CHAPTER VIII.

IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE: ITS REPRESENTATIONS OF MORAL EVIL.

IN our last we had reached the Moral Influence of Books and Reading, and in discussing this were brought to the questions so often mooted of the moral influence of the so-called works of the imagination. We attempted the defence of such works in the general, by citing examples from writers to whom all men pay a willing homage. Our discussion was arrested by the half-inquiry, half-objection: "What if the scenes are vicious, the sentiments are false, and the passions are sensual, malignant, or degrading? Can it be morally healthful that one should be conversant with such pictures, thoughts, and feelings, especially if armed with double energy, and clothed with dangerous fascinations by the power of genius? Would you have your son or your daughter excited by the scenes, infatuated by the characters, or tempted by the words of Byron, Moore, Bulwer, Goethe, or even of many that they find in Shakspeare, Milton, Burns, and Scott? In the works of every one of these writers, I can point you to many passages that should never be presented to a pure and virtuous mind. The very contact with them must involve some soil or taint, if it does not impart corruption. To entertain them in any form, to suffer them to confront the imagination, or to glide before the eye of the mind even for an instant, is to be debased and polluted, and towards them one should have no other feelings than aversion and disgust, however splendid or powerful is the genius that gilds or glorifies them."

This is partly true and partly false.

What is true is

The moral evil

very true, and what is false is very false.
or danger in such cases, does not, however, arise from the
fact that debasing scenes or wicked characters are made to
stand or move before the imagination; nor again, that
hateful passions are spoken out in venomous or malignant
words; nor that wickedness acts itself forth with complete
and consistent energy. It still remains true that :

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out."

The ground of moral exposure is not the fact that evil is painted, nor that it is painted boldly; but it is in the manner in which it is represented,-whether with fidelity to the ordinances of nature, or falsely to her eternal laws as written on the heart of man. This will be determined in a great measure by the man whose imagination reflects and recreates the evil, according as he writes like a Christian, or writes like a Turk-like a man with a conscience and a moral nature, or like a man who makes his passions his conscience, and his will his God. Prof. F. W. Newman, solidly observes, "In poetry, as in all other writings, the moral influence depends on its throwing our sympathies aright and leaving on the mind fit images and contemplations. Many darker passions may be portrayed: for the pathos which we seek has a two-fold character like the sublime and beautiful, viz: the terrible and the lovely. While we shudder at evil passion, it cannot make us worse. Demoralization begins, when we learn to sympathize with it, or to dwell upon things over which it is healthful to step lightly."-Lectures on Poetry, i. This difference between the two methods of depicting evil will be obvious by one or two examples.

Satan, as described by Milton, is well known to most readers. He is justly conceived and nobly painted. He is

not a being who is low and offensive because degraded and brutish, but an archangel ruined, once possessed of the intellect and heart of a seraph, now blasted by bad ambition and consumed by unrelenting pride. Every feature is consistent with this conception. His will is as inexorable as that of Prometheus nailed, to the Caucasian rock. The hatred is intense, steadying the powers by unrelenting determination, not distracting or weakening them by impotent rage. The cunning is masterly, yet dignified. The passion burns like a red-hot furnace, and the words speak out the inner soul with the energy of a fierce north-wester. "Better reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," utters and describes his character and ruling principle. Had Milton painted Satan thus and only thus, he had given but half his being, as well as glorified him with splendors too attractive for the responsive tastes of many readers. But he did not leave him thus, for his truthful insight taught him, that thus described and only thus, he were no real fiend-no conceivable being of any species, but simply the half of an incomplete conception-a monster by defect. He therefore makes him confess his agony in such words as

"Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell-myself am Hell!
And in the lowest deep, a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission, and that word
Disdain forbids me and my dread of shame."

In the presence of his old compeer, Zephon, severe in steadfast allegiance and white with unstained purity:

"Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely: saw and pined

His loss; but chiefly to find here observed

His lustre impaired-yet seemed

Undaunted."

He descends to the low and mean disguise of a filthy reptile, placing himself at the ear of the sleeping Eve, "squat like a toad," from which disguise, when touched by the spear of Ithuriel, he cannot help himself but he must stand forth a treacherous tempter, "discovered and surprised." As he reports to his associates his success in the ruin of man, and waits with confidence for

"Their universal shout and high applause

To fill his ear,"

there rushes in upon his enraged and disappointed soul

"On all sides, from innumerable tongues,

A dismal universal hiss, the sound

Of public scorn."

The completeness and truth of Milton's picture of Satan is in striking contrast with the Lucifer of Byron's Cain, who discourses atheism and blasphemy with such specious and passionate force that the trusting reader's faith in God and conscience is shaken and confounded, and it is well if, with heated brain and unbelieving heart, or passionate and despairing scorn, he does not plunge himself into some rash act of passion or crime; or, having done so, does not sullenly turn his back upon hope, and cast in his lot with those who curse God and die. In such a character there is but half the truth, and therefore truth itself is dishonored and belied. Passion is painted in sublime energy, in audacious daring, with impetuous and overbearing ferocity. So far there is truth. But the inward shame and agony are wanting; and most important of all, the conscious weakness of selfishness and sin that are self-confessed; the meanness of violating gratitude, fealty, and self-control; all of which should be present and made prominent to express and impress the truth, that this Lucifer, with all his sophistry and pride, with his boasting and his blasphemy, inwardly knows that he has sold himself to a falsehood.

Moreover, in the absence of this completing half-truth-so far as the poet's representations are concerned-God himself is, by these specious and passionate reasonings, made an almighty and malignant monster, injustice sits upon the eternal throne, and the universe itself is pervaded by a gigantic lie. A similar defect with similar evil consequences, is to be observed in the Devil of Goethe's Faust, except that the metaphysics are more profound and scholarlike, and the sneer is more consummately devilish at whatever is worthy in human pursuit, whatever is noble in human self-denial, and whatever is confiding in human affection.

We observe that by these three writers the same bad character is depicted, and so far as his badness is concerned, with feelings, words, and acts that are consistent; and so far, with more or less of aesthetic perfection. In Milton the evil is harmless; it is even morally healthful, because, with the attractions and force of evil, the weakness and self-reproach, the shame and agony are also represented. With Byron and Goethe, the diabolism that is dormant in man, is uppermost, and blasphemy, selfishness and lust rule in the universe, and sit upon the throne of the Eternal. *

We might also contrast the Hamlet of Shakspeare with the Manfred of Byron. Hamlet had been disappointed of his rightful crown, and wronged in his holiest confidence, by the frailty of his mother. Disturbed in his confidence in man and in God, he plots a murderous revenge, slays the father of Ophelia, and spurns and treads upon her

* We trust that none of our over-fastidious readers will sneer at our recognition of the "diabolism that is dormant in man." It was suggested by the words of Sir Thomas Browne: "The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me." "In brief, we are all monsters-that is, a composition of man and beast; wherein we must endeavor to be as the poet's fancy that wise man Chiron, that is, to have the legion of man above that of beast, and sense to sit but at the feet of reason."-Religio Medici.