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in the pangs of death, when he thought of the mead of Valhalla.

The first works of the imagination are, as we have said, poor and rude, not from the want of genius, but from the want of materials. Phidias could have done nothing with an old tree and a fish bone, or Homer with the language of New Holland.

forth our tears, to the art by which those images the heart only knoweth, a joy with which a have been selected and combined. We applaud stranger intermeddleth not. The machinery, the genius of the writer. We applaud our own by which ideas are to be conveyed from one sagacity and sensibility, and we are comforted. person to another, is as yet rude and defective. Yet, though we think that, in the progress of Between mind and mind there is a great gulf. nations towards refinement, the reasoning The imitative arts do not exist, or are in their powers are improved at the expense of the ima- lowest state. But the actions of men amply gination, we acknowledge, that to this rule prove that the faculty which gives birth to there are many apparent exceptions. We are those arts is morbidly active. It is not yet the not, however, quite satisfied that they are more inspiration of poets and sculptors; but it is the than apparent. Men reasoned better, for ex- amusement of the day, the terror of the night ample, in the time of Elizabeth than in the the fertile source of wild superstitions. It time of Egbert; and they also wrote better turns the clouds into gigantic shapes, and the poetry. But we must distinguish between poetry winds into doleful voices. The belief which and a mental act, and poetry as a species of springs from it is more absolute and undoubtcomposition. If we take it in the latter sense, ing than any which can be derived from eviits excellence depends, not solely on the vigour dence. It resembles the faith which we reof the imagination, but partly also on the in- pose in our own sensations. Thus, the Arab, truments which the imagination employs. when covered with wounds, saw nothing but Within certain limits, therefore, poetry may be the dark eyes and the green kerchief of a beckimproving, while the poetical faculty is decay-oning Houri. The Northern warrior laughed ing. The vividness of the picture presented to the reader is not necessarily proportioned to the vividness of the prototype which exists in the mind of the writer. In the other arts we see this clearly. Should a man, gifted by nature with all the genius of Canova, attempt to carve a statue without instruction as to the management of his chisel, or attention to the anatomy of the human body, he would produce Yet the effect of these early performances, something compared with which the High-imperfect as they must necessarily be, is imlander at the door of the snuff-shop would de- mense. All deficiencies are to be supplied serve admiration. If an uninitiated Raphael by the susceptibility of those to whom they are were to attempt a painting, it would be a mere addressed. We all know what pleasure a daub; indeed, the connoisseurs say, that the wooden doll, which may be bought for sixearly works of Raphael are little better. Yet, pence, will afford to a little girl. She will rewho can attribute this to want of imagination? quire no other company. She will nurse it, Who can doubt that the youth of that great ar- dress it, and talk to it all day. No grown-up tist was passed amidst an ideal world of beauti- man takes half so much delight in one of the ful and majestic forms? Or, who will attribute incomparable babies of Chantrey. In the same the difference which appears between his first manner, savages are more affected by the rude rude essays, and his magnificent Transfigura-compositions of their bards than nations more tion, to a change in the constitution of his advanced in civilization by the greatest masmind? In poetry, as in painting and sculpture, terpieces of poetry. it is necessary that the imitator should be well acquainted with that which he undertakes to imitate, and expert in the mechanical part of his art. Genius will not furnish him with a vocabulary: it will not teach him what word most exactly corresponds to his idea, and will most fully convey it to others: it will not make him a great descriptive poet, till he has looked with attention on the face of nature; or a great dramatist, till he has felt and witnessed much of the influence of the passions. Information and experience are, therefore, necessary; not for the purpose of strengthening the imagination, which is never so strong as in people incapable of reasoning-savages, children, madmen, and dreamers; but for the purpose of enabling the artist to communicate his conceptions to others.

In a barbarous age the imagination exercises a despotic power. So strong is the perception of what is unreal, that it often overpowers all the passions of the mind, and all the sensations of the body. At first, indeed, the phantasm remains undivulged, a hidden treasure, a wordless poetry, an invisible painting, a silent music, a dream of which the pains and pleasures xist to the dreamer alone, a bitterness which

