "ignorant present," fondly the evils which his works had occasioned in cherishing the venerableness of old time, and reverently listening to the voices of ancestral wisdom? The future is all visionary and unreal-the past is the truly grand, and substantial and abiding. The airy visions of hope vanish as we proceed; but nothing can deprive us of our interest in that which has been. It is good, therefore, to have one periodical work exclusively devoted to "auld lang syne." It is also pleasant to have one which, amidst an age whose literature is "rank with all unkindness," is unaffected by party or prejudice, which feeds no depraved appetite, which ministers to no unworthy passion, but breathes one tender and harmonious spirit of revering love for the great departed. We shall rejoice, therefore, to see this work "rich with the spoils of time," and gradually leading even the mere readers of periodical works, to feel with the gentle author of that divine sonnet, written in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon:

"Not harsh nor rugged are the winding ways Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers." These, we believe, are all the larger periodical works of celebrity not devoted to merely scientific purposes. Of the lesser Reviews, the Monthly, as the oldest, claims the first notice; though we cannot say much in its praise. A singular infelicity has attended many of its censures. To most of those who have conduced to the revival of poetry it has opposed its jeers and its mockeries. Cowper, who first restored "free nature's grace" to our pictures

the

world. But its conductors have since

This marvellous effusion of bigotry is contained in volume of the Review, p. 75. The Reviewer commences an article on Twiss's Index to Shakspeare in the third with the following tremendous sentence: sensible of the value of time, and the relation which the employment of it bears to his eternal state, we should not have had to present our readers with the pitiable spectacle of a man advanced in years consuming the embers of vitality in making a complete verbal Index to the Plays of Shakspeare."

"If the compiler of these volumes had been properly

After acknowledging the genius of Shakspeare, the Reviewer observes. "He has been called, and justly too, the Poet of Nature. A slight acquaintance with the religion of the Bible will show that it is of human nature in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and agitated by the most vicious propensities, that the poet became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar of his goddess will spread its poisonous fumes over the hearts of his countrymen, till the memory of his works is yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which the plays of Shakspeare ministered to their guilty delights." The Reviewer farther complains of the inscription on Garrick's tomb (which is absurd enough, though on far different grounds)-as "the absurd and impious epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of the miserable retailers of his impurities!" "We commiserate," continues the critic, "the heart of the man who can read the following lines without indignation:

'And till eternity, with power sublime,
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary time,
Shakspeare and Garrick, like twin stars, shall shine,
And each irradiate with a beam divine.'

Par nobile fratrum! Your fame shall last during the em-
pire of vice and misery, in the extension of which you

have acted so great a part! We make no apology for our sentiments, unfashionable as they are. Feeling the importance of the condition of man as a moral agent, accountable not merely for the direct effects, but also for the remotest influence of his actions, while we execrate the

a murder, or an authentic description of birth-day dress, or the nice development of a family receipt, communicated, in their pages, to maiden ladies of a certain age an incalcula ble pleasure-and when the learned decipherficed to give them a venerableness in the eyes of the old. If they, then, ever aspired to criticism, it was in mere kindness-to give a friendly greeting to the young adventurer, and afford him a taste of unmingled pleasure at the entrance of his perilous journey. Now they are full of wit, satire, and pungent remark

changed, or have grown wiser. Their Reviews of poetry have been, perhaps, on the whole, in the purest and the gentlest spirit of any which have been written in this age of criticism. Without resigning their doctrines, they have softened and humanized those who professing of an inscription on some rusty coin sufthem, and have made their system of religion look smilingly, while they have striven to preserve it unspotted from the world. If occasionally they introduce their pious feelings where we regard them as misplaced, we may smile, but not in scorn. Their zeal is better than heartless indifference—their honest denunciations are not like the sneers of envy or-touching familiarly on the profoundest questhe heartless jests which a mere desire of applause inspires. It is something to have real principle in times like these-a sense of things beyond our frail nature-even where the feeling of the eternal is saddened by too harsh and exclusive views of God, and of his children: for, as observed by one of our old poets, "Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"t

