Imatges de pàgina
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of the Tartars, Kabardions, and Lesghis, driven from their ancient seats by the advance of Russian conquest, have sought a last refuge in the inaccessible mountains of Circassia, and become amalgamated with the Circassian people: the last descendants of Zingis, the race of the dethroned Kherais of the Krim, are at their head: and aid is secretly afforded to their co-religionists by the neighbouring Moslem tribes in the Russian dominions, to an extent which the severe punishment consequent on detection has been unable to check. The suc cess of the Caucasian mountaineers, and the present disaffection of the Cossacks, may be hailed as the first signs of reflux in the tide of aggression which Russia has for more than a century been steadily carrying forward: and, when we remember the eagerness with which the Cossacks of Poltava and the Ukraine, on the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, * held themselves in readiness to welcome the French as deliverers, we may estimate the probable effect which might be produced if Great Britain, following the example set by her professed ally in the late case of Herat, should retaliate by sending her Mediterranean fleet into the Black Sea, and thus demonstrating to the tribes on its shores that the power of the "Padishah of the Sea" (as the Circassians term the British sovereign) is less exaggerated, and less kept in check by Russia, than the Russians have constantly endeavoured to represent it.†

The country occupied by the Don

Cossacks extends about 350 versts in length on both sides of the Don, and about 300 in extreme width, containing 3611 geographic square miles: it contains 119 stanitzas, varying from 50 to 300 houses; each stanitza is still surrounded by a rampart and ditch, but the khutor or stable is outside. The male population is supposed to be about half a million, of whom 200,000 are able to bear arms, and have each consequently an allotment of lands and fisheries; the officers have double and treble shares. Every Cossack is liable to be called upon to serve three years in any part of the world, mounted, equipped, and armed at his own expense, but receiving pay when on actual service. After three years' service he is liable to service only nly in the frontier cordon, the police, &c.: after twenty years he serves in the home police only, and after twenty-five years he is free entirely. The Cossacks are mostly in easy circumstances, and are exempt from most taxes, particularly the salt and capitation taxes; most of them possess three or four horses, and many have studs of upwards of 1000: their country, with the Ukraine and the neighbouring cavalry colonies, supplies nearly all Russia with horses. Bremner says, that "with the exception of the cavalry of the guard stationed at Petersburg, and the longnecked pets of some Cossack policemen, scarcely a single mounted soldier is seen by the traveller till he reach the southern districts. There are 45,000 cavalry in Little Russia alone."‡

this mighty chain of mountains, as a curb upon Hejaj and Mejaj, or Gog and Magog: the barbarous tribes of the North.

* Bremner's Russia, ii. 405.

† The present force of the Cossacks is estimated by Mr Bremner on the (authority of Schnitzler and others) at 101,760 men, divided into 164 regiments. Of these the Don-Cossacks supply 70 regiments of the line, and 19 of the guards; the Tchernomorskis 21. of the line, and one of the guards; the Siberian Cossacks 30 of the line; the Cossacks of the Ukraine 18 of the line, (organized in 1831 as a partial revival of this branch, under the title of Cossacks of Little Russia;) the remaining five regiments are supplied by the Cossacks of the Ural, Terek, and Volga. Each polk or regiment is divided into ten sotnikas or troops; its staff consisting of a polkovnik (colonel), yessawul (major), and a standard-bearer. Bremner's Russia, ii. 381.

SONG-WRITING.

MOORE.

How many, we would ask, of the poets of the present day, have proposed to themselves any model of ex. alted beauty, to which, in their works, they have longed and laboured to conform; any radiant image of the first fair, finished and faultless in all its parts and proportions, that has robbed them of their rest, and haunted them in their dreams, still attracting them to a nearer contemplation of its excellence, and animating them to some effort by which they might gratify in themselves, and in some degree communicate to others, the love and delight with which it has filled their souls? How many of them even have dwelt with humbler admiration on the reflection of that primary excellence presented in the compositions of timehonoured genius, and have attempted to pro on their own age and country, anu with themes of their own choice, analogous if not similar effects to those which have for ever embalmed the memory and influence of their classic prototypes? How many of our poets have asked of themselves with a heartfelt and assiduous importunity

"What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?"

