CRITICISMS ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
“We cannot allow these verses[444] to adorn, with a sad beauty, the pages of this Magazine—more especially as they are the last composed by their distinguished writer, and that only a few days before her death—without at least a passing tribute of regret for an event which has cast a shadow of gloom through the sunshiny fields of contemporary literature. But two months ago, the beautiful lyric entitled ‘Despondency and Aspiration,’ appeared in these pages, and now the sweet fountain of music from which that prophetic strain gushed has ceased to flow. The highly gifted and accomplished, the patient, the meek, and long-suffering Felicia Hemans, is no more. She died on the night of Saturday, the 16th of May 1835, at Dublin, and met her fate with all the calm resignation of a Christian, conscious that her spirit was winging its flight to another and a better world, where ‘the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’
“Without disparagement of the living, we scarcely hesitate to say, that in Mrs Hemans our female literature has lost perhaps its brightest ornament. To Joanna Baillie she might be inferior, not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphysically analysing those sentiments and feelings which constitute the basis of human actions,—to Mrs Jameson in the critical perception which, from detached fragments of spoken thought, can discriminate the links which bind all into a distinctive character,—to Miss Landon in eloquent facility,—to Caroline Bowles in simple pathos,—and to Mary Mitford in power of thought; but as a female writer, influencing the female mind, she has undoubtedly stood, for some bypast years, the very first in the first rank; and this pre-eminence has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the eastern Ganges or the western Mississippi. Her path was her own; and shoals of imitators have arisen, alike at home and on the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating genius, have mimicked her themes, and parodied her sentiments and language, without being able to reach its height. In her poetry, religious truth and intellectual beauty meet together; and assuredly it is not the less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature alone. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from purity of morals, delicacy of perception and conception, sublimity of religious faith, and warmth of patriotism; and, turning from the dark and degraded, whether in subject or sentiment, she seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life on which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely feminine—and, in our estimation, this is the highest praise which could be awarded it,—it could have been written by a woman only; for although, in the ‘Records’ of her sex, we have the female character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passion and of ill-requited affection; of heroical self-denial, and of withering hope deferred; of devotedness tried in the furnace of affliction, and of
yet its energy resembles that of the dove, ‘pecking the hand that hovers o’er its mate,’ and its exaltation of thought is not of the daring kind, which doubts and derides, or even questions, but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forward with faith and reverential fear.
“Mrs Hemans has written much, and, as with all authors in like predicament, her strains are of various degrees of excellence. Independently of this, her different works will be differently estimated, as to their relative value, by different minds; but among the lyrics of the English language which can scarcely die, we hesitate not to assign places to ‘The Hebrew Mother’—‘The Treasures of the Deep’—‘The Spirit’s Return’—‘The Homes of England’—‘The Better Land’—‘The Hour of Death’—‘The Trumpet’—and ‘The Graves of a Household.’ In these ‘gems of purest ray serene,’ the peculiar genius of Mrs Hemans breathes, and burns, and shines pre-eminent; for her forte lay in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic life—the gentle overflowings of love and friendship—‘homebred delights and heartfelt happiness’—the associations of local attachment—and the influences of religious feelings over the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and situations of man, or from the aspects of external nature. We would only here add, by way of remark, that the writings of Mrs Hemans seem to divide themselves into two pretty distinct portions—the first comprehending her ‘Modern Greece,’ ‘Wallace,’ ‘Dartmoor,’ ‘Sceptic,’ ‘Historic Scenes,’ and other productions, up to the publication of ‘The Forest Sanctuary;’ and the latter comprehending that volume, ‘The Records of Woman,’ ‘The Scenes and Hymns of Life,’ and all her subsequent productions. In her earlier works, she follows the classic model, as contradistinguished from the romantic, and they are inferior in that polish of style, and almost gorgeous richness of language, in which her maturer compositions are set. It is evident that new stores of thought were latterly opened up to her, in a more extended acquaintance with the literature of Spain and Germany, as well as by a profounder study of the writings of our great poetical regenerator—Wordsworth.”—Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1835.
[444] “Sabbath Sonnet.”
