Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

that passage which describes him as, with noble impartiality, showering his favours alike upon all, and being no respecter of persons. When we find passages like these -"God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth;" "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord;" we turn to where it is written "God is love," and we know that with love dwelleth neither jealousy nor vengeance. When Jesus threatens those who do not accept his message with endless and unspeakable torments, we see no proportion in the punishment, or no wise end to be served by it, and we reject the fearful threat so repugnant to the moral sense, and accept rather his magnanimous appeal to Deity on behalf of his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." We follow Paul, when he instructs us to "Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good;" but when, after doing this, he denounces us because we cannot honestly come to his conclusion, we turn away from him. When, in his lofty discourse on charity, the same apostle tells us that it is greater than faith and hope, we catch, as if it were by intuition, the transcendent truth; but when he promulgates his Anathema maranatha, and deals condemnation to those who cannot put faith in some dogma of his, we see neither charity nor consistency in his speech. John charms us, when he enjoins us to love one another, and sets before us what seems to him the highest incitements so to do; but when he urges us to treat rudely those who do not believe as we believe, and to refuse them succour, we reject unhesitatingly the loveless mandate. We fail to see the hand of Divine Wisdom in a book whose meanings are so perplexed and double that the whole race of critics have been unable to fix them, and are disputing about them still, as they have been doing ever since they were given to the world. That book, in which the tyrant, the slaveholder, the soldier, the peace preacher, the patriot, and the abolitionist find their defence, and from which Catholic, Calvinist, and Unitarian deduce their creeds, cannot be so plain that a wayfaring man shall not err therein; and, falling below acknowledged human productions in point of consistency and perspicuity, cannot, without disrespect, be attributed to God. Men, whose abilities have been great, whose op

portunities have been many, whose candour is unquestioned, and who have been possessed with an anxious desire to save their souls by getting at the truth-have differed about its most important teachings, and have disputed about original sin, the Godhead of Christ, the punishment of the wicked, free will, necessity, &c. The claim of the secularist is the same as that set up by every christian sect,—that he shall be allowed to judge for himself what he shall accept and what he shall reject. What he finds in harmony with experience and the moral sense, he takes, and rejects what is found not conscnant with these.

[ocr errors]

Science, with mighty power, has borne her testimony against Secularism," we are told; but how, when, or where she has done it we are not told, and therefore do not attach much importance to such an assertion, unsupported by even an attempt at proof. The harmony of science and revelation "Rolla" supposes he settles by an unsupported assertion.

66

"Rolla" assumes that Christianity is the only way to social happiness, and then turns round upon Secularism, and declares, because it rejects that way, it cannot lead to the desired result; and this is "the greatest, the most conclusive and unanswerable argument which can be brought to bear upon this question" by "Rolla." Because Secularism is not Christianity, it is not consonant with the highest amount of social happiness," is the argument of this writer, a reply to which is unnecessary. We are gravely informed that history-sacred and profane, experience, reason, and philosophy attest "that Christianity is the only power that can secure the real happiness of society." We are afraid that "Rolla" has not interrogated these witnesses, else their testimony might have been found to lean to the other side. Christianity has had eighteen centuries of trial, and society is yet far from real happiness. Its history has been written in wars, inquisitions, persecutions for scientific discovery, St. Bartholomew massacres, Smithfield fires of martyrdom, and Claverhouse raids against freedom of conscience in Scotland: Catholics answering Huss with faggots, Calvin silencing Servetus by a slow fire, and Cotton Mather zealously executing vengeance upon supposed witches and wizards,

one.

are episodes in its records. In our day it
seats a despot in the chair of St. Peter; a
murderer, stained with the blood of hundreds
of his fellow-citizens, and disgraced by his
broken oath, on the throne of France; and it
keeps up a church establishment in our own
land, which a stain on our civilization. age owes to Christianity.
The war in which our treasure is being

wasted and our best blood spilt is a religious
Sectarian rivalries, animosities, bitter-
ness, and contentions, and "noonday gropings
for deliverances, in the midst of darkness
which can be felt, and of strife which is to
be deplored," are amongst the benefits this

JAMES.

The Essayist.