In process of time, the instruments by which the imagination works are brought to perfection. Men have not more imagination than their rude ancestors. We strongly suspect that they have much less. But they produce better works of imagination. Thus, up to a certain period, the diminution of the poetical powers is far more than compensated by the improvement of all the appliances and means of which those powers stand in need. Then comes the short period of splendid and con summate excellence. And then, from causes against which it is vain to struggle, poetry begins to decline. The progress of language, which was at first favourable, becomes fatal to it, and, instead of compensating for the decay of the imagination, accelerates that decay, and renders it more obvious. When the adventurer in the Arabian tale anointed one of his eyes with the contents of the magical box, alt the riches of the earth, however widely dis persed, however sacredly concealed, became visible to him. But when he tried the experi ment on both eyes, he was struck with blindness. What the enchanted elixir was to the sight of the body, language is to the sight of the imagination. At first it calls up a world

of glorious illusions, but when it becomes too wonderful models of former times are justly copious, it altogether destroys the visual power. appreciated. The frigid productions of a later As the development of the mind proceeds, age are rated at no more than their proper symbols, instead of being employed to convey value. Pleasing and ingenious imitations of images, are substituted for them. Civilized the manner of the great masters appear. Poetmen think as they trade, not in kind, but by ry has a partial revival, a St. Martin's Summeans of a circulating medium. In these cir- mer, which, after a period of dreariness and cumstances the sciences improve rapidly, and decay, agreeably reminds us of the splendour criticism among the rest; but poetry, in the of its June. A second harvest is gathered in; highest sense of the word, disappears. Then though, growing on a spent soil, it has not the comes the dotage of the fine arts, a second heart of the former. Thus, in the present age, childhood, as feeble as the former, and far Monti has successfully imitated the style of more hopeless. This is the age of critical Dante; and something of the Elizabethan inpoetry, of poetry by courtesy, of poetry to spiration has been caught by several eminent which the memory, the judgment, and the wit countrymen of our own. But never will Italy contribute far more than the imagination. We produce another Inferno, or England another readily allow that many works of this descrip- Hamlet. We look on the beauties of the motion are excellent; we will not contend with dern imitations with feelings similar to those those who think them more valuable than the with which we see flowers disposed in vases great poems of an earlier period. We only to ornament the drawing-rooms of a capital. maintain that they belong to a different species We doubtless regard them with pleasure, with of composition, and are produced by a differ- greater pleasure, perhaps, because, in the midst ent faculty. of a place ungenial to them, they remind us It is some consolation to reflect that this of the distant spots on which they flourish in critical school of poetry improves as the sci- spontaneous exuberance. But we miss the ence of criticism improves; and that the science sap, the freshness, and the bloom. Or, if we of criticism, like every other science, is con- may borrow another illustration from Queen stantly tending towards perfection. As experi- Scheherezade, we would compare the writers ments are multiplied, principles are better un-of this school to the jewellers who were emderstood.

ployed to complete the unfinished window of the palace of Aladdin. Whatever skill or cost could do was done. Palace and bazaar were ransacked for precious stones. Yet the artists, with all their dexterity, with all their assiduity, and with all their vast means, were unable to produce any thing comparable to the wonders which a spirit of a higher order had wrought in a single night.

In some countries, in our own, for example, there has been an interval between the downfall of the creative school and the rise of the critical, a period during which imagination has been in its decrepitude, and taste in its infancy. Such a revolutionary interregnum as this will be deformed by every species of extravagance. The first victory of good taste is over the bombast and conceits which deform such times The history of every literature with which as these. But criticism is still in a very im- we are acquainted confirms, we think, the perfect state. What is accidental is for a long principles which we have laid down. In time confounded with what is essential. Ge- Greece we see the imaginative school of poet neral theories are drawn from detached facts.ry gradually fading into the critical. EschyHow many hours the action of a play may be lus and Pindar were succeeded by Sophocles; allowed to occupy-how many similes an epic Sophocles by Euripides; Euripides by the poet may introduce into his first book-whe- Alexandrian versifiers. Of these last, Theother a piece which is acknowledged to have a critus alone has left compositions which debeginning and end may not be without a mid-serve to be read. The splendid and grotesque dle, and other questions as puerile as these, fairy-land of the Old Comedy, rich with such formerly occupied the attention of men of let- gorgeous hues, peopled with such fantastic ters in France, and even in this country. shapes, and vocal alternately with the sweetPoets, in such circumstances as these, exhibit est peals of music and the loudest bursts of all the narrowness and feebleness of the criti- elvish laughter, disappeared forever. The cism by which their manner has been fashion- masterpieces of the New Comedy are known ed. From outrageous absurdity they are pre- to us by Latin translations of extraordinary served indeed by their timidity. But they merit. From these translations, and from the perpetually sacrifice nature and reason to ar- expressions of the ancient critics, it is clear bitrary canons of taste. In their eagerness to that the original compositions were distinavoid the mala prohibita of a foolish code, they guished by grace and sweetness, that they are perpetually rushing on the mala in sc. sparkled with wit and abounded with pleasing Their great predecessors, it is true, were as sentiments, but that the creative power was bad critics as themselves, or perhaps worse; gone. Julius Cæsar called Terence a half but those predecessors, as we have attempted Menander-a sure proof that Menander was to show, were inspired by a faculty indepen- not a quarter Aristophanes. Ident of criticism, and therefore wrote well while they judged ill.

