Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

mulged in the books he deals in, provided they sell. In the course of time, however, he finds himself growing into connexion with the holders of one set, rather than another, and, ultimately, that he has acquired a character for productions of a certain school. Thenceforth he knows, or thinks he knows, "on which side his bread is buttered," and devotes himself to his party or sect. His course is now decided his conduct regulated within prescribed limits, the narrowest trade notions. Fatal error! the circulation of his Magazine, or Review, at once fixed, is fixed as in a frost, incapable of increase but not of diminution. A day arrives when the sun shines too warmly for his ice-lake, and the surface becomes again fluid is again the arena for the swimmer, not the skater.

Thus it is that one periodical has been followed by another. As each attains its climax, it settles into formality; and a mere dead arrangement substitutes the living order of its earlier appearances. But as, in nature, corruption generates and generation corrupts, so, also, in literature, one ephemeral work has only exampled a way for another; and, taken on the large scale, the race of monthly and quarterly publications has advanced in excellence, both in aim and execution.

It would have been contrary to the dealings of Providence, regarding literature in general, if the course of proceeding adopted had, after all, not been for some worthy and beneficial result. Not only were letters of divine origin, but whatever has flowed from them, and still flows, is of especial sanctity. Periodical writings are of too influential a character with mankind, not to have a "sacred history," were the clue to the labyrinth but once pos

sessed.

"All things once are things for ever;
Soul, once living, lives for ever;
Blame not what is only once,
When that once endures for ever;
Love, once felt, though soon forgot,
Moulds the heart to good for ever;
Once betrayed from childly faith,
Man is conscious man for ever;
Once the void of life revealed,
It must deepen on for ever;
Unless God fill up the heart
With himself for once and ever:
Once made God and man at once,
God and man are one for ever.*

The wandering spirit of periodical literature, therefore, has had its peculiar metempsychoses, and its metamorphoses. It has reflected like a stream-mirror, the moonlike phases of the more permanent and standard specimens of authorship, blended with the current opinion on their merit; the contributors to it being mainly amateurs, rather than artists-lovers and readers, rather than the makers of books. What Coleridge has said of the spirit of poetry, may even be pro

From the poems of Richard Monckton Milnes, author of "Memorials of a Tour in Greece." In 2 vols. London: Moxon, 1838.

3

nounced of this humbler spirit of criticism:-They alone are capable of estimating its different incarnations aright, "who have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with each new birth, with each rare avatar, the human race frame to itself a new body by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its motion and activity."

Thus it is with books, and, in particular, with periodical and serial books. A Magazine, or Review, shall outlast its first projectors and contributors, vary its publisher and printer, its mode of arrangement and its style of composition-it shall gain new writers and readers, and from time to time fit itself to new conditions, yet, in its old title and name, preserve an apparent identity; nay, though in every point else it has undergone complete alteration. Of the MONTHLY MAGAZINE we would fain be able to add, in the language of Shakspere,

"Nothing of it that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into some thing rich and strange."

Was the old body built in part of "bones"? we, by our so potent magic, would turn them into" coral" ;-of "eyes"?-into "pearls.'

Full fathom five, if not many more, in the great deep of the past, lies the corse of the paternal series of which the present number of the Monthly Magazine is the remote issue: there lies the fathernumber or volume-and with him many of his offspring repose

"Sea-nymphs hourly ring their knell,

Hark! now we hear them-ding-dong bell!”

Nothing has happened to them but what chances to all the works composing the class to which they belong. The individual is a type of the species.

The entire body of periodical literature has hitherto presented the chrysalis, as it were, of the Psyche that it involved. We hope to exhibit a higher evolution of the principle contained in it than has yet been ventured. A chasm-a void, remains to be filled up in this department of our literature: we trust in being enabled to occupy it. With a view to the production of a work which, though periodically published, shall partake of a permanent character, while it includes every passing subject of interest or importance, this New Series of the MONTHLY MAGAZINE is projected. Some of the most celebrated writers of the day have consented to become contributors. Our pages will successively present, in courses of about three months, censes of the literature of the time, whether foreign or domestic; retrospective reviews and antiquarian repertories; biographical essays; discussions on all subjects interesting the church and the state, or concerning the progress of science and society, philosophy and mind, in every age and country under heaven.

If we have been enabled to conceive this idea with any confidence, and shall be empowered to work it out with any success, it

is due not to us, but to the Disposer of Events, who has so ordained it, that all things have been tending to, and are lapsing in, a New Era of human endeavour. A truth, this, almost universally felt; nay, a matter nearly of actual experience; the daily discourse of newspapers, and the passing subject of public chronicles.

There are three aspects of this approaching period that we are mainly concerned in considering-the Poetical, the Philosophical, and the Political.

POETRY. It is not necessary for us to revert to a time preceding that in which Cowper flourished. Commencing with this writer, we turn at once our back on Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and his canons of criticism: what he prized as the essentials of poetry have been since deemed the accidents only; and, in many instances, his decisions have been altogether reversed. The style of opinion in Dr. Johnson's day on Cowper may be gathered from the solitary note on the subject in Boswell, by the biographer himself. The doctor had been speaking of the "superfetation of the press in modern times," as prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferior value, in order to be in the fashion" Better works," said Johnson, "are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity. But it must be considered," added he, " that we have now more knowledge generally diffused all our ladies read now, which is a great extension. Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light-with light borrowed from the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance." Whereupon Allan Ramsay remarked, that he supposed Homer's 'Iliad' to be a collection of pieces which had been written before the poet's time; and expressed a wish to see a translation of it in poetical prose, like the book of Ruth, or Job. Robertson, the historian, then proposed that Dr. Johnson should undertake the task; to which proposition the doctor replied, "Sir, you would not read it without the pleasure of verse.' Which reply Boswell annotates in this fashion:-" This experiment, which Madame Dacier made in vain, has since been tried in our own language, by the editor of Ossian; and we must either think very meanly of his abilities, or allow that Dr. Johnson was right. And Mr. Cowper, a man of real genius, has miserably failed in his blank verse translation.”