THOMAS MOORE.

perhaps the chief sources of that poetic oneness which pervades the whole. It is the most equally sustained poem in our literature of poetic romance. We peruse it with all that romantic interest with which we regaled many an hour of captivated boyhood over " Arabian Nights." We seem to grow young again, and revel in the outgoings of our common passion, amid the gorgeous scenery of the eastern world; and, as we close the book, and awake from our dreams, we are ready to use the words of the Empress of Russia, who personated "Lalla Rookh at the Chateau Royal of Berlin-" Is it, then, all over? are we now at the close of all that has given us so much delight?"

AMONG the greatest men of genius of whom | of its symbols and varied illustrations, are Erin may boast with national pride, stands Thomas Moore-the friend, admirer, brother poet, and biographer of Lord Byron. England, Ireland, and Scotland, in the persons of Byron, Moore, and Walter Scott, presented, in one age, to the world of literature a singular and glorious triad:-singular in several aspects. They all published in their own day their great standing works. They all obtained the popularity which is ever due to genius, but which does not often attend the works of men of genius in their own times. They all lived to silence, by their splendid productions, the voice of critical dogmatism in the school of poesy. They all showed that the poet's gift is an inspiration, and dependent on nothing that is merely artistic. Then, gentle reader, mark the deep and bitter moral lesson which the eventful lives of these famed men teach us! how that in their individual experience they found the fame of greatness, and the worship of men, best defined in the words of the wisdom of the son of Sirach, " All is vanity!"

There is no redundancy of either passages or words. There is no sentence which the best perception of poetic melody would avoid on the thousandth perusal. There is a mystic thread of genuine poetic power running through the whole assemblage of thoughts, sentences, and symbols, constituting the fourfold poem a unity, not a casket of fragments, like so many of our modern poems-fragments of intrinsic excel

to

work form;-rather is it a golden chain, each link set with precious gems, or a perfect melody, each note instinct with a power enchant, not of itself so much, as in association with all the rest.

The limits of this essay will be devoted to that beautiful poem, "Lalla Rookh." The two most palpable facts which present them-lence they often are, but spoiled by a patchselves to our mind concerning this poem are -1. The beauty and perfection of the poem itself. 2. The remarkable display of the poet's acquaintance with eastern history, life, scenery, costume, religions, and manners. As it regards the beautiful perfection of the poesy, it is difficult, if not impossible, to define analytically its various elements. The poetic grace, the verbal harmony, the compositional symmetry, the beauty and aptness

Though there are, indeed, many passages of such deep pathos, sublimity of thought, and lake-like beauty, that they linger in the mind altogether unconnected with the part or character to which they belong in the

poem, yet are they most pathetic, sublime,
and beautiful in their natural connection.
Take, for instance, the following:-

"Yes, yes," she cried;" my hourly fears,
My dreams have boded all too right;
We part for ever-for ever part--to-night!
I knew, I knew it could not last-
'Twas bright, 'twas heavenly, but 'tis past!
Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower,
But 'twas the first to fade away.
I never nurs'd a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die."

How expressive is this of the holiest passion under the cloud of darkest disappointment! In its embodiment of the sad experience of all true and loving hearts, how it becomes the universal soul-language of all who know its import from experience!

Dante for Beatrice, Petrarch for Laura, or Goëthe in his "Sorrows of Werter," have nothing so pathetic and deeply expressive of the wild agony of the soul that has loved, but, alas! lost-of the heart that has learned the mystic philosophy of the poet's words—

"I hold it true, whate'er betide,

I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."

Beautiful as is this, the language of the true soul in the inevitable sorrow of this life, is it not more so, coming warm and wild from the lips of the lovely Hinda? It is because we are so deeply enamoured with the beautiful being who speaks, that the passages come with such power to the heart, that it becomes at once the symbol of our own experience.

"Oh, what a pure and sacred thing Is beauty!

*

*

*

Light as the angel shapes that bless
An infant's dream, yet not the less
Rich in all woman's loveliness:
With eyes so pure, that from their ray
Dark Vice would turn abash'd away,
Blinded, like serpents, when they gaze
Upon the emerald's virgin blaze,
Yet filled with all youth's sweet desires,
Mingling the meek and vestal fires
Of other worlds with all the bliss,
The fond, weak tenderness of this:
A soul, too, more than half divine,
Where, through some shades of earthly
feeling,

Religion's soften'd glories shine,

Shedding a glow of such mild hue,
So warm and yet so shadowy too,
As makes the very darkness there
More beautiful than light elsewhere."

