Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

disorder" of his soul. The stream of his genius falls, from a vast height, amidst bleakest rocks, into depths, which mortal eye cannot fathom, and into which it is dangerous to gaze; but it sends up a radiant mist in its fall, which the sun tints with heavenly colouring, and it leaves its echoes on the golden and quiet clouds! The too frequent perversion of his genius does not prevent it from showing, in its degree, the immortality of the most sublime of the human faculties.

Sir Walter Scott, if his poetry is not all which his countrymen proclaim it, is a bard, in whose success every good man must rejoice. | His feeling of nature is true, if it is not profound; his humanity is pure, if it is not deep; his knowledge of facts is choice and various, if his insight into their philosophy is not very clear or extensive. Dr. Percy's Reliques prepared his way, and the unpublished Christabel aided his inspirations; but he is entitled to the credit of having first brought romantic poetry into fashion. Instead of the wretched sentimentalities of the Della Cruscan school, he supplied the public with pictures of nature, and with fair visions of chivalry. If he is, and we hope as well as believe that he is, the author of the marvellous succession of Scotch romances, he deserves far deeper sentiments of gratitude than those which his poems awaken. Then does he merit the praise of having sent the mountain breezes into the heart of this great nation; of having supplied us all with a glorious crowd of acquaintances, and even of friends, whose society will never disturb or weary us; and of having made us glow a thousand times with honest pride, in that nature of which we are partakers!

Mr. Southey is an original poet, and a delightful prose-writer, though he does not even belong to the class which it has been the fashion to represent him as redeeming. He has neither the intensity of Wordsworth, nor the glorious expansion of Coleridge; but he has their holiness of imagination, and childlike purity of thought. His fancies are often as sweet and as heavenly as those which "may make a crysome child to smile." There is, too, sometimes an infantine love of glitter and pomp, and of airy castle-building, displayed in his more fantastical writings. The great defect of his purest and loftiest poems is, that they are not imbued with humanity; they do not seem to have their only home on "this dear spot, this human earth of ours," but their scenes might be transferred, perhaps with advantage, to the moon or one of the planets. In the loneliest bower which poesy can rear, deep in a trackless wild, or in some island, placed "far amid the melancholy main," the air of this world must yet be allowed to breathe, if the poet would interest "us poor humans." It may heighten even the daintiest solitude of blessed lovers,

"All the while to feel and know,
That they are in a world of wo,
On such an earth as this."

Mr. Southey's poems are beautiful and pure, yet too far from our common emotions. His Joan of Arc, his Thalaba, and his Roderick, are

full of the stateliest pictures. But his Kehama is his greatest work—the most marvellous succession of fantasies, "sky tinctured," ever called into being, without the aid of real and hearty faith! Mr. Southey's prose style is singularly lucid and simple. His life of Nelson is a truly British work, giving the real heartiness of naval strength of our country, without ostentation or cant; his memoir of Kirke White is very unaffected and pathetic; and his Essays on the State of the Poor, really touching in their benevolence, and their well-regulated sympathies. Of the violences of his more decidedly political effusions, we shall not here venture to give an opinion; except to express our firm belief, that they have never been influenced by motives unworthy of a man of genius. Mr. Campbell has not done much which is excellent in poetry, but that which he has written well is admirable in its kind. His battleodes are simple, affecting, and sublime.-Few passages can exceed the dying speech of Gertrude, in sweet pathos, or the war-song of old Outalissi, in stern and ferocious grandeur. It is astonishing, that he, who could produce these and other pieces of most genuine poetry, should, on some occasions, egregiously mistake gaudy words for imagination: and heap up fragments of bad metaphors, as though he could scale the "highest heaven of invention," by the accumulation of mere earthly materials.