tions of philosophy as on the lightest varieties of manners-sometimes overthrowing a system with a joke, and destroying a reputation in the best humour in the world. One magazinethe Gentleman's-almost alone retains "the homely beauty of the good old cause," in pristine simplicity of style. This periodical work is worthy of its title. Its very dulness is agreeable to us. It is as destitute of sprightliThe British Critic is a highly respectable tiquarian disquisitions are very pleasant, giving ness and of gall as in the first of its years. Its anwork, which does not require our praise, or us the feeling of sentiment without seeming to offer any marks for our censure. It is, in a obtrude it on us, or to be designed for a disgreat measure, devoted to the interests of the play of the peculiar sensibility of their authors. church and of her ministers. It has sometimes We would not on any account lose the veteran shown a little sourness in its controversial Mr. Urban-though he will not, of course, sufdiscussions-but this is very different, indeed, fice as a substitute for his juvenile competitors from using cold sneers against unopposing-but we heartily wish that he may go flourishauthors. Its articles of criticism on poetry-ing on in his green old age and honest selfif not adorned by any singular felicity of ex- complacency, to tell old stories, and remind us pression-have often been, of late, at once of old times, undisturbed by his gamesome clear-sighted and gentle. and ambitious progeny!

The Edinburgh Monthly Review is, on the Yet we must turn from his gentle work to whole, one of the ablest and fairest of the gaze on the bright Aurora Borealis, the new Monthly Reviews, though somewhat dispro-and ever-varying Northern Light-Blackwood's portionably filled with disquisitions on matters of state policy.

Few literary changes within the late change
ful years have been more remarkable than the
alteration in the style and spirit of the maga-
zines. Time was when their modest ambition
reached only to the reputation of being the
"abstracts and brief chronicles" of passing
events-when they were well pleased to afford
vent to the sighs of a poetical lover, or to give
light fluttering for a month to an epigram on a
lady's fan-when a circumstantial account of
names, we cannot but shudder at the state of those who have
opened fountains of impurity at which fashion leads its suc-
cessive generations greedily to drink."-Merciful Heaven!
*We will give an instance of this-with a view to
exhibit the peculiarities into which exclusive feelings
lead; for observation, not for derision. In a very beau-
tiful article on Wordsworth's Excursion, the critic
notices a stanza, among several, on the death of Fox,
where the poet-evidently not referring to the questions
of immortality and judgment, but to the deprivations
sustained by the world in the loss of the objects of its
admiration-exclaims,

"A power is passing from the earth
To breathless nature's vast abyss;
But when the mighty pass away,
What is it more than this,
That man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet to God return?

Such ebb and flow will ever be,

Then wherefore shall we mourn?" On which the Reviewer observes; "The question in the last two lines needs no answer: to that in the four preceding ones we must reply distinctly, 'It is appointed to men once to die, but after this the JUDGMENT."-Heb.

ix. v. 27.

↑ Daniel.

Magazine. We remember no work of which and in eulogy-no work, at some times so so much might be truly said, both in censure profound, and at others so trifling-one moment so instinct with noble indignation, the next so pitifully falling into the errors it had denounced-in one page breathing the deepest and the kindliest spirit of criticism, in another condescending to give currency to the lowest calumnies. The air of young life-the exuberance both of talent and of animal spiritswhich this work indicates, will excuse much of that wantonness which evidently arises from the fresh spirit of hope and of joy. But there are some of its excesses which nothing can palliate, which can be attributed to nothing but malignant passions, or to the baser desire of extending its sale. Less censurable, but scarcely less productive of unpleasant results, is its practice of dragging the peculiarities, the conversation, and domestic habits of distinguished individuals into public view, to gratify a diseased curiosity at the expense of men by whom its authors have been trusted. Such a course, if largely followed, would destroy all that is private and social in life, and leave us nothing but our public existence. How must the joyous intercourses of society be chilled, and the free unbosoming of the soul be checked, by the feeling that some one is present who will put down every look, and word, and tone, in a note-book, and exhibit them to the com

