Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the first time since I had lost her. My tears seemed to freshen the feelings of my grief; every little circumstance which had been half-obscured, halfforgotten, in the late dull and stupified state of my mind, now came forth in vivid colouring. I continued to weep, and to press the light dress which my Gertrude had last worn, to stop my ears. While sitting there, I discovered a small volume lying beneath one of the cushions of the sofa, and I recollected that I had often seen it in the hands of my wife. The book was lying open, as if it had been just laid down. I was struck by the peculiar richness of the binding: the sides and back were covered with green velvet, thickly bossed with pearls and rubies, and its clasps, of pale virgin gold, were also studded with valuable gems. I expected to find some rare and richly ornamented manuscript, some painted missal: I was disappointed, for the volume was a small plainly printed English Bible. I hastily turned over the leaves: on the title page my wife had written with an unsteady hand these wordsMy last prayer will be that my husband may regard this book as his best treasure-it has been ever mine. From the grave, from another world, I beseech him to search this message of God himself. O let him not dispute over this sacred volume, but pray in a childlike and teachable spirit for the knowledge of himself, of the truth, of eternal happiness! For your sake, my blessed love,' I exclaimed fervently, I will read this little volume! It shall lie next to my heart, which your image shall never leave.' At that moment the phantom stood before me, and the book dropped from my hand.

All about me seemed to undergo a gradual change, and the presence of the phantoni is no longer dreadful to me. He still appeareth often, but not to terrify, not to wither my heart within me. I have learned to bless his appearance, for he now cometh rather as a friendly monitor. In the hour of danger, of temptation, of trial, I see his look of agonized entreaty, I hear his solemn voice of warning, deploring my past guilt, and pointing to those mercies which have blotted out the sentence of condemnation pronounced against all sinners. His form I can still recognise, but it seemeth like one that is transfigured, and the garments that he wears are white and glistening.

Here I conclude You say that you must return to England. My true friend, I would go thither also. I would no longer defer my departure from Naples for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

Poems.

New

As to this recent publication, we do not think it will increase the fame of Campbell; neither do we think it will shake his well established reputation. It comes too late to effect this; but had it appeared immediately after "The Pleasures of Hope," it would have needed something better than "Gertrude of Wyoming," highly polished as that is, to have placed him on his former level in public estimation.

been opened. No man can now elevate | great men found it expedient to vary from
himself by the most elaborate imitations, their predecessors. Indeed we do not recol-
and Mr Campbell unhappily belongs to the lect a single great poet who has not a ver-
class of imitators. We do not know but sification peculiarly his own.
Byron, in
we may shock the prejudices of some of our his dedication of the "Corsair," talks about
readers by this assertion, nor do we mean his having attempted "the good, old, and now
to make it without some qualification. His neglected heroic couplet;" but the coup-
lyric poetry is his own, pure and unming- lets of the "Corsair" are no more like the
led, and noble; but his longer works-those couplets of Dryden, or of Pope, or of Gold-
to which his odes are but appendages-all smith, than they are like the couplets of
discover mannerism and imitation strongly Chaucer, or than the blank verse of Thom-
marked. This will not do now, and cannot son is like the blank verse of Milton or
do hereafter. The master poets of the age Young. It is curious to see that in the
have broken down the barriers of preju- lyric poetry of Campbell,-that part of his
dice; they have moulded anew the public works on which his fame must ultimately
taste, and stamped it with an original im- rest, he has invented new measures of
press. No revival of an obsolete school of verse.
poetry, no direct imitation of a new one,
can now win the applause of the public,
though it may exact the approval of critics.
Campbell was happy in the time at which
"The Pleasures of Hope” was published; |
a few years later, and it would been prais-
ed by critics and neglected by readers, if
indeed his good sense would not then have
entirely suppressed it. Brown's "Paradise
of Coquettes" and "Bower of Spring"
were praised in the Edinburgh Review;
but we may retort on the critics their own
words, "Who reads them?" They slumber
with Hayley's "Triumphs of Temper."
Truly the Scottish critics have been very
unhappy in their remarks on poetry, in the
subjects which they have selected either
for praise or blame. They seemed to have
put down Wordsworth for a time; they
ridiculed Byron and Coleridge; they be-
stowed mingled praise and censure on
Southey;-look at the result! Those pas
sages of Southey which they condemned
are admired, and the judges are condemned
for those which they absolved. Coleridge
is now confessedly "a singularly wild and
beautiful" poet, the most original perhaps
that ever wrote.* The superior excellence
of some of Byron's later performances are
thought by good judges to be due to his
having been "dosed with Wordsworth."
And, in Wordsworth's own language, who
does not observe to what a degree the
poetry of the Island has been coloured by
his works?

