Page images
PDF
EPUB

So, whene'er I turn mine eye
Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,
Friends who closed their course before me.

Yet what binds us friend to friend,
But that soul with soul can blend?
Soul-like were those days of yore-
Let us walk in soul once more!

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee!-
Take, I give it willingly-
For, invisible to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me.

[ocr errors]

117.-SOME ENGLISH AUTHORS.

USES OF POETRY AND ART.

If we wish men to practise virtue, it is worth while trying to make them love virtue, and feel it an object in itself, and not a tax paid for leave to pursue other objects. It is worth training them to feel not only actual wrong and meanness, but the absence of noble aims and endeavors, as not merely blamable but also degrading; to have a feeling of the miserable smallness of mere self in the face of this great Universe, of the col lective mass of our fellow creatures-in the face of past history and of the indefinite future; the poorness and insignificance of human life, if it is to be all spent in making things comfortable for ourselves and our kin, and raising ourselves and them a step or two on the social ladder. Now, of this elevated tone of mind the great source of inspiration is Poetry, and all literature so far as it is poetical and artistic. We may imbibe exalted feelings from Plato, or Demosthenes, or Tacitus, but it is in so far as those great men are not solely philosophers, or orators, or historians, but poets and artists. Nor is it only loftiness, only the heroic feelings, that are bred by poetic cultivation. Its power is as great in calming the soul as in elevating it-in fostering the milder emotions, as the more exalted. It brings home to us all those aspects of life which take hold of our nature on its unselfish side, and lead us to identify our joy and grief with the good or ill of the system of which we form a part, and all those solemn or pensive feelings which, without having any direct application to conduct, incline us to take life seriously, and predispose us to the recep

tion of any thing which comes before us in the shape of duty. Who does not feel a better man after a course of Dante, or of Wordsworth, or after brooding over Gray's Elegy, or Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty?

MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.

John Stuart Mill.

If the choice were necessary, I would, sir, prefer my blindness to yours. Yours is a cloud spread over the mind, which darkens both the light of reason and of conscience: mine keeps from my view only the colored surfaces of things, while it leaves me at liberty to contemplate the beauty and stability of virtue and of truth. How many things are there, besides, which I would not willingly see! how many which I must see, against my will! and how few which I feel any anxiety to see! There is, as the apostle has remarked, a way to strength through weakness. Let me, then, be the most feeble creature alive, as long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and immortal spirit; as long as, in that obscurity in which I am enveloped, the light of the Divine presence more clearly shines: then, in proportion as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong, and in proportion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see.

BOOKS AND READING.

All readers are not critical. There are still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased, and who do not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never read an Essay upon Tasteand if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or their digestion by studying a cookery-book. Young readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor incrusted by the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you. Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dauger. ous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the control of others, and disposed you to relax in that

self government without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue-and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow-creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so if you are conscious of all or any of these effects-or if, having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book into the fire, whatever name it may bear on the title-page! Throw it into the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend! -young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rosewood bookcase! Robert Southey.

WORDSWORTH ON POETRY.

Aristotle has said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing. It is so its object is truth, not individual and local, but general and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion-truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry is the image of Man and Nature. The poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a man. The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science. Emphatically may it be said of the poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, that he looks before and after." He is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs; in spite of things silently gone out of

66

mind, and things violently destroyed; the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole Earth and over all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere: though the eyes and senses of men are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sen. sation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge-it is as immortal as the heart of Man. If the time should ever come when what is now called science shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produc as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.

USE AND WORTH OF KNOWLEDGE.

Men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

We see how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have decayed and been demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men's wit and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions

and opinions in succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other!

MEMORY AND THE MUSES.

Francis Bacon.

Time and education beget experience; experience begets memory; memory begets judgment and fancy; judgment begets the strength and structure, and fancy begets the ornaments, of a poem. The ancients therefore fabled not absurdly in making Memory the mother of the Muses. For memory is the world, though not really, yet so as in a looking glass, in which the judgment, the severer sister, busieth herself in a grave and rigid examination of all the parts of Nature, and in registering by letters their order, causes, uses, differences and resemblances; whereby the fancy, when any work of art is to be performed, finds her materials at hand and prepared for use, and needs no more than a swift motion over them, that what she wants, and is there to be had, may not lie too long unespied. That which giveth a poem the true and natural color consisteth in two things, which are, to know well, that is, to have images of Nature in the memory distinct and clear, and to know much. A sign of the first is perspicuity, propriety and decency, which delights all sorts of men, either by instructing the ignorant or soothing the learned in their knowledge. A sign of the latter is novelty of expression, and pleaseth by excitation of the mind, for novelty causeth admiration, and admiration curiosity, which is a delightful appetite of knowledge.

REFLECTIONS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Thomas Hobbes.

For myself, if things go badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. He must then, faith, be termed the Too well known. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence. It is a bitter thought; but, if tears start at it, let them flow. My heart clings to the place I have created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me. What a life mine has been-half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself. Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me—that is

« PreviousContinue »