mon gaze! If the enshading sanctities of life are to be cut away, as in Peter's Letters, or in the Letters from the Lakes-its joys will speedily perish. When they can no longer nestle in privacy, they will wither. We cannot, however, refuse to Blackwood's contributors the praise of great boldness in throwing away the external dignities of literature, and mingling their wit and eloquence and poetry with the familiarities of life, with an ease which nothing but the consciousness of great and genuine talent could inspire or justify. Most of their jests have, we think, been carried a little too far. The town begins to sicken of their pugilistic articles; to nauseate the blended language of Olympus and St. Giles's; to long

for inspiration from a purer spring than Belsher's tap; and to desire sight of Apollo and the Muses in a brighter ring than that of Moulsey-hurst. We ought not to forget the debt which we owe to this magazine for infusing something of the finest and profoundest spirit of the German writers into our criticism, and for its "high and hearted" eulogies of the greatest, though not the most popular of our living poets.

We have thus impartially, we think, endeavoured to perform the delicate task of characterizing the principal contemporaries and rivals of the New Monthly Magazine;-of which our due regard to the Editor's modesty forbids us to speak.

ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.

[NEW MONTHLy Magazine.]

How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute!-MILTON.

Blessings be on him and immortal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,
The Poet who on earth hath made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!-WORDSWORTH.

OUR readers will be disappointed if they ex- ing sentiment-or one new gleam cast on the pect to find in this article any of the usual inmost recesses of the soul, is more than a flippancies of criticism. Were we accustom-sufficient compensation for a thousand critical ed to employ them, its subject would utterly errors. False doctrines of taste can endure confound us. Strange is their infatuation only for a little season, but the productions of who can fancy that the merits of a great poet genius are "for all time." Its discoveries are subjected to their decision, and that they cannot be lost-its images will not perishhave any authority to pass judicial censures, its most delicate influences cannot be dissior confer beneficent praises, on one of the di-pated by the changes of times and of seasons. vinest of intellects! We shall attempt to set forth the peculiar immunities and triumphs of Wordsworth's genius, not as critics, but as disciples. To him our eulogy is nothing. But we would fain induce our readers to follow us "where we have garnered up our hearts," and would endeavour to remove those influences by which malignity and prejudice have striven to deter them from seeking some of the holiest of those living springs of delight which poets have opened for their species.

It may be a curious and interesting question, whether a poet laboriously builds up his fame with purpose and judgment, or, as has most falsely been said of Shakspeare, "grows immortal in his own despite;" but it cannot af fect his highest claims to the gratitude and admiration of the world. If Milton preferred Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost, does that strange mistake detract from our revering love? What would be our feeling towards critics, who should venture to allude to it as A minute discussion of Wordsworth's system a proof that his works were unworthy of pewill not be necessary to our design. It is rusal, and decline an examination of those manifestly absurd to refer to it as a test of his works themselves on the ground that his perpoetical genius. When an author has given verse taste sufficiently proved his want of numerous creations to the world, he has fur- genius? Yet this is the mode by which ponished positive evidence of the nature and ex-pular Reviewers have attempted to depreciate tent of his powers, which must preclude the Wordsworth-they have argued from his theonecessity of deducing an opinion of them from the truth or falsehood of his theories. One noble imagination-one profound and affect

ries to his poetry, instead of examining the poetry itself-as if their reasoning was better than the fact in question, or as if one eternal

image set up in the stateliest region of poesy, | hinted allusion, or nice shade of feeling, which

had not value to outweigh all the truths of criticism, or to atone for all its errors?

may adorn it. If by "poetic diction" is intended the vivid expression of poetic thoughts, to annihilate it, is to annihilate poetry; but if it means certain ornamental phrases and forms of language not necessary to such expression, it is, at best, but a splendid error. Felicity of language can never be other than the distinct expression of felicitous thought. The only art of diction in poetry, as in prose, is the nice bodying forth of each delicate vithe images, in words which at once make us conscious of their most transient beauty. At all events, there was surely no offence in an individual's rejecting the aid of a style regarded as poetic, and relying for his fame on the naked majesty of his conceptions. The triumph is more signal when the Poet uses language as a mirror, clear, and itself invisible, to reflect his creations in their native hues,-than when he employs it as a stained and fallacious medium to exhibit its own varieties of tint, and to show the objects which it partially reveals in its own prismatic colouring.