Theodric; a Domestic Tale; and Other
By Thomas Campbell.
York. 1825. 18mo. pp. 116.
MR CAMPBELL'S fortune as a poet has been
singular. The fame of other poets fluctu-
ated during their whole lives, and their
For one who loves literature well enough
niches in the Temple were assigned to to trace its history in its minuter points, it is
them by posterity; but he seems many interesting to notice the changes in the
years ago to have attained a station, from versification of our language since the days
which no subsequent performances have of Queen Elizabeth, from the ruggedness
removed him; and he is now arrived at an of Donne and Cowley, through the affect-
age which renders it improbable that he ed airiness of Waller, the stateliness of
will produce any work to alter the judg- Dryden, and the flippancy of Pope, to the
ment of the public. He has always been, smooth flow of Goldsmith and his followers;
and from the nature of things always must and then to turn to the rich and varied har.
be, a popular poet, but, as it has been de-mony that wells forth from the pages of
cided, a poet of the second class. There Walter Scott and of Byron, and the poets
are passages in all his works which appeal of the Lake school. We have not adverted
directly to feelings inherent in human na-
ture,-passages which will awaken respon-
ses in the breast of every reader.

to the less marked differences which may
be found in some of the intermediate poets;
but we have cited enough to show, that,
even in the trivial point of form, these

His first work, "The Pleasures of Hope," was, according to the notions of the leaders of the public taste in its day, a work of high promise. But better and more exalt- in this country? We have but few of them, and Why are not Coleridge's Poems republished ed views of poetical excellence have since i those not the best.

Theodric is a short tale, and, as it seems
to us, carelessly told.
scription of Alpine scenery, conveyed from
It opens with a de-
Wordsworth, and sadly marred in the trans-
version. The poet imagines himself stand-
ing by the tomb of a Swiss maiden, whose
story is told him by his companion: that
she fell in love with a colonel in the Aus-
trian army from the enthusiastic descrip-
tions of her brother, who was a cornet in
his troop; and learning that he was about
to marry another woman, she died of love;
that the colonel having one day scolded a
little, because his wife stayed too long on a
visit, she died of grief thereupon just about
the same time. What became of the colonel
and cornet afterwards, our author says not.
Now any man who is conversant with the
Lake poets, must know, that a fine super-
structure of poetry might have been built
on such a plan as this. We ourselves, ad-
mirers as we are of another school than his,
did believe that Mr Campbell could have
worked up this simple tale powerfully; but
he has failed. The style is a strange med-
ley-some passages are of the versification
of Mr Campbell's earlier works, some of
that of Lord Byron's, and now and then a
dash of Crabbe's; and we could not feel
affected by the incidents, however much we
tried. We quote the opening lines.

"Twas sunset, and the Ranz des Vaches was sung,
And lights were o'er th' Helvetian nountains flung,
That gave the glacier tops their richest glow,
And tinged the lakes like molten gold below.
Warmth flushed the wonted regions of the storm,
That high in Heaven's vermilion wheeled and soared.
Where, Phoenix-like, you saw the eagles form,
Woods nearer frowned, and cataracts dashed and

roared,

From heights brouzed by the bounding bouquetin;
Herds tinkling roamed the long-drawn vales be-
And hamlets glittered white, and gardens flourished

tween,

green.

Some of our readers may not have had an opportunity of seeing the original of these

344

lines; and to such of them as have seen it, love of ordinary mortals, than that which is we presume no apology is necessary for re-expressed in Byron's. "The Ritter Bann" calling to their recollection such finished has been sufficiently ridiculed, so we will not join in the chorus. "Reullura" is as tame as poetry of so high an order. the Ritter. The Song-"Men of England" is more in the style of Campbell's best efforts than any thing else in the volume, and is worthy of a place not far below "The Battle of the Baltic."

"Tis storm, and hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening murmur pour;
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight;
Dark is the region as with coming night;
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm.
Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form ;
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake re line;
Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned that flame with gold;
Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire
The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire.
Wordsworth's Descriptive Sketches.