It is the singular lot of Moore, to seem, in his smaller pieces, as though he were fitted for the highest walk of poetry; and in his more ambitious efforts, to appear as though he could fabricate nothing but glittering tinsel. The truth is, however, that those of his attempts, which the world thinks the boldest, and in which we regard him as unsuccessful, are not above, but beneath his powers. A thousand tales of veiled prophets, who wed ladies in the abodes of the dead, and frighten their associates to death by their maimed and mangled countenances, may be produced with far less expense of true imagination, fancy, or feeling, than one sweet song, which shall seem the very echo "of summer days and delightful years." Moore is not fit for the composition of tales of demon frenzy and feverish strength, only because his genius is of too pure and noble an essence. He is the most sparkling and graceful of triflers. It signifies little, whether the Fives Court or the Palace furnish him with materials. However repulsive the subject, he can "turn all to favour, and to prettiness." Clay and gold, subjected to his easy inimitable hand, are wrought into shapes, so pleasingly fantastic, that the difference of the subject is lost in the fineness of the workmanship. His lighter pieces are distinguished at once by deep feeling, and a gay festive air, which he never entirely loses. He leads wit, sentiment, patriotism, and fancy, in a gay fantastic round, gambols sportively with fate, and holds a dazzling fence with care and with sorrow. He has seized all the "snatches of old tunes," which yet lingered about the wildest regions of his wild and fanciful country; and has fitted to them words of accordance, the most exquisite. There is a luxury in his grief, and a sweet melancholy in his joy, which are

old and well remembered in our experience, | in several numbers of the Indicator-he has rethough scarcely ever before thus nicely re-vived some of those lost parts of our old exvived in poetry.

The works of Crabbe are full of good sense, condensed thought, and lively picture; yet the greater part of them is almost the converse of poetry. The mirror which he holds up to nature, is not that of imagination, which softens down the asperities of actual existences, brings out the stately and the beautiful, while it leaves the trivial and the low in shadow, and sets all things which it reflects in harmony before us: on the contrary, it exhibits the details of the coarsest and most unpleasing realities, with microscopic accuracy and minuteness. Some of his subjects are, in themselves, worthless others are absolutely revoltingyet it is impossible to avoid admiring the strange nicety of touch with which he has felt their discordances, and the ingenuity with which he has painted them. His likenesses absolutely startle us.-There are cases in which this intense consciousness of little circumstances is prompted by deep passion; and, whenever Mr. Crabbe seizes one of these, his extreme minuteness rivets and enchants us. The effect of this vivid picturing in one of his tales, where a husband relates to his wife the story of her own intrigue before marriage, as a tale of another, is thrilling and grand. In some of his poems, as his Sir Eustace Grey and the Gipsy-woman's Confession, he has shown that he can wield the mightiest passions with ease, when he chooses to rise from the contemplation of the individual to that of the universal; from the delineation of men and things, to that of man and the universe.

perience, which we had else wholly forgotten; and has given a fresh sacredness to our daily walks and ordinary habits. We do not see any occasion in this for terms of reproach or ridicule. The scenery around London is not the finest in the world; but it is all which an immense multitude can see of nature, and surely it is no less worthy an aim to hallow a spot which thousands may visit, than to expatiate on the charms of some dainty solitude, which can be enjoyed only by an occasional traveller.

