Chapter 20

Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original; in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love. Fairy Tales, or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but "Thalaba" and "Kehama" do so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether matron or maid, mother or daughter--in joy or sorrow--as they appear before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their path! We feel, in perusing such pictures--"Purity! thy name is woman!" and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer "yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction.

The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel--and as long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his patriotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed again--it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the brightest--and the past became the present. We know now the character of our own people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing civilisation, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or herself, but the representative--so we offer to prove if you be sceptical--of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and created--you know the meaning of these words--as many characters--real living flesh-and-blood human beings--naturally, truly, and consistently, as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the passions--out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being--was--nay, do not threaten to murder us--not seldom an imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life--he and Burns together--and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while--and shared in the general and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing--though more for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman--and that it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales--Novels--and Romances--fresh floods of light pouring all over Scotland--and occasionally illumining England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine--whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.

Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, "'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difficultly-distinguished and very debatable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts--some in woodmen's dresses--most in warrior's mail: green archers leaped forth with yew-bow and quivers--and giants stalked shaking spears. The grey chronicler smiled; and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres--not they indeed--nor phantoms of the brain--but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;--base-born cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high-born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir Walter is, that he has _harried_ all Scotland. Never was there such a freebooter. He harries all men's cattle--kills themselves off-hand, and makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or numerous verse are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish--of kings that fought for fame or freedom--of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn--of the DELIVERER. If that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North--we shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter.

Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question--has he ever written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; for he has done this--he has exhibited human life in a greater variety of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr Faustus.

"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes--beyond compare. Byron had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat surface of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external world--of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact. He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a cento--his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped--from it they live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had "The Excursion" and "Lyrical Ballads" never been, neither had any composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the third canto of "Childe Harold." His soul, however, having been awakened by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much fine description pervades most of his subsequent works. He afterwards made much of what he saw his own--and even described it after his own fashion; but a greater in that domain was his instructor and guide--nor in his noblest efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, which he had manifestly set as models before his imagination. With all the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his flight--that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in thinking--at first--but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.

But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age alone of our poetry--the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in intellect, but in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches, that we wonder how women condescend to allow the world to be carried on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of maternal affection, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful bosom. Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that interesting speculation, suffice it for the present to say, that so far from having no souls--a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies--women are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We--men we mean--may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes--often--are truly so inspired, and write like gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all male rational creatures are, in the long run, vile, corrupt, and polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster--so is every Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father O'Leary to Dr Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have touched it for the whole world. But all women--till men by marriage, or by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain to reduce them nearly to their own level--are pure as dewdrops or moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft, solemn, and divine.

Observe, however--to prevent all mistakes--that we speak but of British women--and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouqué is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French school, who charitably adopted their own natural daughters, while other less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and Matrons of this Island--and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius that we speak--we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian surnames in whispering under-tones of affection, almost as inaudible as the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening.

Corinna and Sappho must have been women of transcendant genius so to move Greece. For though the Greek character was most impressible and combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that delightful land dunces were all dumb. Where genius alone spoke and sung poetry, how hard to excel! Corinna and Sappho did excel--the one, it is said, conquering Pindar--and the other all the world but Phaon.

But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration. She has created tragedies which Sophocles--or Euripides--nay, even Æschylus himself, might have feared, in competition for the crown. She is our Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and Sir Walter truly said--let them who dare deny it--that he saw her Genius in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of the dark Strathaven Muirs.

Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer. "This will never do!" It has done--perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us--to purify the passions by pity and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul--till its atmosphere is like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on the Passions. And all that Joanna intended--and it was a great intention greatly effected--was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each glorious tragedy--sovereign sometimes by divine right--sometimes an usurper--generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of Hate. But in his sister--the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light sometimes opposed in sublime contrast--and sometimes the light swallowing up the darkness--or "smoothing its raven down till it smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave--for the light, unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure, deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, sometimes a dreadful brotherhood?

Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such different moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful--but the power is that of sympathy and genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living things, and whose overflowing tenderness diffuses itself over the beauty even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood--the lust of crime in a mind polluted with wickedness--the remorse of acts which could never pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For, in the act of imagination he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings--its good and gracious affections--call up from their hidden places those elements of our being, of which the seeds were sown in him as in all--give them unnatural magnitude and power--conceive the disorder of passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he knows and understands for himself what passes in the minds of others. What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciously, at every moment in our intercourse with one another. To this kind of sympathy, so essential to our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart which willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others whose character is utterly unlike its own, and freedom from any inordinate overpowering passion which quenches in the mind the feelings of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the affections and happiness of its kind. To paint bad passions is not to praise them; they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity them; and therefore Baillie has done so--nay start not--better than Byron.

Well may our land be proud of such women. None such ever before adorned her poetical annals. Glance over that most interesting volume, "Specimens of British Poetesses," by that amiable, ingenious, and erudite man, the Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisoned in clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those days bring tears to our eyes by their simple pathos--for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, and shows that they were but too familiar with grief. But their strains are mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." The deeper harmonies of poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The range of their power was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchilsea--Catherine Phillips, known by the name of Orinda--and Mrs Anne Killigrew, who, as Dryden says, was made an angel, "in the last promotion to the skies"--showed, as they sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their genius, and more fortunate in its nurture? Poetry from female lips was then half a wonder, and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer rare--not even the highest--yes, the highest--for Innocence and Purity are of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as the flowers beneath our feet.

We have not forgotten an order of poets, peculiar, we believe, to our own enlightened land--a high order of poets sprung from the lower orders of the people--and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the light of song. Such glory belongs--we believe--exclusively to this country and to this age. Mr Southey, who in his own high genius and fame is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume--and a most interesting one--on the uneducated poets; nor shall we presume to gainsay one of his benevolent words. But this we do say, that all the verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the same sort of whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of dry leaves or sticks, compared with these Five--Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, and Clare. It must be a strong soil--the soil of this Britain--which sends up such products; and we must not complain of the clime beneath which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of domestic life must be sound--the natural knowledge of good and evil high--the religion true--the laws just--and the government, on the whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate these children of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay.