O not to see the stars of heaven serene,
Or ships calm gliding on the quiet sea,
Or light-arm'd knights on field careering free,
Or wild deer spoiling gay in woody scene:
O not to hear, long-look'd-for good has been,
Or love's soft lays in skilful melody,
Or songs of ladies fair as fair may be,
By murmuring fountain on some pleasant green:
O none of these can to my buried heart
(Buried with her, who, while she liv'd, was light
And gladness to my eyes,) ever impart
The least emotion of renew'd delight!
To see her once again, would I could part
From weary life, or would she ne'er had met my sight!"
We strenuously recommend this anonymous writer to follow the service of the Muses. In descriptive poetry, and in that poetry which delights among the calm and peaceful affections, he is by nature qualified to excel—while, in translation he is, from the fineness and delicacy of his tact (provided he keep down his fantastic ingenuity) likely to surpass every competitor.
"Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical," &c."The essence of poetry is invention—such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and, being few, universally known: but few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression."[1]
So says Dr Johnson. It is happy for the world, that, in spite of the prognostics of literary prophets, there is something in the mind of man too buoyant to be borne down by any of those impossibilities which have been conjured up by a host of cool unimaginative critics. It is idle to tell us what cannot be done in the walks of imagination, or what is the point at which the poet's power of illustration must stop. If any were to assert, in these days, that because Sternhold and Hopkins, and Tate and Brady, were eminently pious and devotional versifiers, therefore all that is to be said in poetry, on the subject of devotion, had been said by them, we should all see the absurdity of such a declaration; and equally arbitrary and unjust, it appears to us, is the assertion we have quoted. The doctrines of religion may be few and simple; the analogies, the combinations, the reflections, which they suggest to the mind of cultivated man, are boundless as its powers of enjoyment. There are some individuals, it is true, who regard the imagination as so dangerous a foe to true religion, that they will not allow her any place in their systems. Observing how often men of taste appear among the opponents of religion, they seem literal enough to suppose, that the less the taste is cultivated, the more devotional we shall become. Hence they draw the line closer and closer, separating what is beautiful from what is true, and discarding every flower which might have been bound round the majestic front of Truth, without any diminution of her dignity. It is perfectly true, that, in the reception of articles of belief, we should look to no records less variable than those of divine revelation. Let our first principles be as simple as possible. Let not the traditions of men, however pleasing to our own imaginations, be any thing more to us than subjects of interesting speculations. Let all that we know by nature of the Being that made us, bow down to that revealed delineation of his attributes with which the Scriptures present us. But grant that our faith is fixed by these unerring standards, and where is the harm of resorting to those affecting associations,—of striking those strings within us, to which we have recourse when we wish to awaken inferior recollections? We must give religion all the advantage we can. In the world she will have enemies, and none more sturdy than those who, if they knew her as she is, would hail her as the source of the most noble conceptions. We will not sacrifice one iota of her simplicity for the sake of dressing her up for the acceptance of men of the world; but let her not be known to men of genius as the foe of a chastened and pure imagination.
We regard the volume before us as
- ↑ Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 275, 8vo edition.