In time men begin to take more rational and comprehensive views of literature. The analysis of poetry, which, as we have remarked, inust at best be imperfect, approaches nearer and nearer to exactness. The merits of the

The literature of the Romans was merely a continuation of the literature of the Greeks. The pupils started from the point at which their masters had in the course of many generations arrived. They thus almost wholly missed the period of original invention. The only Latin poets whose writings exhibit much

vigour of imagination are Lucretius and Catullus. The Augustan age produced nothing equal to their finer passages.

In France, that licensed jester, whose jingling cap and motley coat concealed more genius than ever mustered in the saloon of Ninon or of Madame Géoffrin, was succeeded by writers as decorous and as tiresome as gentlemenushers.

The poetry of Italy and of Spain has undergone the same change. But nowhere has the revolution been more complete and violent than in England. The same person who, when a boy, had clapped his thrilling hands at the first representation of the Tempest, might, without attaining to a marvellous longevity, have lived to read the earlier works of Prior and Addison. The change, we believe, must, sooner or later, have taken place. But its progress was accelerated and its character modified by the political occurrences of the times, and particularly by two events, the closing of the theatres under the Commonwealth, and the restoration of the house of Stuart.

We have said that the critical and poetical faculties are not only distinct, but almost incompatible. The state of our literature during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First is a strong confirmation of this remark. The greatest works of imagination that the world has ever seen were produced at that period. The national taste, in the mean time, was to the last degree detestable. Alliterations, puns, antithetical forms of expression lavishly employed where no corresponding opposition existed between the thoughts expressed, strained allegories, pedantic allusions, every thing, In short, quaint and affected in matter and manner, made up what was then considered as fine writing. The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, and the council-board was deformed by conceits which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy. The king quibbled on the throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by reflecting that his majesty was a fool. But the chancellor quibbled in concert from the woolsack, and the chancellor was Francis Bacon. It is needless to mention Sidney and the whole tribe of Euphuists. For Shakspeare himself, the greatest poet that ever lived, falls into the same fault whenever he means to be particularly fine. While he abandons himself to the impulse of his imagination, his compositions are not only the sweetest and the most sublime, but also the most faultless that the world has ever seen. But as soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to the level of Cowley, or rather he does ill what Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elaborately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing wanting to make them perfect was, that he shouid never have troubled himself with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and laboricas flight." His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar it is only necessary that he should not struggle to fall. He resembled the American cacique who, possessing in unmeasured abundance the metals which in polished societies are esteemed the most preVOL. I.-€

cious, was utterly unconscious of their value, and gave up treasures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other countries, to secure some gaudy and far-fetched but worthless bau ble, a plated button, or a necklace of coloured glass.

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We have attempted to show that, as know ledge is extended, and as the reason developes itself, the imitative arts decay. We should, therefore, expect that the corruption of poetry would commence in the educated classes of society. And this, in fact, is almost constantly the case. The few great works of imagination which appear in a critical age are, almost without exception, the works of uneducated men. Thus, at a time when persons of quality translated French romances, and when the Universities celebrated royal deaths in verses about Tritons and Fauns, a preaching tinker produced the Pilgrim's Progress. And thus a ploughman startled a generation, which had thought Hayley and Beattie great poets, with the adventures of Tam O'Shanter. Even in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth the fashionable poetry had degenerated. tained few vestiges of the imagination of earlier times. It had not yet been subjected to the rules of good taste. Affectation had completely tainted madrigals and sonnets. The grotesque conceits and the tuneless num bers of Donne were, in the time of James, the favourite models of composition at Whitehall and at the Temple. But though the literature of the Court was in its decay, the literature of the people was in its perfection. The Muses had taken sanctuary in the theatres, the haunts of a class whose taste was not better than that of the Right Honourables and singular good Lords who admired metaphysical love-verses, but whose imagination retained all its fresh. ness and vigour; whose censure and approbation might be erroneously bestowed, but whose tears and laughter were never in the wrong. The infection which had tainted lyric and didactic poetry had but slightly and partially touched the drama. While the noble and the learned were comparing eyes to burning glasses, and tears to terrestrial globes, coyness to an enthymeme, absence to a pair of compasses, and an unrequited passion to the fortieth remainderman in an entail, Juliet leaning from the balcony, and Miranda smiling over the chess-board, sent home many spectators, as kind and simple-hearted as the master and mistress of Fletcher's Ralpho, to cry them. selves to sleep.