There is another passage of English poetry which we doubt not owes its origin to this. We mean the opening of the third canto of the Corsair; but no trace of imitation is to be found there. Byron was a master of his art; he did not borrow another man's lamp and pour out the oil; but when he had caught light from it, the flame which he kindled was his own, and supplied from an inexhaustible fountain. We have not found in Theodric any other passage of such palpable imitation as that which we have quoted; but we think that the whole poem evinces, that it is the work of one who draws sometimes from one and sometimes from another, without relying upon his own collected and concocted resources. Like all the works of its author, it has passages of tranquil beauty. The following description is of this kind:

and to know her well Prolonged, exalted, bound, enchantment's spell; For with affections warm, intense, refined, She mixed such calm and holy strength of mind, That, like Heaven's image in the smiling brook, Celestial peace was pictured in her look. Hers was the brow, in trials unperplexed, That cheered the sad, and tranquillized the vexed; She studied not the meanest to eclipse, And yet the wisest listened to her lips; She sang not, knew not Music's magic skill, But yet her voice had tones that swayed the will. There are lines in which the author's wish to snatch, like some of his cotemporaries, "a grace beyond the reach of art," has betrayed him into a meanness of expression that sorts but oddly with the others around them. Such, for instance, as these:

'His ecstacy, it may be guessed, was much.'
'But how our fates from unmomentous things
May rise, like rivers, out of little springs.'.
'The boy was half beside himself.'

Of the smaller poems contained in this volume, none are equal to some which Campbell has heretofore written; several of them were first published in the New Monthly Magazine. Some of the contributors to that Magazine are, however, better poets than its editor, if we may suppose that the poetry there published, and not republished here, was the work of others. The love songs are about as good as love songs commonly are. They are more true to nature than Moore's, and the feeling which they express is much more like the

SONG MEN OF ENGLAND.'
Men of England! who inherit

Rigins that cost your sires their blood!
Men whose undegenerate spirit

Has been proved on land and flood!-
By the foes ye 've fought uncounted,
By the glorious deeds ye 've done,
Trophies captured-breaches mounted,
Navies conquered-kingdoms won!
Yet, remember, England gathers
Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,
If the patriotism of your fathers
Glow not in your hearts the same.
What are monuments of bravery,
Where no public virtues bloom?
What avail in, lands of slavery,
Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?
Pageants!-Let the world revere us
For our people's rights and laws,
And the breasts of civic heroes

Bared in Freedom's holy cause.
Yours are Hampden's, Russell's glory,
Sydney's matchless shade is yours-
Martyrs in heroic story,

Worth a hundred Agincourts!
We're the sons of sires that baffled
Crowned and mitred tyranny:
They defied the field and scaffold

For their birthrights-so will we! Perhaps the following ode-if ode it beexhibits as much power and originality as any thing in the volume; but it is difficult to forget, while reading it, some poems of modern,date, which we cannot but think that Mr Campbell remembered while writing it.

THE LAST MAN.

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its immortality!

I saw a vision in my sleep,
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!

I saw the last of human mould,
That shall Creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands;

In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread,
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood,
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,
Saying, We are twins in death, proud Sun,
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,

"Tis Mercy bids thee go;
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;"
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth,
The vassals of his will;-
Yet mourn not I thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrowned king of day:

For all those 'rophied arts
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang,
Healed not a passion or a pang
Eutailed on human hearts.

Go, let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again.

Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.
Even I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies,

Behold not me expire.

My lips that speak thy dirge of death-
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see thou shalt not boast.
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,—
The majesty of Darkness shall

Receive my parting ghost!
This spirit shall return to Him
That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led captivity,
Who robbed the grave of Victory,-
And took the sting from Death!

Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste

To drink this last and bitter cup

Of grief that man shall taste-
Go, tell that night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race,

On Earth's sepulchral clod,
The dark'ning universe defy
To quench his Immortality,

Of shake his trust in God!

A Comparative View of the Systems of Pes talozzi and Lancaster: in an Address delivered before the Society of Teachers of the City of New York. By Solyman Brown, A. M. New York. 1825. 8vo. pp. 24.

THE title of this pamphlet excited our interest to a high degree, but we were not a little disappointed on being obliged to read to the seventeenth page before we found the subject again alluded to. The preceding part consists of judicious remarks upon the importance of education, and the value of good instructers. The most important observations occur on pages 21, 22.