Not only have Wordsworth's merits been improperly rested on his system, but that system itself has been misrepresented with no common baseness. From some of the attacks directed against it, a reader might infer that it recommended the choice of the meanest subjects, and their treatment in the meanest way; and that it not only represented poetry as fitly employed on things in them-bration of the feelings, and each soft shade of selves low and trivial, but that it forbade the clustering and delicate fancies about them, or the shedding on them any reconciling and softening lustre. Multitudes, indeed, have wondered as they read, not only that any persons should be deluded by its perverse insipidities, but that critics should waste their ridicule on an author who resigned at once all pretensions to the poetic art. In reality, this calumniated system has only reference to the diction, and to the subjects of poetry. It has merely taught, that the diction of poetry is not different from that of prose, and suggested that themes hitherto little dwelt on, were not unsuited to the bard's divinest uses. Let us briefly examine what ground of offence there is in the assertion or application of these positions.

But it is said that the subjects of Wordsworth's poetry are not in themselves so lofty as those which his noblest predecessors have chosen. If this be true, and he has yet succeeded in discovering within them poetical affinities, or in shedding on them a new con

Some have supposed that by rejecting a diction as peculiar to poetry, Wordsworth denied to it those qualities which are its es-secration, he does not surely deserve ill of his sence, and those "harmonious numbers" species. He has left all our old objects of which its thoughts "voluntarily move." Were veneration uninjured, and has enabled us to his language equivocal, which it is not, the recognise new ones in the peaceful and faslightest glance at his works would show that miliar courses of our being. The question is he could have no design to exclude from it the not whether there are more august themes stateliest imaginings, the most felicitous allu- than those which he has treated, but whether sions, or the choicest and most varied music. these last have any interest, as seen in the He objected only to a peculiar phraseology-light which he has cast around them. If they a certain hacknied strain of inversion-which had been set up as distinguishing poetry from prose, and which, he contended, was equally false in either. What is there of pernicious heresy in this, unless we make the crafty politician's doctrine, that speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts, the great principle of poetry? If words are fitly combined only to convey ideas to the mind, each word having a fixed meaning in itself, no different mode of collocation can be requisite when the noblest sentiment is to be imbodied, from that which is proper when the dryest fact is to be asserted. Each term employed by a poet has as determinate an office-as clearly means one thing as distinguished from all others as a mathematician's scientific phrases. If a poet wishes lucidly to convey a grand picture to the mind, there can be no reason why he should resort to another mode of speech than that which he would employ in delivering the plainest narrative. He will, of course, use other and probably more beautiful words, because they properly belong to his subject; but he will not use any different order in their arrangement, because in both cases his immediate object is the same-the clear communication of his own idea to the mind of his reader. And this is true not only of the chief object of the passage, but of every

have, the benefits which he has conferred on humanity are more signal, and the triumph of his own powers is more undivided and more pure, than if he had treated on subjects which we have been accustomed to revere. We are more indebted to one who opens to us a new and secluded pathway in the regions of fantasy with its own verdant inequalities and delicate overshadings of foliage, than if he had stepped majestically in the broad and beaten highway to swell the triumphant procession of laurelled bards. Is it matter of accusation that a poet has opened visions of glory about the ordinary walks of life-that he has linked holiest associations to things which hitherto have been regarded without emotion-that he has made beauty "a simple product of the common day!" Shall he be denied the poetic faculty, who, without the attractions of story—without the blandishments of diction-without even the aid of those associations which have encrusted themselves around the oldest themes of the poet, has for many years excited the animosities of the most popular critics, and mingled the love and admiration of his genius with the lifeblood of hearts neither unreflecting nor ungentle?