“Did we not know this world to be but a place of trial—our bitter probation for another and for a better—how strange in its severity would seem the lot of genius in a woman! The keen feeling—the generous enthusiasm—the lofty aspiration and the delicate perception—are given but to make the possessor unfitted for her actual position. It is well!—such gifts, in their very contrast to the selfishness and the evil with which they are surrounded, inform us of another world—they breathe of their home, which is heaven; the spiritual and the inspired in this life but fit us to believe in that which is to come. With what a sublime faith is this divine reliance expressed in all Mrs Hemans’s later writings! As the clouds towards nightfall melt away on a fine summer evening into the clear amber of the west, leaving a soft and unbroken azure whereon the stars may shine; so the troubles of life, its vain regrets and vainer desires, vanished before the calm close of existence—the hopes of heaven rose steadfast at last—the light shone from the windows of her home, as she approached unto it.
“We have noticed this yearning for affection—unsatisfied, but still unsubdued—as one characteristic of Mrs Hemans’s poetry: the rich picturesque was another. Highly accomplished, the varied stores that she possessed were all subservient to one master science. Mistress both of German and Spanish, the latter country appears to have peculiarly captivated her imagination. At that period when the fancy is peculiarly alive to impression—when girlhood is so new, that the eagerness of childhood is still in its delights—Spain was, of all others, the country on which public attention was fixed—victory after victory carried the British flag from the ocean to the Pyrenees; but, with that craving for the ideal which is so great a feature in her writings, the present was insufficient, and she went back upon the past;—the romantic history of the Moors was like a storehouse, with treasures gorgeous like those of its own Alhambra.
“It is observable in her minor poems, that they turn upon an incident rather than a feeling. Feelings, true and deep, are developed; but one single emotion is never the original subject. Some graceful or touching anecdote or situation catches her attention, and its poetry is developed in a strain of mourning melody, and in a vein of gentle moralising. I always wish, in reading my favourite poets, to know what first suggested my favourite poems. Few things would be more interesting than to know under what circumstances they were composed—how much of individual sentiment there was in each, or how, on some incident seemingly even opposed, they had contrived to ingraft their own associations. What a history of the heart would such annals reveal! Every poem is in itself an impulse.
“Besides the ideal and the picturesque, Mrs Hemans is distinguished by her harmony. I use the word harmony advisedly, in contradistinction to melody. Melody implies something more careless, more simple, than belongs to her style; it is song by snatches; our English ballads are remarkable for it. To quote an instance or two: there is a verse in that of Yarrow Water—
Nothing can exceed the tender sweetness of these lines; but there is no skill. Again, in Faire Rosamonde, the verse that describes the cruelty of Eleanor—
How musical is the alliteration! but it is music which, like that of the singing brook, has sprung up of itself. Now, Mrs Hemans has the most perfect skill in her science; nothing can be more polished than her versification. Every poem is like a piece of music, with its eloquent pauses, its rich combinations, and its swelling chords. Who that has ever heard, can forget the exquisite flow of ‘The Voice of Spring?’—
It is like the finest order of Italian singing—pure, high, and scientific.
“I can never sufficiently regret that it was not my good fortune to know Mrs Hemans personally: it was an honour I should have estimated so highly—a happiness that I should have enjoyed so keenly. I never even met with an acquaintance of hers but once; that once, however, was much. I knew Miss Jewsbury, the late lamented Mrs Fletcher. She delighted in speaking of Mrs Hemans; she spoke of her with the appreciation of one fine mind comprehending another, and with the earnest affection of a woman and a friend. She described her conversation as singularly fascinating—full of poetry, very felicitous in illustration by anecdote—happy, too, in quotation, and very rich in imagery; ‘in short, her own poem on “The Treasures of the Deep” would best describe it.’ She mentioned a very striking simile to which a conversation on Mrs Hemans’s own poem of ‘The Sceptic’ had led;—‘Like Sinbad the sailor, we are often shipwrecked on a strange shore. We despair; but hope comes when least expected. We pass through the gloomy caverns of doubt into the free air and blessed sunshine of conviction and belief.’ I asked her if she thought Mrs Hemans a happy person, and she said, ‘No; her enjoyment is feverish, and she desponds. She is like a lamp whose oil is consumed by the very light which it yields.’ What a cruel thing is the weakness of memory! How little can its utmost efforts recall of conversation that was once an instruction and a delight!