The difference between these two systems of Pestalozzi and Lancaster, I have said, is greatgreater, perhaps, than we have been accustomed to imagine. In the one, [that of Lancaster] where a multitude of words are read, and perhaps committed to memory by the pupil, a great quantity of the signs of ideas is acquired; while the ideas themselves, and the things of which they are the images, are totally unknown. If words were the natural signs of things, or even the natural signs of ideas, the case would be reversed; but so long as language consists of conventional and artificial signs, having no analogy with thoughts or things, a mere reliance

upon books in elementary instruction, will be little a degree of disgust which proves a great imbetter than a nostrum of paper and of ink.

In the other system, on the contrary, where books are introduced only to embody the elements of science, and where able teachers are employed to illustrate, to amplify, to infer; to elicit thought and excite reflection; to encourage inquiry and engage curiosity; to teach practice, and explode theory, either things themselves are presented directly to the senses, or their appropriate ideas are excited in the mind, by the aid of analogous images already there, and the mere words which signify the one and the other, follow of necessity. In this case we secure the reality, instead of the transient shadow which flits across the mind only to leave it in greater darkness and more deplorable sterility. In short: the one system imparts IDEAS, and the other

WORDS.

In the statement of the difference between the two methods of teaching, the author is perfectly correct; but we regret that he did not exclude less important matter, and give a more full exposition of the Pestalozzian system. We know of no other subject so important to all who have any concern with the business of instruction-from the mother who sows the seed, to the instructer of ripening youth, who aids in the expansion of the branches, the leaves, and the flowers, and prepares the tree to bring forth fruit. We do not ascribe to Pestalozzi the sole merit of reviving the system of analytical instruction. It is a striking characteristic of the present age, that men are unwilling to believe any thing on authority; it must be explained and illustrated so that it can be understood. The mind revolts from a dogmatical mode of teaching. We love to feel that we are free and rational agents, as well while acquiring, as while using, knowledge.

All the causes which have combined to produce this character in the present age, have tended equally to introduce that method of instruction which Pestalozzi has done so

pediment to the acquisition of knowledge in any way. The best part of all that children learn, is caught in casual moments, when facts happen to be illustrated in a familiar and interesting manner, and especially when they chance to see a simple truth explained by being applied to its proper use. It may be said, that this is all the knowledge that scholars can obtain, which is legitimate. Whatever is not so acquired, is unaccompanied by love of knowledge for its own sake, or the proper use which it is designed to effect. It is altogether factitious; and when the spurious motive which excited the mind to the exertion by which it was ob tained, ceases to operate, then all interest in the knowledge ceases, and it is generally forgotten.

[blocks in formation]

The comprehensive mind of the Swiss philosopher, after comparing all the data derived from history, resulted in the conclusion, that the great diversity of elementary books employed in the schools of modern times, is destructive of the best interests of early education; especially when those books are voluminous and prolix-calculated to burden, perplex, and stupify, rather than exhilarate, enlighten, and expand the mind.

The character of those elementary treatises which were employed by ancient instructers, he was ena bled to infer from a single splendid example which had survived the conflagration of the library of The acquisition of knowledge is not in Alexandria, and all the ravages of the Gothic baritself unpleasant to any mind. A love of Geometry of Euclid, the preceptor of the Ptolebarians in the Western Empire. This was the knowing, a pleasure in receiving informa- mies:-a book which has been found so complete tion, is proper to the nature of all children; in itself; so free from redundancy and defect; so and there is always something which is pre-perfectly inclusive and exclusive, that no geometricisely adapted to the capacity of every child, without creating an evident imperfection. Such cian in any age, has been able to add or diminish, and in which he will feel a strong interest only are the books which Pestalozzi and his followwhen it is presented to his mind. To obtain ers believe to be suited to the minds of youth. what is now suited to the state and powers of the intellect, will infallibly prepare the way for the truth next in order; and the mind may advance by this regular gradation towards the illimitable measures of eternity.

We know that this theory, when presented definitely, still appears to most persons wild and extravagant. The truth is, we can form no idea of this orderly, analytical arrangement of the facts or truths in science, because we were not thus instructed. All our knowledge consists of truths obtained with little regard to method, and stored in the mind with almost no reference to orderly arrangement.