These and many like passages need little comment and no praise. There is a perfectness of poetic beauty about them which baffles all analytical criticism, and in this sense leaves the enchanted reader, like the mighty-tongued and giant-souled Coleridge, while gazing on "enthroned Blanc," in the joy of vision-speechless!

But the deductions of criticism concerning the genius of the poet are palpable and natural. While the poetry of this "cele99 demonstrates the brated oriental romance perfect mastery of the poet in verbal science and rhythmic harmony, it also presents him to the reader as mighty in the soul's domain— in embodying passion in fictitious character so naturally and yet so vividly, that the personages of the poem appear before us as realities in human life. We know them, and, according to their distinct characters, admire, fear, love, or hate them. This is no mean test of poetic genius-a test, indeed, to the high standard of which very few poets, down from Homer, the chief of epicists, to Shakspere, the prince of poets, in the delineation of moral character and the mystic workings. of the passions and powers of the eternal. soul of man; and onward from the immortal dramatist down to our own time;-a test, we repeat it, to the high standard of which very few poets can come with so just a claim as Moore.

Azim, the young, brave, and devoted warrior Mokanna, the misanthrope, the vicious and Satan-like, subtle and mighty in "dark vice" and error-Zelica, the loving, deluded, and bewildered Zelica-the Gheberyouth, whose soul, though enamoured of the angel Hinda, would not, could not forsake, even for love and beauty, the cause of his down-trodden country, or for a moment forget his oath to avenge her wrongs or perish-are to us as living characters; hence, perhaps, the truth of Byron's words concerning Moore he is "the poet of all circles, and the delight of his own." He makes the subjects of his pen to us as real, though wondrous characters.

"Happiness of nature," says Hazlitt, "and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent cha

Like light through summer foliage stealing, racteristics of the Bard of Erin." This,

perhaps, contains the most truth of any of this critic's remarks on Moore as a poet. The criticisms of Hazlitt, as regards our author, are, taken as a whole, poor and unworthy of his famed insight and power. They bear the seal of his originality, and that is all. They lack both vigour and profundity, and sound like table-talk after the beauty of Jeffrey's, or the silent march of Macaulay's critiques. Hazlitt seems to have been as blind to Moore's real claims as a poet of high standard, as another mastermind in the province of criticism was to the claims of Southey, Wordsworth, and others. So true is it, as a general rule, that contemporaneous criticism is one-sided, partial, and worthless. While Hazlitt, and especially Jeffrey, wrote the most splendid criticisms on Shakspere and other poets of the past, neither in their writings did justice to modern poets. But who, gentle reader, now that Moore and Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Jeffrey, are shrouded in the light-revealing and truth-unveiling past, who are the losers by such error and short-sightedness? Is there any doubt? While the poetry of Moore and Wordsworth has invested our literature and language, and the literature and language of other nations, with a perennial glory, the criticisms of these men are daily becoming dimmer and drier in the vast library of "Dry-as-dust." We acknowledge the merit of Hazlitt and Jeffrey in a degree beyond the reach of a Gilfillan's pen or might of applause; but for the sake of their fame let not their criticisms on these poets, whom they knew not, always live.

We deny not the pleasure-loving and pleasure-taking spirit of Moore-we confess he was too Anacreontic; neither do we defend the moral character of some of his writings, any more than we should some of Byron's or Shelley's? But what has this to do with them as poets and men of extraordinary genius? Who thinks of talking about the Pantheistic and erratic tendencies of Homer, the objectionable theology of Ovid, or the still more objectionable morality of Horace, as matters of importance in our decision of them as the sons of inspiration? Yet modern poets are to be measured by their orthodoxy in creed and conduct! and nineteenth century criticism is to sit in judgment on men's consciences and beliefs!

Not less remarkable is our second aspect of

66

the romance-The remarkable display of the poet's acquaintance with eastern history, life, scenery, costume, religions, and manners. Well might it be asked, "Whether it was true that Moore had never been in India?" by one who was familiar from contact with many of the facts with which Moore has enriched his romance. It requires a mind of great observation in reading in so vast a field as that in which Moore must have long studied, in order to bring together so many topographical, antiquarian, and other facts. A mind as powerful in minute inspection and research as poetic could only produce a "Lalla Rookh." Moore was a man of travel, it is true, but he never opened his natural eye in the East, the grand theatre of this poem. Herein is the marvel, that such extraordinary accuracy" should characterize the whole. The fact that the poem has passed into the Persian language is a testimony to its intrinsic excellence. The mystery may somewhat be solved if we take into consideration two remarkable characteristics of the poet. Moore was a man of great industry in research and observation. He says, "I took the whole range of all such oriental reading as was acc Adesivre to me, and became, for the time, indeed, far more conversant with all relating to that distant region than I have ever been with the scenery, productions, or modes of life of any of those countries lying most within my reach." With what a glory does this invest the media of information-books! but how much greater is the glory which crowns the transcendent powers of the immortal mind in such wondrous effort!

