Page images
PDF
EPUB

born with more vivid conceptions than other men, have lived in an ideal world, which the nature of human desires led them to portray more perfect and noble than the world of reality. This gave them more independent spirits, more lofty and romantic ideas, and also enabled them to reason; for Locke allows that it is not necessary for men to devote their lives to the study of logic to reason well. Pure thoughts and lofty principles influenced by genius, that do not suffer common prejudices to affect them, will weigh things with the greatest impartiality, and come to the most rational conclusions. In past and even in present days, how much that the world sanctions appears absurd and barbarous in the eye of genius. The judges would have burnt all the old women in England without compunction, if evidence had been tendered that they were witches, in the days of John Milton, and even for fifty years afterwards; the poet, we may answer for it, would not have condemned one. Dante would never have made a hell for many great men of his time deemed by the multitude among the mighty and noble, had he looked upon them with the eyes of his own age. He contemplated them as not of his own time, and with the impartiality of a future and wiser generation. Vulgar minds cannot comprehend the ideas of men of genius; they think them audacities or chimerical innovations; but they who contribute to the improvement of mankind belong but a small part of them to present time-they are the heritage of unborn ages. Honest and good men may labour in their world of realities in a circle of minute duration, be useful, industrious, and virtuous followers in a beaten track, content with what they see, and thinking the world precisely as it should be in every respect. They, however, are but the wheels of society, not the moving causes. Sir Thomas More is a remarkable instance among imaginative writers, and seems at first to constitute an exception to the foresight, if it may be so denominated, of that class. But he was bred a lawyer, and suffered the pernicious leaven of the profession to neutralize the effect of the divine spirit with which he wrote. More condemned persecution in his works as not fit for his Utopian state of society; but he practised it, from his inveterate obedience to custom, when he should have nobly resisted it from principle.

Writers of imagination, by what is wrongly called deception, more properly fiction, send us in search of better things than we already possess. Present and limited use is not so much their object as to delight and allure. From the spirit of correction and improvement, which originates in the desire of possessing better things than we see around us, old and bad laws are repealed; the legislative body bows to public opinion, and changes old and absurd usages for those that are more rational and useful; the commercial restrictions of past times are removed; a more liberal toleration is sanctioned, and a system consistent with the state of mental culture is introduced. Fixed things are injurious to that eternal desire of perfection, with which the better order of minds is imbued. We must not stand still, but we shall infallibly do so if we have no longing after idealities. Our line of action may be uniform, but, notwithstanding, we must pursue it from the expectation of overtaking what is better than we have yet come up with. Genius is, most of it, that eternal hope ever alive in the mind, of something better than present good-the quenchless vestal fire, the soul of every thing great and noble in the world. Imaginative writers dwell

in a world of spirit, glorious in beauty and boundless in extent. Let the tale be a deception-let the poem be a fiction-let the metaphysician show his teeth at it, and the mathematician snarl and sneer, because he cannot lay down its length and breadth; it is from this very cause its beneficial effects arise, and that it is so useful to mankind. It is because it keeps alive better things than their philosophy can teach, that its elements are so valuable. A touching ballad shall make a million friends to a virtuous object; a hundred sermons shall not procure one. Alilibullero" shall uncrown a tyrant before a mathematician can construct a fort in which to shelter himself from his fury. The direct effects of works of the imagination sometimes seem irresistible; and if any chance to be impugnable on the score of principles-for all writers will have their imperfections, more or less-there is a property mysteriously attached to the mass of public opinion, that makes it reject what is erroneous, as it were, by the subtlest intuition, and profit by the purer portion.

Let us examine the earliest writers of imagination, and compare them with mere schoolmen, how liberal are their views-how refined their sentiments! Matter-of-fact men, who deal only in the tangible, are of the earth earthy: the natural is their sphere-they deal in cubes and blocks-they must see and touch, to believe. They ever gravitate to the centre: their looks are always "downward bent," and they enjoy no "visions beatific." Their grovelling and heavy imaginations are unequal to mounting with the "sightless couriers of the air." They see only with "leaden eyes that love the ground;" and if they dream, they dream by rule and compass. The eye that "doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," is to them the organ of a distempered brain. Where should we arrive if we considered human nature only in the mere matter-of-fact way it exhibits itself in the world-a thing of petty interests, selfish, overreaching, deceitful, infirm, and perishable?-if we always kept to the reality of the picture, and contemplated it in its naked truth?-if we could not mark out nobler destinies for it than its realities show, and fill up the defects of what is, with the images and desires of what would render existence more delightful? What a glorious light flashes on the offspring of imagination, the herald of a more perfect state of things existing somewhere! How they seem imbued with qualities of the most redeeming character! Even in the darker times, how they sparkled with native radiance! what a contrast they formed to the bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance of ecclesiastical writers, and the plodders after the dogmas of blind scholastics! Before philosophy glimmered, and Galileo was incarcerated by churchmen for promulgating sublime truths, too vast for the understandings of monks and cardinals, writers of imagination had forced their way for ages and satirised the crimes of consistories and the knavery of the Apostolic Church-thus insensibly undermining the Vatican. Fiction triumphed in the cause of truth, and, opening