The greatest difficulty which this system much to illustrate and recommend. The presents, is that of determining the proper Reformation, the works of Bacon, of New-arrangement of the several sciences. Probton, of Franklin, and many others, and all ably it should be different with different that has been done to encourage and culti-scholars. In any single science, there is vate experimental science, have contributed no great difficulty in arranging the truths to the same end. The tendency of the analytically. We mention, as examples, whole, is to abolish the system of dogmati- Euclid's Elements in Geometry and Colcal teaching, and to substitute for it a sys-burn's First Lessons in Arithmetic. Upon tem of learning, a system by which the scholar shall, at all times, have that presented to his mind which he is capable of comprehending, and of applying to some

use.

This is the way in which all real knowledge is obtained, and it is because our elementary books and our common modes of instruction are so imperfect, that so very little is done at school to improve any other faculty of the mind than the memory. The memory is continually stuffed with natural images, while the affections are uninterested in them, and the understanding takes no cognizance of their application or

use.

Foreign motives-as fear of punishment and hope of reward-must be continually urged in order to encourage the mind to this almost useless mode of acquiring knowledge. We call this species of knowl. edge almost useless, because it proves of comparatively little practical advantage, and the acquirement of it is accompanied by

some other occasion, we may endeavour to show, that the same system of arrangement can easily be applied to the other sciences; and shall conclude this notice with an extract from the Address of Mr Brown, which contains some just observations respecting the systems he is comparing.

the best method of inculcation, those of Pestalozzi Among the variety of suggestions in relation to and Lancaster, have secured the greatest share of public consideration. But while each has found its advocates, no two systems are more diametrically opposed.

the brightest pages of Grecian and Roman history, Pestalozzi seems to have reverted his eye upon and, after admiring the perfection of the respective languages of these two august nations, to have inquired into the causes of their literary and intellectual greatness. By a natural mode of argument, from effect to cause, he was led to suspect, that the eminent historians and poets, orators and statesmen, military chieftains and scientific artists of those states, must have acquired the first rudiments of the sciences under circumstances peculiarly adapted to

But this philosopher ventured even farther, and suffered himself to conjecture what was the character of those instructors to whom the Egyptians, their children. He was able to demonstrate, beGreeks, and Romans, intrusted the education of yond contradiction, that many of the first names which history has transmitted were teachers of the youth of their country: and he found no trifling number of examples of a fact still more to his purcountries to be taught by these great masters. pose; that young men were sent from remote Hence he very logically inferred, that the most approved instructors were MEN of learning, experience, and character.

By this process of investigation, corroborated by tradition among the descendants of these two nations, resident in the mountains of his country, Pestalozzi gathered all the assistance which antiquity could supply, and reduced to practice in his native Switzerland, the result of his inquiries. His plan has been successfully pursued in Europe and America; and the institution of Fellemburgh in Switzerland, and the Polytechnic school of France, have given celebrity to his principles.

These principles are at once natural and simple, and in perfect harmony with the philosophy of Franklin, to practise much, and trust little to theory. The simple elements of science are presented to the learner, and he is led to all the minute ner the pupil is induced to confide little in a mere particulars, as if by actual discovery. In this man tenacity of memory, but to repose with all its powers on the decisions of an active understanding.

Lancaster, on the other hand, was desirous of hazarding a mere experiment, without the least authority from the practice of any age or nation.

A philanthropist, no doubt, he desired a more of the poorer classes of the community, in every general diffusion of knowledge than the condition country, had hitherto admitted. By a sole reliance on books, with the bare rehearsal of lessons to those who were ignorant of their meaning, he hoped that such children as were deprived of higher advantion. tages, might receive, at least, tolerable instruc

In England, where this system received at first considerable patronage, it has sunk into general neglect; and in these States, where Lancaster travelled long, and laboured with indefatigable industry to impress the public mind with the sense of the importance of his new discovery, the schools established on this plan have gradually dwindled, and must eventually share the fate of their predecessors across the Atlantic. I have witnessed the

living pranks of very few of these monsters; but I have attended during the funeral obsequies of several. in different states, and have seen their remains, unattended by a solitary mourner, committed to everlasting forgetfulness.

MISCELLANY.