No species of fiction is so delightful to us as the old English drama. Even its inferior pro ductions possess a charm not to be found in any other kind of poetry. It is the most lucid mirror that ever was held up to nature. The creations of the great dramatists of Athens produce the effect of magnificent sculptures, conceived by a mighty imagination, polished with the utmost delicacy, imbodying ideas of ineffable majesty and beauty, but cold, pale. and rigid, with no bloom on the cheek, and nc speculation in the eye. In all the draperies, the figures, and the faces, in the lovers an the tyrants, the Bacchanals and the Furies there is the same marble chillness and dead

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and that of agreeable imitation. The works of Shakspeare, which were not appreciated with any degree of justice before the middle of the eighteenth century, might then have been the recognised standards of excellence during the latter part of the seventeenth; and he and the great Elizabethan writers might have been almost immediately succeeded by a generation of poets, similar to those who adorn our own times.

ness. Most of the characters of the French terval between the age of sublime invention stage resemble the waxen gentlemen and ladies in the window of a perfumer, rouged, curled, and bedizened, but fixed in such stiff attitudes, and staring with eyes expressive of such utter unmeaningness, that they cannot produce an illusion for a single moment. In the English plays alone is to be found the warmth, the mellowness, and the reality of painting. We know the minds of the men and women, as we know the faces of the men and women of Vandyke.

in the writers whom they reprobated; but whether they took the best measures for stopping the evil, appears to us very doubtful, and must, we think, have appeared doubtful to themselves, when, after the lapse of a few years, they saw the unclean spirit whom they had cast out, return to his old haunts, with seven others fouler than himself.

By the extinction of the drama, the fashionable school of poetry-a school without truth of sentiment or harmony of versificationwithout the powers of an earlier or the correctness of a later age-was left to enjoy un

morbid quickness to perceive resemblances and analogies between things apparently heterogeneous, constituted almost its only claim to admiration. Suckling was dead. Milton was absorbed in political and theological contro

But the Puritans drove imagination from its The excellence of these works is in a great last asylum. They prohibited theatrical repremeasure the result of two peculiarities, which sentations, and stigmatized the whole race of the critics of the French school consider as dramatists as enemies of morality and relidefects from the mixture of tragedy and co-gion. Much that is objectionable may be found medy, and from the length and extent of the action. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of a world, in which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually jostling each other-in which every event has its serious and its ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with characters, with which we could not possibly become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect the works of Shakspeare, in particular, are miracies of art. In a piece, which may be read aloud in three hours, we see a character gradually unfold all its re-disputed ascendency. A vicious ingenuity, a cesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The petulant youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, by the chastening of af-versy. If Waller differed from the Cowleian ffliction, into a pensive moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and self-command, sinks under a conflict between love, strong as death, and jealousy, cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes, step by step, to the extremities of human depravity. We trace his progress from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition, to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet, in these pieces, there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted: nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and every morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the Dervise in the Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his head under the water.

It is deserving of remark, that at the time of which we speak, the plays even of men not eminently distinguished by genius-such, for example, as Jonson-were far superior to the best works of imagination in other departments. Therefore, though we conceive that, from causes which we have already investi- | gated, our poetry must necessarily have declined, we think that, unless its fate had been accelerated by external attacks, it might have enjoyed an euthanasia-that genius might have been kept alive by the drama till its place could, in some degree, be supplied by tastethat there would have been scarcely any in

sect of writers, he differed for the worse. He had as little poetry as they, and much less wit: nor is the languor of his verses less offensive than the ruggedness of theirs. In Denham alone the faint dawn of a better manner was discernible.

But, low as was the state of our poetry during the civil war and the Protectorate, a still deeper fall was at hand. Hitherto our literature had been idiomatic. In mind as in situation, we had been islanders. The revolutions in our taste, like the revolutions in our government, had been settled without the interference of strangers. Had this state of things continued, the same just principles of reasoning, which, about this time, were applied with unprecedented success to every part of philosophy, would soon have conducted our ancestors to a sounder code of criticism. There were already strong signs of improve ment. Our prose had at length worked itself clear from those quaint conceits which still deformed almost every metrical composition. The parliamentary debates and the diplomatic correspondence of that eventful period had contributed much to this reform. In such bustling times, it was absolutely necessary to speak and write to the purpose. The absurdities of Puritanism had, perhaps, done more. At the time when that odious style, which deforms the writings of Hall and of Lord Bacon, was almost universal, had appeared that stupendous work, the English Bible-a book which, if every thing else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the

whole extent of its beauty and power. The respect which the translators felt for the original prevented them from adding any of the hideous decorations then in fashion. The groundwork of the version, indeed, was of an earlier age. The familiarity with which the Puritans, on almost every occasion, used the scriptural phrases, was no doubt very ridiculous; but it produced good effects. It was a cant; but it drove out a cant far more offensive.