“To the three characteristics of Mrs Hemans’ poetry which have already been mentioned—viz. the ideal, the picturesque, and the harmonious—a fourth must be added,—the moral. Nothing can be more pure, more feminine and exalted, than the spirit which pervades the whole; it is the intuitive sense of right, elevated and strengthened into a principle. It is a glorious and a beautiful memory to bequeath; but she who left it is little to be envied. Open the volumes which she has left, legacies from many various hours, and what a record of wasted feelings and disappointed hopes may be traced in their sad and sweet complainings! Yet Mrs Hemans was spared some of the keenest mortifications of a literary career. She knew nothing of it as a profession which has to make its way through poverty, neglect, and obstacles: she lived apart in a small, affectionate circle of friends. The high-road of life, with its crowds and contention—its heat, its noise, and its dust that rests on all—was for her happily at a distance; yet even in such green nest, the bird could not fold its wings, and sleep to its own music. There came the aspiring, the unrest, the aching sense of being misunderstood, the consciousness that those a thousand times inferior were yet more beloved. Genius places a woman in an unnatural position; notoriety frightens away affection; and superiority has for its attendant fear, not love. Its pleasantest emotions are too vivid to be lasting: hope may sometimes,
but, like the azure glimpses between thunder-showers, the clouds gather more darkly around for the passing sunshine. The heart sinks back on its solitary desolation. In every page of Mrs Hemans’ writings is this sentiment impressed. What is the conclusion of ‘Corinne crowned at the Capitol?’
“What is poetry, and what is a poetical career? The first is to have an organisation of extreme sensibility, which the second exposes bareheaded to the rudest weather. The original impulse is irresistible—all professions are engrossing when once begun; and, acting with perpetual stimulus, nothing takes more complete possession of its follower than literature. But never can success repay its cost. The work appears—it lives in the light of popular applause; but truly might the writer exclaim,—
If this be true even of one sex, how much more true of the other! Ah! Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.”—New Monthly Magazine for August 1835.
“Though respect for the memory of the dead, and delicacy towards the living, enjoin us to be brief in alluding to the events of her life, we may speak freely, and at length, of the history of her mind, and the circumstances of her literary career, in the course of which she deserved and acquired a European reputation as the first of our poetesses living, and still before the public. Few have written so much, or written so well, as Mrs Hemans; few have entwined the genuine fresh thoughts and impressions of their own minds so intimately, with their poetical fancies, as she did; few have undergone more arduous and reverential preparation for the service of song—for, from childhood, her thirst for knowledge was extreme, and her reading great and varied. Those who, while admitting the high-toned beauty of her poetry, accused it of monotony of style and subject, (they could not deny to it the praise of originality, seeing that it founded a school of imitators in England, and a yet larger in America,) little knew to what historical research she had applied herself—how far and wide she had sought for food with which to fill her eager mind. It is true that she used only a part of the mass of information which she had collected—(for she never wrote on calculation, but from the strong impulse of the moment; and it was her nature intimately to take home to herself, and appropriate only what was high-hearted, imaginative, and refined;)—but the writer of this notice has seen manuscript collections of extracts made in the course of these youthful studies, sufficient of themselves to justify his assertion, if her poems (like those of every genuine poet) did not contain a still better record of the progress of her mind. Her knowledge of classic literature may be distinctly traced in her ‘Sceptic,’ her ‘Modern Greece,’ and a hundred later lyrics based upon what Bulwer so happily calls ‘the Graceful Superstition.’ Her study and admiration of the works of ancient Greek and Roman art, strengthened into an abiding love of the beautiful, which breathes both in the sentiment and in the structure of every line she wrote, (for there are few of our poets more faultlessly musical in their versification;) and when, subsequently, she opened for herself the treasuries of Spanish and German legend and literature, how thoroughly she had imbued herself with their spirit may be seen in her ‘Siege of Valencia,’ in her glorious and chivalresque ‘Songs of the Cid,’ and in her ‘Lays of Many Lands,’ the idea of which was suggested by Herder’s ‘Stimmen der Völker in Liedern.’