[ocr errors]

But this does not clear the fact of its mystery. We must remember that Moore, in this work, brought not only the knowledge and research of a Wordsworth, but the intense admiration and worship of what men call Nature, of a very Coleridge or ipseShelley!

"How calm, how beautiful comes on

The stilly hour, when storms are gone;
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds beneath the glancing ray
Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity,
Fresh as if day again were born,
Again upon the lap of morn.
When the light blossoms, rudely borne,
And scatter'd at the whirlwind's will,
Hang floating in the pure air still,
Filling it all with precious balm,

In gratitude for this sweet calm," &c. &c.,

The numerous things in the course of the poem to which reference is made poetically, if it were possible to collect, would form an unrivalled museum of beautiful antiquarian valuables, the sight of which would at once bring to the mind the ideas of each which Moore has given them in the poem, with all that peculiarity of beauty and curiosity which betray the poet's happy genius. We know of no poetry in which the curious and beautiful are better used, or with so good effect. Not a little modern poetry is inferior to good prose, arising, to a great extent, from the subordination of beauty to curiosity; violating that nice balancing of the two, which often constitutes the soul of poesy.

In the perusal of "Lalla Rookh" we are, from the beginning to the end, led captive with the intense spirit of beauty which runs through the whole; while we are, at the same time, struck with the novelty and

singularity of the facts used as poetic ornaments. Neither Wordsworth nor Southey are free from the failing here pointed out, not to mention the trash of some would-becalled poets, whose names must not appear among the aristocracy of poetic literature. The remark is sufficiently pungent, without the mention of either names or "flaming titles."

The poet has displayed not a little skill and humour in those prose links which unite the four parts of the romance-especially in the character of the great chamberlain-as a literary critic.

The effect of this upon some of our modern pseudo-critics must have been as complete, though more secret, than that which followed the publication of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Fadladeenism, though on the wane, is not yet gone out. Buckingham. E. W. S.

YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATIONS.

In these pages it has been truly said that having for its object the method of render"the hope of the future is in the young." ing the society more beneficial being adopted, Acting on this truth, various means have old members retire, and the association bebeen adopted to render the young of the comes extinct. As exciting the natural desire present generation fit to act their part nobly of the mind for knowledge, the purpose of the in the future. Of these means, the estab- society has been fulfilled. The mind, resolishment of mutual improvement societies lutely bent on self-culture, cannot rest satisand young men's christian associations are fied with superficial knowledge; and, so long prominently set forth as auxiliaries towards as it continues in connection with such socierendering "the hope of the future" real-ties, as at present constituted, no other kind izable. Much good has already resulted of knowledge can be acquired, because the from such associations, but we fear they do method of pursuing the object of the society not entirely fulfil the object for which they is defective. A syllabus of a mutual imwere originated, and that they are not so ad-provement society is before us, and the subvantageous to the young men of Britain as jects of the essays are-"Chemistry," "John they might be made. Our reason for this Howard," Electricity," "Description of fear, and the manner in which we think the Jerusalem," "Water," "Ornamental Art," obstacles to their success might be removed, &c., &c. Is the benefit to be derived from we venture to lay before our readers in the hearing these essays read equivalent to the following hints. time occupied? We are afraid not. Το speak on the topics, and criticize the style and treatment of these essays, the mind is compelled to pass from one subject to another, the result of which is a dissipation of the intellectual powers, and a surfaceknowledge of various subjects. The concentration of the energies of the mind on one subject is necessary to acquire solid information, and ensure genuine progress. Such concentrated thought cannot be acquired in

I. YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES FOR MUTUAL IMPROVEMENT are in general selforiginated. A want is felt, and to supply that want a society is formed, having for its object the intellectual and moral improvement of its members. Such societies continue for a time, and are dissolved. After the minds of the members reach a certain stage of develop ment, the mutual improvement society is found to be unserviceable. No alteration

66

« AnteriorContinuar »