AUTHORS AND WRITERS.

of its nearest approximations. Theirs has they have detected motive, where other been a study of human experience in its men have only been taken with the convarieties and causes. The distinctions they duct. They thus take us in their works to have made, have proceeded out of the ac- the deep springs of human action, and show tual differences of things. What such men to us all its sources, whether pure or imwere or thought years ago, or yesterday, in pure, however wickedly selfish, or honourregard to the great questions of human con- ably disinterested. These men are authors, cern, they would be, or think to-day. They for they are eminently producers; for when have taught us what, and how they are; they have written, the world has got someand if they have seemed different beings to thing which it had not before. These are us at any time, the change has most proba- rare men. Ages have passed away without bly belonged to our own minds, not to them. When they have appeared, it has theirs. been sometimes accidentally, and the world has not known its own; and they have had no other reward but the incommunicable one, which a fine mind always has, and always must have, in the noble company of its own thoughts. The works of such men have been a legacy to all posterity. And how sacred has been the entail; how careful have we been of the patrimony, and how jealous lest its fame should become the property of another.

Such men are inestimably valuable at all times, and in all ages. They are especially so to our own. We are in a stirring world, and are for turning it upside down. The change, even for the worse, is not altogether the matter of doubtful choice it was once thought to be; or we are willing to change what is well, for the chances of the better. Some of our most gifted talkers have taken the word of the time, or put it into the time's mouth, and little now is, but what is not. In the men of whom we write, there was a saving leaven of human prudence. They had learned caution in the experience of every hour. They had learned it as well in the slow and wise progress of nature, as in their profound observance of human conduct. They talked deliberately, as if in harmony with this progress. I have known instances of peculiar melody of voice among these men, as if moral beauty, and a fine intellect, gave character to their expression. If these were in any degree taught caution and wisdom from nature, by the operation of its ordinary progress upon their minds, they were especially taught the self-same by its occasional deviations. They had seen ruin in the track of the storm, and in the flood of intolerable light from the clouds of heaven. They had seen the fair face of earth smiling in the calm sunshine, and its best fruits in the safe shower.

AUTHORS never die. The good and the evil they do, alike live after them. The body may be dead, but the mind lives; on earth too; and will live. Men's minds, as others know them, are known by what they say, do, and write. We have had men amongst us who never wrote any thing, but who, nevertheless, acted widely upon others by conversation alone. They thought as deeply, and as accurately, and talked with the same precision and order, as if they were thinking for writing, or were actually writing. Their opinions were sought for, where they might be useful, and were as accessible as if they were on the bookseller's counter, or in the library. These were strictly authors. They are, however, necessarily short-lived. Their records are not permanent. They are not the property of the whole, and which the whole will find a common pride and interest to preserve, and to preserve unadulterated. They are the property of a few, which the few will appropriate, and may alter and deform without mercy, and without fear. It is melancholy to see the mind thus dying to its own age, and to the future. If we have felt safer while such a mind was with us and near us, when danger was abroad, or anticipated, we have lost much when we have lost it. We have acquired a habit of dependence, and have felt it to be the direct and useful product of the greater and better power of another. It has been a useful dependence, for its quality has been to make our own minds stronger and better. There has been an advantage to us, perhaps, that these men have not written. Their honest and sound views have not been submitted either to vulgar impertinence, or party malevolence. The sharp, and sometimes effective, criticism of lesser minds, or the encounter of as strong, Men, in the third place, are known by differently, and, it may be, less prudently what they write. This remark wants large directed, has not hurt our faith, or dimin-qualification. Writers are authors by emished our confidence. We have reposed delightedly and usefully beneath the protection of a fine mind, and, it may be, for the time, have not been disquieted, that we have had so few with us. The influence that has been so limited and personal, however, might have been felt every where. In its degree perhaps less vividly, but in its amount far greater. Above all, if these men had written, they would have survived the grave.