“But though her mind was enriched by her wide acquaintance with the poetical and historical literature of other countries, it possessed a strong and decidedly marked character of its own, which coloured all her productions—a character which, though any thing but feeble or sentimental, was essentially feminine. An eloquent modern critic (Mrs Jameson) has rightly said, ‘that Mrs Hemans’ poems could not have been written by a man;’ their love is without selfishness, their passion without a stain of this world’s coarseness, their high heroism (and to illustrate this assertion we would mention ‘Clotilda,’ ‘the Lady of Provence,’ and the ‘Switzer’s Wife,’) unsullied by any grosser alloy of mean ambition. Her religion, too, is essentially womanly—fervent, clinging to belief, and ‘hoping on, hoping ever,’ in spite of the peculiar trials appointed to her sex, so exquisitely described in the ‘Evening Prayer in a Girls’ School’—
“If such was the mind of her works, the manner in which she wrought out her conceptions was equally individual and excellent. Her imagination was rich, chaste, and glowing: those who saw only its published fruits little guessed at the extent of its variety.
“It is difficult to enumerate the titles of her principal works. Her first childish efforts were published when she was only thirteen, and we can speak of her subsequent poems, ‘Wallace,’ ‘Dartmoor,’ ‘The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,’ and her ‘Dramatic Scenes,’ only from memory. These were probably written in the happiest period of her life, when her mind was rapidly developing itself, and its progress was aided by judicious and intelligent counsellors, among whom may be mentioned Bishop Heber. A favourable notice of one of these poems will be found in Lord Byron’s letters; and the fame of her opening talent had reached Shelley, who addressed a very singular correspondence to her. With respect to the world in general, her name began to be known by the publication of her ‘Welsh Melodies,’ her ‘Siege of Valencia,’ and the scattered lyrics which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine, then under the direction of Campbell. She had previously contributed a series of prose papers, on Foreign Literature, to Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine, which, with little exception, are the only specimens of that style of writing ever attempted by her. To the ‘Siege of Valencia’ succeeded rapidly her ‘Forest Sanctuary,’ her ‘Records of Woman,’ (the most successful of her works,) her ‘Songs of the Affections,’ (containing, perhaps, her finest poem, ‘The Spirit’s Return,’) her ‘National Lyrics and Songs for Music,’ (most of which have been set to music by her sister, and become popular,) and her ‘Scenes and Hymns of Life.’ A few words with respect to the direction of her powers in later days may be worthily extracted from a letter of hers which lies now before us. She had been urged by a friend to undertake a prose work, and a series of ‘Artistic Novels,’ something after the manner of Tieck, and Goethe’s Kunst-Romanen, as likely to be congenial to her own tastes and habits of mind, and to prove most acceptable to the public.
“‘I have now,’ she says, ‘passed through the feverish and somewhat visionary state of mind often connected with the passionate study of art in early life; deep affections and deep sorrows seem to have solemnised my whole being, and I now feel as if bound to higher and holier tasks, which, though I may occasionally lay aside, I could not long wander from without some sense of dereliction. I hope it is no self-delusion, but I cannot help sometimes feeling as if it were my true task to enlarge the sphere of sacred poetry, and extend its influence. When you receive my volume of ‘Scenes and Hymns,’ you will see what I mean by enlarging its sphere, though my plan as yet is very imperfectly developed.’
“Besides the works here enumerated, we should mention her tragedy, ‘The Vespers of Palermo,’ which, though containing many fine thoughts and magnificent bursts of poetry, was hardly fitted for the stage, and the songs which she contributed to Colonel Hodges’ ‘Peninsular Melodies;’ and we cannot but once more call the attention of our readers to her last lyric, ‘Despondency and Aspiration,’ published in Blackwood’s Magazine for May 1835. It is the song of the swan—its sweetest and its last!”[445]—Athenæum, No. 395.