How many have answered the enquiry by the exclamation

"Hence all the flattering vanities that lay Nets of roses in my way;

Hence, the desire of honours and estate, And all that is not above fate!"

How many again have been actuated by the still nobler feeling, that the gift of poetry was bestowed upon them as a divine instrument for doing good, as much as for imparting pleasure, to their species, and that of this talent, as of every other, the God who gave it would demand a strict account? But a few, we suspect, of those who have in our day desired or attained a poetical reputation, could lay claim to feelings or motives such as we have described. Yet, without some of these sources of inspiration, and, perhaps, more particularly without the highest and rarest that we have named, we do

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But the sentiment, however shadowy, that he was the servant and priest of the virgin daughters of Jove, must, amidst all the errors of heathenism, have supported the sweetest and stateliest of poets in his noble aspirations after piety and wisdom-after the beautiful and the good. In the days of Christianity the poetical office is not less than ever a sacred ministry; and poets are an anointed priesthood, who have still holier and higher truths to proclaim, and feelings to infuse, than even the imagination that led Æneas into Hades could conjecture or comprehend. While living in a clearer light, and under a purer dispensation, it is still to us a virtual truth, that poetry is a virgin daughter of heaven, whose service can only be well and worthily performed by those who remember the sacredness of her origin, and the benevolence of her errand to the earth.

We are not about to enter on any denunciation of those who have perverted poetry to purposes or propensities of an unworthy nature, and have attempted to lend a new or an additional impulse to self-indulgence, by those graces and embellishments which were intended to adorn the awful form of virtue, and render her features more familiar and more attractive. We are not disposed to think that the influence of such writers is so extensively or so enduringly pernicious, as might at first be thought. We, indeed, consider that it is idle and unjust to declaim in this respect against the perversions of genius, or to exhort the true poet to employ his powers on such objects only as are glorious to himself, and profitable to his species.

We doubt whether genius can exist at all, at least genius of a high class, without carrying in its own constitution a practical security against error and vice. There can be no great genius without an ardent longing, and an inextinguishable preference, for what is truly beautiful: and no highly endowed spirit can fail to see almost intuitively that virtue is beauty, and vice deformity. All the better parts of our nature-all the nobler views of our destiny-must have a charm in the eyes of the true poet which never can adorn their opposites. They must be more delightful as objects of contemplation-moreinspiring and more satisfying as subjects of representation and development. If we could conceive a painter, with an exquisite sense of form and colouring, who yet preferred to delineate the lifeless desert or the sickly swamp, before the fertile valley or the heaven-kissing hill; or whose human figures more readily exhibited the loathsomeness of disease and decay, than the purple light of health and happiness-we should imagine an anomaly something akin to that of a great poet, whose sensibility and enthusiasm were yet content to dwell on themes of frivolity and folly, to the exclusion of what was truly noble and touching in human character.

It is not our object here to enquire, in connexion with this view, in what manner some of the greatest poets have been led to devote a part of their powers to subjects of levity and license. Perhaps, in reference to the age and people whom they addressed, even this lowering of their tone was necessary or serviceable to the perfect success of their mighty mission. The greatest poets, we are inclined to think, ought to embody in themselves the image both of the real and of the ideal world, to enable them the more effectually to convert the sensual vulgarities of the one into the spiritual sublimities of the other. Not without a profound and important meaning of this nature, is the glorious description of his own power by the noblest and wisest of his brotherhood:

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from

earth to heaven."