against their will, been forced to flatter-of which the tragedy of Bayes is a very favour able specimen. What Lord Dorset observed to Edward Howard, might have been addressed to almost all his contemporaries :—

"As skilful divers to the bottom fall,

other writers of the time. As for Gondibert, those may criticise it who can read it. Ima gination was extinct. Taste was depraved. Poetry, driven from palaces, colleges, and the

Swifter than those who cannot swim at all; So, in this way of writing without thinking, Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking." From this reproach some clever men of the world must be expected, and among them The highest kind of poetry is, in a great Dorset himself. Though by no means great measure, independent of those circumstances poets, or even good versifiers, they always which regulate the style of composition in wrote with meaning, and sometimes with wit. prose. But with that inferior species of poe-Nothing indeed more strongly shows to what try which succeeds to it, the case is widely a miserable state literature had fallen, than different. In a few years, the good sense and the immense superiority which the occasional good taste which had weeded out affectation rhymes, carelessly thrown on paper by men from moral and political treatises would, in of this class, possess over the elaborate prothe natural course of things, have effected a ductions of almost all the professed authors. similar reform in the sonnet and the ode. The The reigning taste was so bad, that the success rigour of the victorious sectaries had relaxed. of a writer was in inverse proportion to his A dominant religion is never ascetic. The labour, and to his desire of excellence. An government connived at theatrical representa- exception must be made for Butler, who had as tions. The influence of Shakspeare was once much wit and learning as Cowley, and who more felt. But darker days were approaching. knew, what Cowley never knew, how to use A foreign yoke was to be imposed on our lite-them. A great command of good homely rature. Charles, surrounded by the compa-English distinguishes him still more from the nions of his long exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him out, or never to have received him back. Every year which he had passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his coun-atres, had found an asylum in the obscure trymen. In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of parliaments had been so fatal. Politeness was his solitary good quality. The insults which he had suf-duced the greatest of modern epic poems fered in Scotland had taught him to prize it. The effeminacy and apathy of his disposition fitted him to excel in it. The elegance and vivacity of the French manners fascinated him. With the political maxims and the social habits of his favourite people, he adopted their taste in composition; and, when seated on the throne, soon rendered it fashionable, partly by direct patronage, but still more by that contemptible policy which, for a time, made England the last of the nations, and raised Louis the Fourteenth to a height of power and fame, such as no French sovereign had ever before attained.

dwelling, where a great man, born out of due season, in disgrace, penury, pain, and blind ness, still kept uncontaminated a character and a genius worthy of a better age.

Every thing about Milton is wonderful; but nothing is so wonderful as that, in an age so unfavourable to poetry, he should have pro

We are not sure that this is not in some de gree to be attributed to his want of sight. The imagination is notoriously most active when the external world is shut out. In sleep its illusions are perfect. They produce all the effect of realities. In darkness its visions are always more distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses himself with what is called building castles in the air, must have experienced this. We know artists, who, before they attempt to draw a face from memory, close their eyes, that they may recall a more perfect image of the features and the expres sion. We are therefore inclined to believe, It was to please Charles that rhyme was that the genius of Milton may have been preFirst introduced into our plays. Thus, a rising served from the influence of times sc unfalow, which would at any time have been vourable to it, by his infirmity. Be this as it 1ortal, was dealt to the English drama, then may, his works at first enjoyed a very small just recovering from its languishing condition. share of popularity. To be neglected by his Two detestable manners, the indigenous and contemporaries was the penalty which he paid the imported, were now in a state of alternate for surpassing them. His great poem was conflict and amalgamation. The bombastic | not generally studied or admired, till writers meanness of the new style was blended with the far inferior to him had, by cbsequiously cring ingenious absurdity of the old; and the mix-ing to the public taste, acquired sufficient fa ture produced something which the world had never before seen, and which, we hope, it will never see again-something, by the side of which the worst nonsense of all other ages appears to advantage-something, which those who have attempted to caricature it, have,

vour to reform it.

Of these Dryden was the must eminent Amidst the crowd of authors, who, during the earlier years of Charles the Second, courted notoriety by every species of absurdity and affectation, he speedily became conspicuous

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