“An elaborate summary of the principal features of Mrs Hemans’ character, or of the general and individual merits of her poems, can hardly be necessary, if the foregoing memorials have fulfilled the design of their editor. The woman and the poetess were in her too inseparably united to admit of their being considered apart from each other. In her private letters, as in her published works, she shows herself high-minded, affectionate, grateful—wayward in her self-neglect, delicate to fastidiousness in her tastes—in her religion fervent without intolerance—eager to acquire knowledge, as eager to impart it to others—earnestly devoted to her art, and in that art to the service of all things beautiful, and noble, and holy. She may have fallen short of some of her predecessors in vigour of mind—of some of her contemporaries in variety of fancy; but she surpassed them all in the use of language, in the employment of a rich, chaste, and glowing imagery, and in the perfect music of her versification. It will be long before the chasm left in our female literature by her death will be worthily filled: she will be long remembered—long spoken of by those who know her works—yet longer by those who knew herself,—
Memorials of Mrs Hemans, p. 354-6.
[445] It has already been shown that this was not the case.
“Mrs Hemans, if not in all respects the most gifted of the female writers who form so bright a constellation in the sphere of our contemporary literature, surpassed them all in those attributes of genius which characterise the lyric poets. Without possessing the dramatic conception of Joanna Baillie or Mary Mitford—the masculine vigour and depth of thought displayed by the late Mrs Fletcher, (better known as Miss Jewsbury,) or the fertile imagination of others of our delightful female prose writers—she outshone them all in her peculiar orbit; and though she wrote too much, and often too carelessly, to sustain, in all her compositions, the high standard of poetic excellence to which she often attained, her best productions, in her own rich and peculiar vein, rival those of the mightiest masters of English song; while their exquisitely feminine character justify the remark, that ‘the poetry of Mrs Hemans could have been written only by a woman.’”—E. R., 1836.
“We have now received the last of the imperishable gifts of Mrs Hemans’ genius. The period of her spirit’s trials and sufferings, and its glorious course on earth, has been completed. She has left an unclouded fame; and we may say, in her own words:—
“As this, therefore, will be the last time that we shall review any production of Mrs Hemans, we may be permitted to recall, with a melancholy pleasure, the admiration and delight with which we have followed the progress of her genius. The feelings with which her works are now generally regarded have been expressed in no publication earlier, more frequently, or more warmly, than in our own. Without repeating what we have already said, we shall now endeavour to point out some of their features, considered in relation to that moral culture in which alone such writings can exist.
“Mrs Hemans may be considered as the representative of a new school of poetry, or, to speak more precisely, her poetry discovers characteristics of the highest kind, which belong almost exclusively to that of later times, and have been the result of the gradual advancement, and especially the moral progress, of mankind. It is only when man, under the influence of true religion, feels himself connected with whatever is infinite, that his affections and powers are fully developed. The poetry of an immortal being must be of a different character from that of an earthly being. But, in recurring to the classic poets of antiquity, we find that, in their conceptions, the element of religious faith was wanting. Their mythology was to them no object of sober belief; and, had it been so, was adapted not to produce but to annihilate devotion. They had no thought of regarding the universe as created, animated, and ruled by God’s all-powerful and omniscient goodness. To them it was a world of matter,—
never existed except in the imagination of modern poets. The beings intended were the ‘fair humanities’ of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, whose attributes, derived from the baser parts of our nature, were human passions lawlessly indulged, accompanied with more than mortal power. Gibbon, who was any thing rather than what he affected to be—a philosopher—speaks of ‘the elegant mythology of the Greeks.’ The great fountains of their popular and poetical mythology were Homer and Hesiod. Hesiod does not surpass Homer in the agreeable or moral character of his fictions; and, as regards the elegance of the mythology found in the great epic poet, a single passage, if we had no other means of judging, might settle the question, the address of Jupiter to Juno at the commencement of the Fifteenth Book of the Iliad:—
“It may be incidentally remarked, that these lines illustrate not merely the features of the ancient mythology, but also the condition of woman as treated by the heroes of Homer and by his contemporaries. We happen just to have opened upon another striking example of the elegance of the ancient mythology during the Augustan age. It is a passage of Ovid, almost too indecent and silly to be alluded to, though Addison was not ashamed to translate it, beginning—
“From the passage referred to, we may judge something of the convivial manners of the Romans, and of the habits of intercourse between the sexes.