Heaven must be the first object of its contemplation; but on the earth too, and on all objects of earthly inte

NO. CCLXXXVII. VOL. XLVI.

rest, its glance must rest, till from this meaner world it is able to raise and refine its earthly disciples to an aptness for that region from which its power is derived, and in which its purposes terminate. The ribald or the rustic, who should be allured, by the merriment of Shakspeare's buffoons or of Chaucer's churls, to obtain even a glimpse of those exquisite revelations of purity and goodness to which these blemishes seem so strangely united, would prove to us the magic efficacy of those master-minds, who, from their universal sympathies, even with the failings of their species, were able, by winning their confidence, to promote their amendment more quickly and more completely than a more rigid and repulsive instructor could have done.

But the apparent anomaly we have glanced at is no exception to our proposition that genius is essentially pure. No great poet ever attempted to embellish error or vice with the charms of poetry, or to practise those deceptions in morality which are alone dangerous. A great poet is as incapable of deceiving others by specious vices or false combinations, as he is of being himself deceived by them. The wand of true genius is an Ithuriel's spear :"No falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness."

When we are told, then, of any who waste their genius upon unworthy subjects, we are inclined to conclude that they are not in reality possessed of that genius which they are accused of degrading. We infer that they are destitute of those powers and faculties

which would enable them to contem

plate and to create what was beautiful and pure, and would necessarily secure their affections from wandering to objects of moral aversion.

In like manner, we are in general inclined to think that where genius exists, it must be accompanied by the power, and must feel the necessity, of giving a high finish in language and imagery to all its works. The love of the beautiful combined with the creative faculty, cannot fail to produce in comparative perfection the object that it loves and labours to realize. The powers of thought and of expression were never known to be separated in the authors of classical antiquity;

2 A

To love thee more and more.

"Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire:
And she I cherish'd turn'd her wheel
Beside an English fire.

and in like manner, in our own nation, A second time; for still I seem
the two faculties have always gone
hand in hand. The genius of Spenser,
Shakspeare, and Milton, is not more
exhibited in the greatness of their
conceptions, than in the unimprovable
felicity and beauty of their diction.
Here, again, we are inclined to say,
that slovenliness, or poverty of lan-
guage, is not to be regarded as a result
merely of carelessness, but as an indi-
cation of the absence of high genius.

It may be thought, that the remarks we are making are pitched on a key a great deal too high for the humble subject by which they have been suggested. But we cannot allow it to be said, that lyrical composition is to be measured by any different or lower rule than that which applies to other poetry. There is the same occasion and the same necessity for exhibiting genius in its true character in a few simple verses of a song, as in a much longer or more ambitious poem: and there are the same grounds for condemning in this department any attempt at poetry, which has not the pure and noble characteristics by which poetry always ought to be, and perhaps always is, distinguished.

The greatest poet of the present age has given us some, though not many, models of the species of composition of which we are now treating. We shall notice two of them as examples at once of deep feeling, of poetical power, and of finished composition. We do not doubt that these poems are to be ascribed to the class of songs, though we have not heard of their being united to music'; and we

suspect there is no living composer, οίοι νυν Βροτοι εισι, who could do justice to their character, and more particularly to the exquisite tenderness of the shortest and best.

The first of the two is a beautiful

picture of a widowed heart seeking

relief in a removal from the scenes of departed happiness, and finding that the softened sorrow of sincere affection finds its only enjoyment in a return to those objects which remind it of what it has lost.

"I travell'd among unknown men,

In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

"'Tis past, that melancholy dream !
Nor will I quit thy shore

" Thy mornings show'd, thy nights con

ceal'd,

The bowers where Lucy play'd; And thine is, too, the last green field That Lucy's eyes survey'd."

Our next example needs no announcement to any of those to whom the name of Wordsworth or of poetry is dear.

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love:

"A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

"She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!"