There are other living poets, some of them of great excellence, on whose merits we should be happy to dwell, but that time and space would fail us. We might expatiate on the heaven-breathing pensiveness of Montgomery on the elegant reminiscences of Rogers-on the gentle eccentricity of Wilson-on the luxurious melancholy of Bowles-or on the soft beauties of the Ettrick Shepherd. The works of Lloyd are rich in materials of reflection—most intense, yet most gentle-most melancholy, yet most full of kindness-most original in philosophic thought, yet most calm and benignant towards the errors of the world. Reynolds has given delightful indications of a free, and happy, and bounteous spirit, fit to sing of merry out-laws and green-wood revelries, which we trust he will suffer to refresh us with its blithe carollings. Keats, whose Endymion was so cruelly treated by the critics, has just put forth a volume of poems which must effectually silence his deriders. The rich romance of his Lamia-the holy beauty of his We dissent from many of Leigh Hunt's prin- St. Agnes' Eve-the pure and simple diction and ciples of morality and of taste; but we cannot intense feeling of his Isabella—and the rough suffer any difference of opinion to prevent the sublimity of his Hyperion-cannot be laughed avowal of our deep sense of his poetical genius. down, though all the periodical critics in EngHe is a poet of various and sparkly fancy, of land and Scotland were to assail them with real affectionate heartiness, and of pathos as their sneers. Shelley, too, notwithstanding the deep and pure as that of any living writer. He odious subject of his last tragedy, evinced in unites an English homeliness, with the richest that strange work a real human power, of which Italian luxury. The story of Rimini is one of there is little trace among the old allegories and the most touching, which we have ever re- metaphysical splendours of his earlier producceived into our "heart of hearts." The crisp- tions. No one can fail to perceive, that there are ness of the descriptive passages, the fine spirit mighty elements in his genius, although there is of gallantry in the chivalrous delineations, a melancholy want of a presiding power-a the exquisite gradations of the fatal affection central harmony-in his soul. Indeed, rich as and the mild heart-breaking remorse of the the present age is in poetry, it is even richer in heroine, form, altogether, a body of sweetly- promise. There are many minds-among bitter recollections, for which none but the which we may, particularly, mention that of most heartless of critics would be unthankful. Maturin-which are yet disturbed even by the The fidelity and spirit of his little translations number of their own incomplete perceptions. are surprising. Nor must we forget his prose These, however, will doubtless fulfil their gloworks; the wonderful power, with which herious destiny, as their imaginations settle into has for many years sent forth weekly essays, of great originality, both of substance and expression; and which seem now as fresh and unexhausted as ever. We have nothing here The dramatic literature of the present age to do with his religion or his politics;—but, it does not hold a rank proportioned to its poetical is impossible to help admiring the healthful genius. But our tragedy, at least, is superior impulses, which he has so long been breathing to any which has been produced since the rich "into the torpid breast of daily life;" or the period of Elizabeth and of James. Though plain and manly energy, with which he has the dramatic works of Shiel, Maturin, Coleshaken the selfism of the age, and sent the ridge, and Milman, are not so grand, and harclaims of the wretched in full and resistless monious, and impressive, as the talent of their force to the bosoms of the proud, or the thought- authors would lead us to desire, they are far less. In some of his productions-especially superior to the tragedies of Hill, Southern,

that calm lucidness, which in the instance of Keats has so rapidly succeeded to turbid and impetuous confusion.

Murphy, Johnson, Philipps, Thomson, Young, | soft and romantic charm of the novels of the Addison, or Rowe. Otway's Venice Preserved Porters-the brilliant ease and admirable good alone-and that only in the structure of its sense of Edgeworth-the intense humanity plot is superior to the Remorse, to Bertram, of Inchbald-the profound insight into the Fazio, or Evadne. And then-more pure, more fearful depths of the soul with which the audramatic, more gentle, than all these, is the thor of Glenarvon is gifted-the heart-rending tragedy of Virginius-a piece of simple yet pathos of Opie-and the gentle wisdom, the beautiful humanity-in which the most exqui- holy sympathy with the holiest childhood, and site succession of classic groups is animated the sweet imaginings, of the author of Mrs. with young life and connected by the finest Leicester's School-soften and brighten the litelinks of interest-and the sweetest of Roman rary aspect of the age. These indications of stories lives before us at once, new and fami- female talent are not only delightful in themliar to our bosoms. selves, but inestimable as proofs of the rich intellectual treasures which are diffused throughout the sex, to whom the next generation will owe their first and their most sacred impressions.