“It is remarkable that, in all religious and moral conceptions, the noblest materials of poetry, the philosophers were very far in advance of the poets. ‘The Fables of Hesiod and Homer,’ says Plato, ‘are especially to be censured. They have uttered the greatest falsehoods concerning the greatest beings.’ Referring to the loathsome and abominable fables about Cœlus, Saturn, and Jupiter, he says—‘We must not tell our youth that he who commits the greatest iniquity does nothing strange, nor he who inflicts the most cruel punishment upon his father when injured by him; but that he is only doing what was done by the first and greatest of the gods.’ A little after he subjoins:—‘The chaining of Juno by her son, the throwing of Vulcan from heaven by his father, because he attempted to defend his mother from being beaten, and the battles of the gods described by Homer, are not fictions to be allowed in our city, whether explained allegorically or not.’ ‘Though we praise many things in Homer,’ he says, ‘we shall not praise him when he represents Jupiter as sending a lying dream to Agamemnon, nor Æschylus when he makes Thetis complain of having been deceived by Apollo.’ ‘When any one thus speaks of the gods, we are indignant; we grant no permission for such writings, nor shall we suffer teachers to use them in the instruction of youth.’[447]
“The poets of this nation did not, in Plato’s opinion, represent their heroes as more amiable or respectable than their gods. ‘We shall not,’ he says, ‘suffer those of whom we have the charge to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess, was so full of evil passions as to unite in himself two opposite vices—avaricious meanness, and insolence towards gods and men. Nor shall we allow it to be said that Theseus, the son of Neptune, and Perithöus, the son of Jove, rushed forth to the commission of such abominable robberies, or that any son of a god or any hero committed those abominable and impious acts which are now imputed to them in the fictions of the poets.’ ‘Such fictions are pernicious to those who hear them; for every bad man finds a license for himself, in the belief that those nearly related to the gods do and have done such deeds. They are, then, to be suppressed, lest they produce a strong tendency to wickedness in our youth.’[448]
“Such were the sentiments of the most poetical of Grecian philosophers concerning the religious and moral character of the poets of his nation; and he remarks in addition upon the gloomy fancies of Homer concerning the state of departed souls, as neither true nor useful, but adapted to produce unmanly fears, and therefore not to be listened to by those who, as freemen, should dread slavery more than death. During the period between Homer and Virgil, a misty brightness had spread over the poetic ideas of the future abodes of the blessed; but the Elysium and Tartarus of poetry were but fictions, awakening no serious hopes nor fears, and having no power over the heart. These imaginations of a future life were connected with no just and ennobling conceptions of the purposes of our existence, of the spiritual nature of man, or of that endless progress to which we may look forward. The heroes of Elysium found their delight in the meaner pleasures of this life,—
“Thus the ancient poets were shut out from the whole sphere of religious sentiment; and all those numberless conceptions and feelings that spring from our knowledge of God and the sense of our own immortality, are absent from their writings, while this whole exhaustless domain has been laid open to the poets of later times. A single example may illustrate what has been said. Let us take the concluding verses of Mrs Hemans’s ‘Fountain of Oblivion:’—
“The whole train of emotion and thought in these verses is of a character wholly unknown to the classic days of Greece and Rome. To imagine any thing corresponding to it in the work of an ancient poet, is to bring together conceptions the most incongruous.