Such a decision as this was to be looked for from a sumph who had just been listening to the praises of Voltaire and Pope, as authors who had more fame in their lifetime than any others ever enjoyed, and who were worthy to be named in the same breath with Virgil and Homer. But compare this decision with that pronounced by our present laureate, who ranks Cowper's version, and rightly, above Pope's. With Dr. Johnson's own assumptions, also, as to Greece and Rome, the poet Coleridge would not have been satisfied-he would have carried the inquiry into the Hebraic period, and beyond. He would have demanded the birth-place on

earth of wisdom; and contended for the unity, in their origin, of poetry and religion, and asserted the claims of inspiration for both. But this was a truth forgotten during the gallican era of English poetry. Forgotten, we say; for previously to such period poetry had always been esteemed as something holy and prophetic, and poets reverenced as veritable vates. Who is it that saith, "Authentic history informs us of no time when poetry was not; and, if the divine art has sometimes sung its own nativity, it is in strains which confess while they glorify ignorance. The sacred annals are silent, and the heathens, by referring the invention of verse to the gods, do but tell us that the mortal inventor was unknown"?-It is a true saying, whoever may have been the utterer.

Ere long, both in this country and in Germany, for the poetic spirit, her true and proper rank was claimed. The literary men of Germany, indeed, dared to esteem themselves members of a perpetual priesthood, appointed to interpret the great Mythos of the universe, and to sucessively assist in the revelation of that "divine idea," by which it is supported, and of which it is only the manifestation-an imperfect one, indeed, but in every age becoming more and more complete, ever progressing towards an ultimate and glorious developement.

A cycle of poetry, which may be said to have closed with Keats and Shelley in this country, and with Schiller and Göthe in Germany, was thus commenced, in which we may trace a still moving and evolving pomp of

"Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions and veiléd Destinies,

Splendors and Glooms, and glimmering Incantations,
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Phantasies;

And Sorrow, with her family of sighs,

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes."

What an unthought-of world is opened-up in the poems of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Byron, Hunt, Shelley, Keats, Klopstock, Herder, Wieland, Schiller, Göthe! See, too, what new shapes the same spirit is assuming in the works of Heraud, Taylor, Barrett and Milnes, in whose productions a new cycle of active and meditative poetry is evidently in process of evolution. In all these authors an intense feeling of the divine origin of poetry is manifested, and an antecedency to every positive form endeavoured to be æsthetically attained. The point of unity, certes, has not yet been reached-nevertheless, oracular voices indicative of some approximation to the temple of pure truth are recognisable enough.

Almost nothing of these tendencies has been reflected in the critical journals of the time. The Quarterlies, both Whig and Tory, either declared open war against the new school of poetry or barely tolerated it. Thus it was, Wordsworth and Coleridge had plenty of inimical critics, but no advocates. Professor Wilson was heard frequently, as an eccentric individual writing in an odd sort of magazine, lauding the former; but the latter was even

"wounded in the house of his friends." The reading populace were altogether ignorant of the wonders that were doing; and the better informed remained yet in doubt as to the merits of all the poets that we have named. They have had to work their way without the aid, or in spite, of criticism.

PHILOSOPHY.-Much of the above-stated discrepancy between the critical and poetical mind of the age, some will attempt to account for by the variety of individual tastes and minds which at all times prevails. The apology only serves to detect another want-the want, in our schemes of education, of that philosophy, which shall refer such variety to a common unity; and by so doing instruct every man in the principle of harmony common to all, and by the knowledge of which every man may speedily become one with his fellows. We shall, as we well enough know, be at once answered, that there is no hope of this, for the whole field of metaphysical science is a scene of ruin-one pile overthrown for another to be built up-and this, in turn, by another still-and the latest built not standing whole, but undergoing demolition, to make room for a new erection yet in the brain of some new projector. We concede to the whole shewing. It is true of all the sciences, not of the metaphysic alone. The sciences, whether physical, metaphysical, moral, or divine, are only branches of history; and history is evermore an imperfect record, symbolically representing, by fitting portions, an aggregate of particulars without arrangement, save such as the historian may have sufficient skill to make. Not only has he to reduce an unascertainable mass of materials to order, but he has to conjecture the unity of which the whole, if he could get it, would be but a representative growth. Grant him the whole of the past, must he not wait until the time of the end, before the ways of God to men can be thoroughly justified in the apprehension of the creature, and be susceptible of historical vindication? Most assuredly. But what said we? Grant him the whole of the past? Impossible! Can he be sure that he has got the whole of the documents, or the whole of the documents the whole of the particulars? We know to the contrary. The historian can only see in part, can only understand in part. And in regard to nature, is the scientific historian any more or better than an historical sciolist? He can only speak and write of what If experience and experiment are to be his guides, he ought to take nothing on the authority of another. To what narrow limits is he then confined! The large domain of the past previous to his birth, and for some time after, is a blank to him ;all but a small portion of space beyond his contemplation. Small the whole extent of his experience-extremely limited the amount of his experimenting! And the knowledge obtained-what is it? Death-decomposition-analysis. The seat of life may not be profanely approached; the enshrined power eludes the last investigation of the man of physical science. It is the same with the metaphysical enquirer. Certain phenomena lead him to certain "ultimate facts," as they are called by professor Dugald Stewart,

« AnteriorContinua »