We would rather be the author of one noble and finished composition, like this of Wordsworth's, than of an innumerable swarm of what the vulgar taste has called clever or charming songs-things with here and there a smart idea, and here and there a tolerable line, but for the most part consisting merely of disguised commonplace, or fanciful exaggeration, wrapped up in a threadbare dress of taw

dry and tinselly language. The more we examine the beautiful lyric which we have just quoted, the more beautiful it will appear. It is simple in the extreme, without one word above the level of ordinary speech; yet, from the innate nobility of the ideas, how gracefully dignified, how powerfully pathetic! A few plain words in the first

verse introduce us at once to the sweet solitude of Lucy, a maid with few friends and no flatterers. The images in the second verse are as new as they are beautiful, and are perfect poetical types of that lonely loveliness which they are intended to picture. Of the conclusion, it may perhaps be said, that it represents the sorrows of bereavement in the only way in which

this can be perfectly done, by suggesting to the reader's mind the strength of their influence, from the impossibility of attempting to express them. This suppression of the utterance of profound grief has, we think, been aptly characterised as an example of the same high style of art which prompted Timanthes to veil the head of Agamemnon, in his picture of Iphigenia's sacrifice. Non reperiens," as Quinctilian well expresses it, " quo dignè modo patris vultum posset exprimere, velavit ejus caput, et suo cuique animo dedit æstimandum."

66

The lyrics of Moore are not of the same school as those we have just been examining. We have much respect for Moore's talents, which are various and versatile, and have been elaborately improved by industry and practice. No song-writer has, perhaps, gathered his subjects from so many sources of erudition and imitation, and none has acquired greater readiness and dexterity in the use of his tools and materials. His natural wit and vivacity have saved him from the fault of being dull, and his enthusiastic love of his country has given to many of his effusions, that force and dignity which are ever the accompaniments of genuine feeling. But we question greatly whether Moore can lay claim to the gift of poetry in any lofty sense of the term. He seems to us to want the creative power and vivid vision of the true poet, and to have never, at least, risen from the region of fancy to that of imagination. We shall examine some of his principal songs, in hopes of discovering some marks of poetical fervour; but we suspect that, in general, it will be found that mere ingenuity has attempted to supply the place of genius. The very frivolous and wholly unpoetical themes which have often occupied his muse, seem to be a proof that her element is not much elevated above the earth. Nor do we recollect any truly great lyric composition that has fallen from his pen. But, perhaps, other causes may have produced this result, than the absence of poetical power. Moore has so long and so successfully carried on with his customers an African traffic in glass beads and Birmingham buttons, that he has never felt the necessity of offering them more substantial merchandise.

It is not easy to compare the characters of Moore and of Burns as lyrical poets. Their education, their habits, and their station, had essential differences, which materially influenced their poetry. The different circles of personal admirers surrounding them, must also have had an effect. The one could draw his thoughts from little else than the storehouse of his own feelings, or a narrow compass of vernacular literature: while the other has borrowed hints and images in every possible quarter, from Herodotus to D'Herbelot, from Sappho to Shenstone, from the Fathers to the Fancy. The one was habitually surrounded by rude or humble companions, or by men of enthusiastic but irregular minds, and only occasionally admitted to the condescending notice of rank or refinement. The other has, from his early years, been the friend and favourite of many whose social position, and whose attainments or pretensions in literature, gave them a right, or a claim, to a high place in the scale of fashion and of taste. Neither of these positions, per. haps, was favourable to the great lesson of self-knowlege, or to the production of works that would stand the test of elevated or rigorous criticism. But with all those disadvantages, and with many individual differences between them, each of them, whether by the force of genius or of talent, has attained an extensive and deserved popularity as a lyrical writer, particularly among his own countrymen; and has contributed not a little to the advancement of lyrical composition.

If we were to characterise the lyrical poetry of Moore, in reference to its most faulty peculiarities, we should say that he has the quaintness of Cowley, without his power; and the facility of Prior, without his adherence to nature. It is, indeed, very remarkable to see the extremes of learning and frivolity meeting together, and to find in the nineteenth century a revival of the metaphysical school of poetry at_our pianofortes and supper-tables. certain, however, that Moore is full of those far-fetched fancies that were so liberally employed by the love poets of the earlier part of the seven. teenth century to puzzle the heads, if they could not touch the hearts, of their mistresses. In every page of Moore we have examples of that perexamples verseness of wit, which, in illustrating

It is

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