“Here it may be worth while, in order to prevent ourselves from being misunderstood, to observe, that we do not mean to depreciate the value of the study of the ancient poets. After those inquiries by which the truths of religion are established, there are none of more interest or importance than such as relate to the mind and heart of man, and open to us a knowledge of what he has been, and what he may be on earth. But, to attain this knowledge, we must acquaint ourselves with the moral and intellectual character of our race, as it has existed, and exists, under influences and forms of society very unlike each other. In this research, no period can be compared in interest with a few centuries in the history of Athens and Rome, which have left traces still so deeply impressed upon the civilised world. Thus, in studying the history of human nature, the Grecian and Roman poets furnish some of our most important materials. We may discover in them a source of sentiments and opinions that still affect men’s minds. Homer carries us back to remote Pagan antiquity, on which his writings shed a light afforded by no other; and, at the same time, having been regarded as the undisputed master-poet by his countrymen, (for this Plato himself does not question,) he shows us what were the topics by which their imaginations were most affected during the period of their greatest civilisation. The dramatic poets of Athens reflect the Athenian character; and in Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, we find the lineaments of the Augustan age. But the value which thus attaches to their works is not to be confounded with the absolute value of those works as poems adapted through their intrinsic beauties to give delight at the present day. In estimating their naked worth, we must likewise separate from them the interest connected with their antiquity, and all those accidental associations that have been gathering round them for many centuries. We must even put out of view the native genius of the writer, if this genius have been exerted under circumstances so unfavourable as to render it ineffectual to produce what may give pleasure to a pure and highly-cultivated mind. Not-withstanding the traditionary enthusiasm that has existed on the subject, it may well be doubted whether their power of giving vivid pleasure merely as poetical compositions, forms a principal recommendation of the study of the ancient poets. They were not acquainted with the richest realms of mind. It is a mistake to address them as ‘bards illustrious, born in happier days.’ But, to return to our immediate subject.
“After the revival of letters, the forms of what was called Christianity, both among Catholics and Protestants, were in many respects so abhorrent to reason, or feeling, or both, that they could combine in no intimate union with our higher nature, however they might operate on men’s passions or fears. Religious truth was, however, sometimes contemplated in greater purity by minds of the better class; and we early begin to find in poetry some expressions of true religious sentiment. But what advance had been actually made even in the seventeenth century, we may learn from the great work of Milton. It is based on a system of mythology more sublime than the Pagan, and less adapted to degrade the moral feelings, but scarcely less offensive to reason, and spreading all but a Manichæan gloom and blight over the creation of God. Putting forth his vast genius, he struggles with it as he can, moulding it into colossal forms that repel our human sympathies, and lavishing upon it gorgeous treasures of imagination; but even his powers yield and sink at times before its intrinsic incongruity and essential falsehood. Whoever rightly apprehends the character of God, or contemplates as he ought the invisible world, will turn to but few pages of the Paradise Lost, with the hope of finding expressions correspondent to his thoughts and emotions. We feel with pain the inappreciable contrast between the genius displayed in the poetical execution of the work, and the absurdity of its prose story. It is the opposition which this story presents to the most ennobling truths, even more than ‘the want of human interest,’ on which Johnson remarks, that gives to the poem the unattractive character of which he speaks, and which we believe is felt by almost all its readers.
“Doubtless pure religious sentiment breaks out in this and in the other poems of Milton. The concluding line of his Sonnet on his Blindness—
and numerous other passages of similar beauty, have, we may believe, found an answering feeling in many hearts. But in speaking of those causes which have given a new character to the poetry of later times, it is not our purpose to trace their influence historically. Going back to the days of Grecian and Roman civilisation, we shall take only a few illustrations that may serve to show more clearly the contrast produced by their absence on one hand, or their operation on the other.
“In proportion as we contemplate the world from the height to which true religion conducts us, we perceive the circle of moral action widening indefinitely. Our duties toward the inferior animals are few and low, compared with those which we lie under to our fellow-men; and our duties toward our fellow-men become far more extensive, and assume a more solemn character, when we regard them not as born to perish upon earth, but as commencing here an unending existence. Our obligations to others correspond to our means of serving them; and we are introduced to a higher class of virtues, as soon as we recognise in those around us beings forming characters for a different mode of existence, to whom the highest service that can be rendered is to assist their progress in virtue, and to whom some influence, good or evil, is continually flowing out from us, and diverging into channels of which we cannot see the termination. All interest in the spiritual and imperishable good of our fellow-men must depend upon our regarding them as spiritual and imperishable. It is only under a sense of our true nature, that man is capable of reaching the sublime thought of assimilating himself to God, by devoting his powers to the moral welfare of his fellow-men.