But most of the subjects of Mr. Wordsworth, though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp,

have a real and innate grandeur. True it is, | resentments; but when he is cast abroad to that he moves not among the regalities, but seek a lodging with the owl, and to endure the among the humanities of his art. True it is, fury of the elements, and is only a poor and that his poetry does not "make its bed and despised old man, the exterior crust which a procreant cradle" in the "jutting, frieze, cor- life of prosperity had hardened over his soul nice, or architrave" of the glorious edifices of is broken up by the violence of his sorrows, human power. The universe, in its naked his powers expand within his worn and wasted majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his frame, his spirit awakens in its long-forgotten nature, are his favourite themes. And is there strength, and even in the wanderings of disno might, no glory, no sanctity in these? traction gives hints of the profoundest philosoEarth has her own venerablenesses-her awful phy, and manifests a real kindliness of nature forests, which have darkened her hills for a sweet and most affecting courtesy-of ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious which there was no vestige in the days of his springs pouring out everlasting waters from pride. The regality of Richard lies not in unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of ele-" compliment extern"-the philosophy of Hammental contests; her jagged rocks, monumental let has a princeliness above that of his rank of an earlier world. The lowliest of her-and the beauties of Imogen are shed into beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the her soul only by the selectest influences of pyramids. The evening breeze has the old creation. sweetness which it shed over the fields of Canaan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The Nile swells with its rich waters towards the bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses nestled among them, watched by the sisterly love of Miriam. Zion's hill has not passed away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor even by the accomplishment of that awful religion of types and symbols which once was enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the poet turns his eye is the same which shone over Thermopyla; and the wind to which he listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly deprived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth, and sky, are open-who has an eye for the most evanescent of nature's hues, and the most ethereal of her graces-who can "live in the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds," or send into our hearts the awful loneliness of regions "consecrate to eldest time?" Is there nothing in man, considered abstractedly from the distinctions of this world-nothing in a being who is in the infancy of an immortal life who is lackeyed by "a thousand liveried angels"-who is even "splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave"-to awaken ideas of permanence, solemnity, and grandeur? Are there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry in the midst of death and of life-in the desires and hopes which have their resting-place near the throne of the Eternal-in affections, strange and wondrous in their working, and unconquerable by time, or anguish, or destiny? How little, comparatively, of allusion is there even in Shakspeare, whose genius will not be regarded as rigid or austere, to other venerablenesses than those of the creation, and to qualities less common than the human heart! The very luxuries which surround his lovers -the pensive sweetnesses which steal away the sting from his saddest catastrophies-are drawn from man's universal immunities, and the eldest sympathies of the universe. The divinity which "hedges his kings" is only humanity's finer essence. Even his Lear is great only in intellectual might and in the terrible strangeness of his afflictions. While invested with the pomp and circumstance of his station, he is froward, impatient, thankless— less than a child in his liberality and in his

The objects which have been usually regarded as the most poetical, derive from the soul itself the far larger share of their poetical qualities. All their power to elevate, to delight, or to awe us, which does not arise from mere form, colour, and proportion, is manifestly drawn from the instincts common to the species. The affections have first consecrated all that they revere. "Cornice, frieze, jutting, or architrave," are fit nestling-places for poetry, chiefly as they are the symbols of feelings of grandeur and duration in the hearts of the beholders. A poet, then, who seeks at once for beauty and sublimity in their native home of the human soul-who resolves "non sectari rivulos sed petere fontes"-can hardly be accused with justice of rejecting the themes most worthy of a bard. His office is, indeed, more arduous than if he selected those subjects about which hallowing associations have long clustered, and which other poets have already rendered sacred. But if he can discover new depths of affection in the soul-or throw new tinges of loveliness on objects hitherto common, he ought not to be despised in proportion to the severity of the work, and the absence of extrinsic aid! Wordsworth's persons are not invested with antique robes, nor clad in the symbols of worldly pomp, but they are "apparelled in celestial light." By his power "the bare earth and mountains bare" are covered with an imaginative radiance more holy than that which old Greek poets shed over Olympus. The world, as consecrated by his poetic wisdom, is an enchanted sceneredolent with sweet humanity, and vocal with "echoes from beyond the grave."

We shall now attempt to express the reasons for our belief in Wordsworth's genius, by first giving a few illustrations of his chief faculties, and then considering them in their application to the uses of philosophical poetry.

We allude first to the descriptive faculty, because, though not the least popular, it is the lowest which Wordsworth possesses. He shares it with many others, though few, we think, enjoy it in so eminent a degree. It is difficult, indeed, to select passages from his works which are merely descriptive; but those which approach nearest to portraiture, and are least imbued with fantasy, are masterpieces in their kind. Take, for example, the

« PreviousContinue »