Men are known, it was said, by what they do. The men about whom we have written, were known in this way, and a wide and useful influence was exerted by their actions. It is a property of such minds to be consistent with themselves. They have been cautious in their decisions, and what is truth with them, is not unfrequently one

But these men have not written. They gave their minds to perishing records, the inemories of men. A few years, and it will be difficult to remember their faces. If we remember their thoughts, it may not be to better our own, or to act by them.

phasis, in common speaking. But all who write are not so. Few men give us what others have not given us before. Other men's thoughts have passed through their minds, it is true, but they have come out as as they went in. It is rare that they get even a new costume, and if they do, how frequently are they only deformed by it. These are writers. An author is one whose mind has not been the highway of other men's thoughts, but a soil into which they have been cast, like seed into the good ground, and where they have died in the upspringings and full harvest of higher and brighter thoughts. The observation of men and of nature has done the same thing. An affinity, if the term be allowed, has, in these men, subsisted between their own minds and the minds of other men. And

The authors of whom we write never repeat themselves. Let characters or incidents be as numerous as they may, a real individuality is preserved every where. You constantly perceive that the various beings created are conscious of their own identity, and act in consequence of it; and that the distinctions between them belong as naturally to this consciousness as they do to the same thing in actual life. Shakspeare was pre-eminent in this character of original authorship. His dead, and equally his living, never appear again when he has done with them, either to push us from our stools, or jostle us in our way. The ghost of Banquo appears indeed to the disturbed imagination of his own Macbeth; but it had no form or being to Shakspeare's mind any more than it had to the vision of the royal guests. When Hostess Quickly tell us that Sir John is dead, and how he died, the association of the winding-sheet, the coffin, the pall, and the grave, is inevitable, and we no more look for his return on earth again, than we should for an acquaintance, or accustomed neighbour, after he is buried.

Some writers who have been once original, seem to have fallen in love with their first fine conception, and ever after hanker for it as for a first love. Let now the variety be intended to be never so great, and names, ages, and temperaments differ as they may, we always detect some limb, some feature, or some peculiarity of the first, given or transfused into all its successors. Their minds are like the philosopher's stone, whatever is touched becomes gold.

Great authors have, finally, a property in their own minds, which other men have not. Other men, and their thoughts and doings, and all external nature, it is true, have their effects upon them. But they have minds too, and in virtue of the very superiority of these over others, bring more to pass of a strictly original character, than the combined suggestions, and other operations, of all the matters of mere observation.

Writers have been divided into various classes. We have spoken of two;-those who are authors and those who are not.

The purely imaginative, and the satirists too, have not unfrequently been the faithfulest authors, and the truest historians. Who reads Hume, Gibbon, or Robertson for a true history? Nobody. But who does not read Shakspeare with a saving and a safe faith. He wrote truly of all ages, for he wrote truly of his own, and knew what was in man. To be honest, was not the less unwise in his time, in the construction of a villain, than it is now.

in this, and while the future continues in futurity, we would class ourselves among the faithful.

Sometimes, however, this vast and remote fut re seems to approach nearer than it should upon the borders of the present, and sometimes our writers and talkers seem to think, and to feel, that it has actually reached us, and that we are now what a few centuries may make us. In this there may be great evil. If our legislators get it, they may legislate for what is not; changing and overturning what belongs to us, to make way for what belongs to nobody. Our financiers may get it, and we may be taxed in advance, and be called wealthy, because every body may be hereafter. It would sometimes seem that the inspiration of our writers was getting transfused into the mass, and that we are living in the future, whether we will or no. We are getting at last at abuses, which have been the protection and happiness of our fathers and ourselves, but which will never be tolerated in the times to come. A strange sort of benefaction is thus to be substituted for present good, the incalculable good of a vast future.