We shall not be suspected of any undue partiality towards modern criticism. But its talent shows, perhaps, more decidedly than any thing else, the great start which the human mind has taken of late years. Throughout all the periodical works extant, from the Edinburgh Review down to the lowest of the magazines, striking indications may be perceived of "that something far more deeply interfused," which is now working in the literature of England. We not rarely see criticisms on theatrical performances of the preceding evening in the daily newspapers, which would put to shame the elaborate observations of Dr. Johnson on Shakspeare. Mr. Hazlitt-incomparably the most original of the regular critics-has almost raised criticism into an independent art, and, while analyzing the merits of others, has disclosed stores of sentiment, thought, and fancy, which are his own peculiar property. His relish for the excellencies of those whom he eulogizes is so keen, that, in his delineations, the pleasures of intellect become almost as vivid and substantial as those of sense. He introduces us into the very presence of the great of old time, and enables us almost to imagine that we hear them utter the living words of beauty and wisdom. He makes us companions of their happiest hours, and share not only in the pleasures which they diffused, but in those which they tasted. He discloses to us the hidden soul of beauty, not like an anatomist but like a lover. His criticisms, instead of breaking the sweetest en chantments of life, prolongs them, and teaches us to love poetic excellence more intensely, as well as more wisely.

But, after all, the best intellectual sign of the present times is the general education of the poor. This ensures duration to the principles of good, by whatever political changes the frame of society may be shaken. The sense of human rights and of human duties is not now confined to a few, and, therefore, liable to be lost, but is stamped in living characters on millions of hearts. And the foundations of human improvement thus secured, it has a tendency to advance in a true geometrical progression. Meanwhile, the effects of the spirit of improvement which have long been silently preparing in different portions of the globe, are becoming brilliantly manifest. The vast continent of South America, whether it continue nominally dependent on European states, or retain its own newly-asserted freedom, will teem with new intellect, enterprise, and energy. Old Spain, long sunk into the most abject degradation, has suddenly awakened, as if refreshed from slumber, and her old genius must revive, with her old dignities. A bloodless revolution has just given liberty to Naples, and thus has opened the way for the restoration of Italy. That beautiful region again will soon inspire her bards with richer strains than of yore, and diffuse throughout the world a purer luxury. Amidst these quickenings of humanity, individual poets, indeed, must lose that personal importance which in darker periods would be their portion. All selfism-all predominant desire for the building up of indiThe present age is, also, honourably distin-vidual fame-must give way to the earnest guished by the variety and the excellence of productions from the pen of women. In poetry there is the deep passion, richly tinged with fancy, of Baillie-the delicate romance of Mitford the gentle beauty and feminine chivalry of Beetham-and the classic elegance of Hemans. There is a greater abundance of female talent among the novelists. The exquisite sarcasm of humour of Madame D'Arblay-the

and simple wish to share in, and promote, the general progress of the species. He is unworthy of the name of a great poet, who is not contented that the loveliest of his imaginations should be lost in the general light, or viewed only as the soft and delicate streaks which shall usher in that glorious dawn, which is, we believe, about to rise on the world, and to set no more'

ON PULPIT ORATORY.

WITH REMARKS ON THE REV. ROBERT HALL.
[LONDON MAGAZINE.]

of poor conceits, miserable compliments, and
hackneyed metaphors, are scarcely worthy
of a transient allusion.