eyes of mankind, innovated on established order, preparing Europe for the Reformation. Boccaccio, by exposing the licentiousness of the clergy in his Decameron, contributed to this good end nearly two hundred years before Luther appeared. There seemed to be such an innate love in remote times for writers of imagination, that they flourished in spite of secular and ecclesiastical opposition, secretly applauded by the enlightened among the great, at a time when works of science

that interfered with superstition would have been strangled in their birth, and their authors burned at the stake by a council of churchmen from pure l'amour de Dieu.

Poetry, being the first step among barbarous nations towards refinement, made way for civilization; while in later times princes and courts loved and encouraged poets, and writers of romance were deemed almost divine. But the regard for literature is now more strong among the people. Modern princes have not kept pace with the advancement of their people, because taste and knowledge cannot increase hereditarily; they must therefore be content to follow, with their courts, the current of public opinion, and be in this respect on a level with the rest of the nation. Few modern princes will wish to show an isolated condition of mind, pretending to despise that which they cannot comprehend. Nor will they, because their subjects are become more refined, affect the vulgar feeling of Louis XIV. when he said to the Duke de Vivonne, who was a healthy ruddy-looking personage, "Mais à quoi sert de lire ?" and got the following reply," Sire, la lecture fait à l'esprit ce que vos perdrix font à mes joues.' There seems to be no affectation, however, in the Emperor of Austria on this head; his intellects, indeed, are naturally weak, and his notions feudal. Else, while he trampled upon Italy, he would not have doomed Pellico, the young, the charming poet of that country, to wear out life in chains and in a dungeon, merely on suspicion of being a friend to his native land. Pellico, to his misfortune, was not slave enough in spirit. Had he been a slave, he had breathed the pure air of Heaven-he had now seen the sun that will probably never again shed its beams upon him!

The direct communication of dry facts would not improve mankind unless all were able to reason impartially and well-alas, how few can! The best relation of the life of a virtuous man, accurately given in cold narrative, would not do half as much in the cause of virtue as a fictitious character of suffering goodness, worked up with the graces of style and the embellishments of eloquence, and written to touch the passions. Every-day examples would not move us towards what is excellent. There is something more than bare truth by which men are to be effected. A stimulant must be applied to the mind as well as the body. We must contemplate ideal goodness, if we would avoid retrograding. We must follow a route tractless as the eagle's, and, rising above a real, keep hope alive by contemplating an invisible creation. The reign of poetry and romance is one of spirit engendering enthusiasm and inspiration, the quality that makes a hero of a soldier, an artist of a mechanic, and a martyr of a saint. It cannot be enjoyed without a temporary abstraction from what is around us, but must rise above the impure tainted atmosphere of common life. The air-woven delicate visions of poetical inspiration will not appear in the clouded, foggy, dense climate of every-day routine; they must float in "gaily gilded trim" beneath unclouded skies, and in the full glory of the sunbeam, in fields of ether, and amid the rich hues of the rainbow. But for scenes of imagination, those cities of refuge to which the mind may fly now and then from the toil, dulness, and weary repetitions of morning, noon and night, and night, noon and morning, what careworn wretches should we be! So far from valuing works of fancy less as we advance in civilization, we shall love them more, because we fly to them with more enjoyment from the fatigue of professional pur