There is another class we mean to glance | one original character, developed and varied at. This embraces writers who are honest, by the operation of a very few agencies. It and writers who are not. We have no con- is a mind, however, of vast capacity, and cern with the purposes or motives of men the causes which are brought to operate when they write or print, for a bad book upon it are of great power. We are not may not have proceeded from a bad motive, surprised to find this character at times a or a useful one from the best. Honest au- wandering misanthrope, feeling deeply the thors are not so to themselves only, but to power of nature, and of man as he now is, their age, and to their country. There is a and man as he has been, in the remote and real weakness in a written hypocrisy. A strange times of antiquity. It is not strange man may walk before us, and talk before us to us that he should now appear deep in the too, and be nothing he seems. But the mind toils of love; now recklessly cruel, and now and the heart of the whole community stir ardently attached. We do not wonder to at the false histories of the writing author. find him grossly licentious and ingenious And this they do, whether the falsehood be in his ribaldry; now discoursing about found in the glozing of sin, in excessive moral distinctions, and now losing or depanegyric, or in caricature vice. spising the whole of them. At one moment he spurns our sympathy, and in the next we should be ashamed of his company. This character has been pronounced to be his own, at least in an early period of its history. This, however, he has denied. But if it be in any measure so, his works to that extent at least are autobiographical, and will go down to succeeding ages for their verisimilitude alone. They are not histories of his time, for they do not give us what an age, especially his own, makes of the mass If this be in any measure true, if we are of men, with whom he was born. They are to realize prophecies, or are realizing them strictly individual, for they all tell us about already, we should look to it, and very sethe same being. Give these works any riously. Human life is getting longer, it is other character, admit for a moment that said, than it used to be, but it will hardly they were intended by the author as a true carry us as far as our writers are disposed history, or a dramatic sketch of his times, to do. We may be losers in the bargain, and and he becomes at once the veriest and what is thus lost to us, will be lost to our vulgarist libeller. As it is, he is the most successors, however remote, or however nuremarkable egotist, if one at all, that has merous. They were safe prophets in the ever lived. He industriously brings to the British parliament, who foretold the liberty surface, and keeps there, what other men and prosperity of America, for we had one more industriously have hidden in the deep- of these already, and could not long want est recesses of their own hearts. This sin- the other. Prophets are not safe now howgle fact explains a thousand anomalies in ever, our prophetic writers; for we have his works; and among these, the strange both liberty and prosperity, and it is for selfishness which could love deeply the in- these, and for these alone, we should give dividual and hate the species; or regard the our minds in the fulness of their best powwhole with one sweeping abhorrence, dis-ers; and if we are true to our best interests, gust, and contempt. those which have been long proved, and found so, our posterity will be blessed without prophesy.

Pope was no traducer of his species as he found it. His age made him, as the age makes every body. His harmonious, and, not unfrequently, grossly indelicate satire, has its quality from his time. It was the current selfishness which made its passage through his heart, and a fine intellect followed in its tide. Pope, however, is temporary and local, for he is confined, and hemmed in by an artificial society both of fashion and letters. We have dispensed with the hoop-petticoat, and pretty much with the heroic couplet. But he is true to what he saw and felt, or to his age, and is o far no libeller.

Byron is still more local than Pope. He is almost individual. His variety is more in name than in thing. His writings seem to be the efforts of a very few agencies upon his own vast mind. A review of some of his poems, which by his own title of them, really belong to his infancy, was one, and probably the earliest of these. This review annoyed him dreadfully. He did not consider that he had strayed from his nobility into the republic of letters, and was ignorant that the constitution of this wide republic, guarantees to all its citizens the privilege of abusing, as well as praising each other. His nobility went in company with his genius, a legitimate association enough in his case, and they were equally annoyed by the reception they met. Disgust to the whole British empire soon followed, and the Curse of Minerva appeared a few years after English Bards and Scottish Reviewers. A still more personal annoyance at length drove his lordship from England forever, and then we had Don Juan, or, with other things, English manners, and English society, under the similitude of Eastern sensuality.

As an author, and it is in this character Lord Byron now lives, his lordship is almost entirely exclusive. He has given us but

We have spoken of authors who have been true to their own character, to their age, and to the world. There are other classes; we have room to speak of but one more. This class is peculiar to our own country. It has in a measure been made by the country, its institutions, and prospects, and deserves to be named. It belongs to us; and however little we have been allowed to appropriate of letters, we may safely claim this. If we should name it, we should call it the prophetic class of authors. This will serve to distinguish them at once from all writers within a reasonable antiquity, and will surely distinguish them from all the moderns. Our writers, whether imaginative or historical, are prophetic. They go habitually before the time. They live in the future of their own minds. They are with a population which cannot be numbered. The blessings of our institutions are upon all. A mass of intellectual power and physical strength occupies the distance, to a degree at times almost oppressive to us, who are comparatively few and powerless. Now there is no harm

THE LAY MONASTERY.

No. I.

The Author.
Me dulcis saturet quies.
Obscuro positus loco,
Leni perfruar otio.

Chorus ex Thyeste.

I AM a wayfaring man in the literary world, and in humour and out of humour with its inhabitants, have come and gone from place to place, and as yet have left no memory behind me. I have always shunned ostentation, even in the vehicle that has carried me, and turning aside from the busier marts of literature, have loitered in its green alleys and silent avenues. To men in the higher walks of letters nature has made known the warm intellectual springs, whence issue those vast conceptions, that are too wide for the embrace of inferior minds-and we of humbler birth

« AnteriorContinuar »