THE decline of eloquence in the Senate and at the Bar is no matter of surprise. In the freshness of its youth, it was the only medium by which the knowledge and energy of a single But the causes which have opposed the exheart could be communicated to thousands. cellence of pulpit oratory in modern times It supplied the place, not only of the press, but are not so obvious. Its subjects have never of that general communication between the varied, from the day when the Holy Spirit different classes of the state, which the inter- visibly descended on the first advocates of the courses of modern society supply. Then the gospel, in tongues of fire. They are in no passions of men, unchilled by the frigid cus- danger of being exhausted by frequency, or toms of later days, left them open to be in- changed with the vicissitudes of mortal forflamed or enraptured by the bursts of enthu- tune. They have immediate relation to that siasm, which would now be met only with eternity, the idea of which is the living soul of scorn. In our courts of law occasions rarely all poetry and art. It is the province of the arise for animated addresses to the heart; and preachers of Christianity to develope the coneven when these occur, the barrister is fettered nection between this world and the next-to by technical rules, and yet more by the techni- watch over the beginnings of a course which cal habits and feelings, of those by whom he will endure for ever-and to trace the broad is encircled. A comparatively small degree shadows cast from imperishable realities on the of fancy, and a glow of social feeling, directed shifting scenery of earth. This sublunary by a tact which will enable a man to proceed sphere does not seem to them as trifling or with a constant appearance of directing his mean, in proportion as they extend their views course within legal confines, are now the best onward; but assumes a new grandeur and qualifications of a forensic orator. They were sanctity, as the vestibule of a statelier and an exhibited by Lord Erskine in the highest per- eternal region. The mysteries of our beingfection, and attended with the most splendid life and death-both in their strange essences, success. Had he been greater than he was, and in their sublimer relations, are topics of he had been nothing. He ever seemed to their ministry. There is nothing affecting in cherish an affection for the technicalities of the human condition, nothing majestic in the his art, which won the confidence of his duller affections, nothing touching in the instability associates. He appeared to lean on these as of human dignities, the fragility of lovelihis stays and resting-places, even when he ness,-or the heroism of self-sacrifice-which ventured to look into the depth of human na- is not a theme suited to their high purposes. ture, or to catch a momentary glimpse of the It is theirs to dwell on the eldest history of the regions of fantasy. When these were taken world-on the beautiful simplicities of the pafrom him, his powers fascinated no longer. triarchal age-on the stern and awful religion, He was exactly adapted to the sphere of a and marvellous story of the Hebrews-on the court of law-above his fellows, but not be- glorious visions of the prophets, and their fulfilyond their gage-and giving to the forms ment-on the character, miracles, and death which he could not forsake, an air of venera- of the Saviour-on all the wonders, and all the bleness and grandeur. Any thing more full beauty of the Scriptures. It is theirs to trace of beauty and wisdom than his speeches, the spirit of the boundless and the eternal, would be heard only with cold and bitter scorn faintly breathing in every part of the mystic in an English court of justice. In the houses circle of superstition, unquenched even amidst of parliament, mightier questions are debated; the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and but no speaker hopes to influence the decision. all the cold and beautiful shapes of Grecian Indeed the members of opposition scarcely pre-mould. The inward soul of every religious tend to struggle against the "dead eloquence of votes," but speak with a view to an influence on the public mind, which is a remote and chilling aim. Were it otherwise, the academic education of the members-the prevalent disposition to ridicule, rather than to admire-and the sensitiveness which resents a burst of enthusiasm as an offence against the decorum of polished society-would effectually repress any attempt to display an eloquence in which intense passion should impel the imagination, and noble sentiment should be steeped in fancy. The orations delivered on charitable occasions, consisting, with few exceptions,

system-the philosophical spirit of all history— the deep secrets of the human heart, when grandest or most wayward-are theirs to search and to develope. Even those speculations which do not immediately affect man's conduct and his hopes are theirs, with all their high casuistry; for in these, at least, they discern the beatings of the soul against the bars of its earthly tabernacle, which prove the immortality of its essence, and its destiny to move in freedom through the vast ethereal circle to which it thus vainly aspires. In all the intensities of feeling, and all the regalities of imagination, they may find fitting materials for

It appears, therefore, at first observation, strange, that in this country, where an irreligious spirit has never become general, the oratory of the pulpit has made so little progress. The ministers of the Established Church have not, on the whole, fulfilled the promise given in the days of its early zeal. The noble enthusiasm of Hooker-the pregnant wit of South-the genial and tolerant warmth of Tillotson-the vast power of reasoning and observation of Barrow-have rarely been copied, even feebly, by their successors. Jeremy Taylor stands altogether alone among churchmen. Who has ever manifested any portion of that exquisite intermixture of a yearning love with a heavenly fancy, which enabled him to embody and render palpable the holy charities of his religion in the loveliest and most delicate images? Who has ever so encrusted his subjects with candied words; or has seemed, like him, to take away the sting of death with "rich conceit;" or has, like him, half persuaded his hearers to believe that they heard the voice of pitying angels? Few, indeed, of the ministers of the church have been endued with the divine imagination which might combine, enlarge, and vivify the objects of sense, so as, by stately pictures, to present us with symbols of that uncreated beauty and grandeur in which hereafter we shall expatiate. The most celebrated of them have been little more than students of vast learning and research, unless, with Warburton and Horseley, they have aspired at once boldly to speculate, and imperiously to dogmatize.

their passionate expostulations with their fel- | Liturgy sunk deep into the heart, and prelow men to turn their hearts to those objects vented the devout worshipper from feeling the which will endure for ever. want of strength or variety in the discourses of the preacher. The church-yard, with its gentle risings, and pensive memorials of affection, was a silent teacher, both of vigilance and love. And the village spire, whose "silent finger points to heaven," has supplied the place of loftiest imaginings of celestial glory. Obstacles of a far different kind long prevented the advancement of pulpit eloquence among the Protestant Dissenters. The ministers first ejected for non-conformity were men of rigid honesty and virtue, but their intel lectual sphere was little extended beyond that of their fellows. There cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that they sacrificed their worldly interest from any regard to the principles of free inquiry, which have since almost become axioms. They believed that their compliance with the requisitions of the monarch would be offensive to God, and that in refusing to yield it they were doing his will; but they were prepared in their turn to assume the right of interpreting the Bible for others, and of condemning them for a more extended application of their example. Harassed, ridiculed, and afflicted, they naturally contracted an air of rigidity, and refused, in their turn, with horror, an extensive sympathy with the world. The controversies in which the learned men among the Dissenters were long occupied, having respect, not to grand and universal principles, but to petty questions of ceremony and minor points of faith, tended yet farther to confine and depress their genius. Their families were not the less scenes of love, because they preserved parental authority in its It cannot be doubted, that the species of pa- state; but the austerity of their manner tended tronage, by which the honours and emoluments to repress the imaginative faculties of the of the establishment are distributed, has tended young. If they indulged themselves in any to prevent the development of genius within relaxation of manner, it was not with flowing its pale. But, perhaps, we may find a more eloquence, but with the quaint conceit and adequate cause for the low state of its preach-grave jest that they garnished their conversaing in the very beauty and impressiveness of its rites and appointed services. The tendency of religious ceremonies, of the recurrence of old festivals, and of a solemn and dignified form of worship, is, doubtless, to keep alive tender associations in the heart, and to preserve the flame of devotion steady and pure, but not to incite men to look abroad into their nature, or to prompt any lofty excursions of religious fancy. There have, doubtless, been eloquent preachers in the church of Rome, because in her communion the ceremonies themselves are august and fearful, and because her proselyting zeal inspired her sons with peculiar energy. But episcopacy in England is by far the most tolerant of systems ever associated with worldly power. Its ministers, until the claim of some of them, to the exclusive title of evangelical, created dissensions, breathed almost uniformly a spirit of mildness and peace. Within its sacred boundaries, all was order, repose, and charity. Its rights and observances were the helps and leaning-places of the soul, on which it delighted to rest amidst the vicissitudes of the world, and in its approach to its final change. The fulness, the majesty, and the dignified benignities of the

tion or their discourses. Their religion wore a dark and uncouth garb; but to this we are indebted, in no small degree, for its preservation through times of demoralizing luxury.

A great change has taken place, of late years, in the literature and eloquence of Protestant Dissenters. As they ceased to be objects of persecution or of scorn, they insensibly lost the austerity and exclusiveness of their character. They descended from their dusty retirements to share in the pursuits and innocent enjoyments of "this bright and breathing world." Their honest bigotries gave way at the warm touch of social intercourse with those from whom they dissented. Meanwhile, the exertions of Whitefield,-his glowing, passionate, and awful eloquence;—his daring and quenchless enthusiasm, and the deep and extensive impression which he made throughout the kingdom, necessarily aroused those who received his essential doctrines, into new zeal. The impulse thus given was happily refined by a taste for classical learning, and for the arts and embellishments of life, which was then gradually insinuating itself into their churches. Some of the new converts who forsook the establishment, not from repug

« ElőzőTovább »