66

suits and the right-angled formalities of daily avocations, which multiply around us, as luxury increases our wants. No; let the author of Waverley write on; let poets pour forth their strains; let the Radcliffes of the time lead us into the horrors of romance, and let the empire of imagination live for ever! Let the plodding lawyer worship his fee, confound right and wrong, and entangle his clients as he may, scoffing at the splendours of fiction. Let the physician look wise and considerate, and shake his head, while his patient suffers nothing but consumption of purse." Let the merchant traffic, and the tradesman truck: let the jew cheat, and the attorney inveigle: let earthquake and plague devastate: let man be cruel and oppressive to fellowman, sell his blood and muscle, or butcher him in war for the sake of a hogshead of sugar, a roll of tobacco, or the dreamy right of some king divine to 66 govern wrong" let dulness and impudence prosper, and merit remain in obscurity: let ignorance and incapacity fill the seat of justice, while common sense is pilloried: let all these things be daily, and go their roundabout as matters-of-course :-whither can we turn from them? where can we go aside from observing them with repulsion and disgust, but to the empire of imagination? Sickened with such objects as constitute the greater part of our realities, we may meditate on forms of female beauty like the Juliet of Shakspeare, or the Rebecca of Ivanhoe-we may solace ourselves with "mask and antique pageantry," and

"Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream:"

with the deeds of Roncesvalles, or of British Arthur; or

"Call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife :"

we may visit scenes and beings of a purer world than our own; and when forced to return to every-day things, return to them with renovated spirits, and the hope that the delightful creations in which we have been revelling, may at some future time be realized to our senses, if not in this world, in another. Y.

SONG. SILENT GLANCES.
OH! there are moments dear and bright,
When Love's delicious spring is dawning,
Soft as the ray of quivering light,

That wakes the early smile of morning;
'Tis when warm blushes paint the cheek,
When doubt the thrill of bliss enhances;
And trembling lovers fear to speak,

Yet tell their hopes by silent glances.

And when young Love rewards their pain,
The heart to rosy joys beguiling,
When Pleasure wreathes their myrtle chain,
And Life's gay scene is fair and smiling;
Oft shall they fondly trace the days,

When wrapt in Fancy's waking trances,
They wish'd, and sigh'd, and loved to gaze,
And told their hopes by silent glances.

M. A.

BRITISH GALLERIES OF ART.-NO. VIII.

Knowle Park, the seat of the Duchess of Dorset.

If the searcher after the riches of Art expects to find, in every British Gallery, a storehouse like some of those which we have had occasion to explore in several of our previous papers under the above title, he will be grievously disappointed;-and moreover his being disappointed will prove that he deserves to be so. The votarist who is not content to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of one saint, but must have a whole calendar to attract him, has mistaken his calling, and may turn critic as soon as he pleases-for he has no true love for that about which he professes to concern himself. Those who are accustomed to lament that the Battle of Waterloo ever took place, either forget, or do not attach a proper value to, the fact, that it caused to be dispersed all over the civilized world those miracles of Art which were collected within the walls of the Louvre and if it did no other good but this, it was worth all that it cost. It is not in human nature duly to appreciate that which it obtains with ease, or can have by asking for; or that which it cannot help seeing if it would. This is one reason why the French artists and critics have not made one progressive step in Art during the last five-and-twenty years. Not that they did not sufficiently admire the works of the old masters that were collected in the Louvre; for they thought many of them nearly equal to their own David's! They admired, without being able to appreciate them. Another reason for this, and one which makes the French artists and critics more excusable, is that, in point of fact, beauty, of whatever kind it may be, does in a great degree counteract itself, when it is present in several different objects in nearly the same degree of perfection. As two perfect negatives in our language destroy the effect of each other, so do two perfect beauties. Two such sights under the same roof as the Venus and the Transfiguration, is what " no mortal can bear," to any good effect; not because their influence is too much, but because it is none at all. They kill each other, like ill-assorted colours. And this is not a matter of taste, of habit, or even of feeling-as far as consciousness is concerned; it is a matter of nature, and therefore of necessity. True lovers of nature love the sun, the moon, and the stars, each with a perfect love. But if all were to appear together, they could love neither, except as a part of the whole. And thus it was with the Louvre. As a convocation of all beauty and power in Art, it was duly appreciated, even by the French. It was adequately admired as THE LOUVRE. But in this general admiration all detail was merged and lost; and of consequence, all the effect of detail was lost too: for it is not galleries that make artists-but pictures. Individual efforts alone can produce individual efforts—like can alone engender like. Great national collections of pictures may produce good, on the same principle, by engendering their like, and thus collaterally aiding high art, by giving it that encouragement without which it cannot extend itself and flourish. But it is greatly to be feared that, even in this point of view, they are upon the whole mischievous rather than beneficial; since they are more calculated to diffuse than concentrate the efforts which they may call forth, and thus lose in quality more than

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »