the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished education, and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the It is not clear, even if we admit Macaulay's theory, why Milton should have had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than the great poets of a later time who lived in a still more highly civilised society. 2 "unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depressed -Paradise Lost, book ix., lines 44-46. * Johnson, "Life of Milton." exception. Surely the uniformity of the phænomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole & many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular 2 3 1 Jane Haldimand, 1769-1858, married in 1799 Dr. Alexander Marcet. Her Conversations on Political Economy, published in 1816, and intended to serve as an elementary text-book, passed through many editions and called forth the praise of such authorities as J. B. Say and McCulloch. 2 Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax 1661-1715, first attracted notice by a parody of Dryden's Hind and Panther, entitled the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, written jointly by him and Prior. He entered the House of Commons in 1689, and soon became a leader of the Whigs. He was made a Lord of the Treasury in 1692, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1694. He took the chief part in commencing the National Debt, founding the Bank of England and reforming the currency. In 1699 he resigned his office and next year he was called to the Upper House as Baron Halifax. He was impeached without success in 1701. In 1714 he was raised to the rank of an earl. As a patron of letters he was ridiculed by Pope under the name of Bufo. As a financier he was one of the greatest in English history. 3 Robert Walpole, Sir, 1676-1745, rose to be First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1715. After a brief exclusion from power he regained these offices and was virtually Prime Minister between 1721 and 1742. Walpole had neither the opportunities nor the daring temper of Montague. His improvements in the tariff, however, and his Excise scheme, defeated by party malice, entitle him to honourable rank as a financier. images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; 2 or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville3 have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man? Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if any thing which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671-1713, distinguished himself as a moral philosopher. He defined the moral sense as "a real antipathy or aversion to injustice and wrong and affection or love towards equity and right for its own sake and on account of its own natural beauty and worth" (Inquiry Concerning Virtue, book i., part iii., section i.). 3 Claude-Adrien Helvetius, 1715-1771, taught in his famous work De l'Esprit, that all our faculties are reducible to sensation, and that interest (the desire of pleasure and the fear of pain) is the only guide of human action. * Bernard Mandeville, 1670-1733, wrote the Fable of the Bees to prove that private vices were public benefits, or, at least, that there would be no civilisation if men had no unreasonable appetites. verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled: "As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy " which he ascribes to the poet, a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, every thing ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a 1. Midsummer Night's Dream," act v., scene 1. certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger longest among the peasantry. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. We He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education he was a profound and elegant classical scholar: he had The Greek Rhapsodists were professional reciters of the epic poems, who accompanied themselves on the lyre. Macaulay here refers to the Io of Plato, professedly a dialogue between Socrates and one of these rhapsodists, |