At Edinburgh, on the 27th ult., Mrs. Cay, widow of Robert Hodshon Cay, of North Charlton, Northumberland, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty of Scotland. On the 30th ult., at Alnwick, Jane, daughter, of the late William Adams, Esq. of Acton, aged 9 years. Same day, at Morpeth, John, infant son of Mr. Anthony Charlton, Solicitor, aged 12 days. At Kelso, on the 30th ult., Mr. John Heweit. At Berwick, on the 5th inst, Andrew, eldest son of Mr. William Jackson, Shoemaker, aged 31. At Sunderland, on the 9th inst., John Crawford, seaman, aged 54, who, in the memorable engagement of Admiral Duncan with the Dutch Fleet, in 1799, nailed the flag of the Venerable (Lord Duncan's ship) to the mast-head, for which he received a pension of £30 a-year, and his townsmen presented him with a silver medal. At Craig Lodge, Haddington, on the 30th ult., Miss Beatrix Dudgeon, daughter of the late John Dudgeon, Esq., of East Craig. At Lauder, on the 3d inst., Charles Simson, Esq., of Treepwood, much and justly regretted by his numerous friends. To Readers and Correspondents. The READERS of the Border Magazine need hardly be requested to suspend for a season their judgment on the character, whole and real, of the present work. The many hindrances, which beset the initial course of any literary undertaking, are so obvious to the leastinitiated in the mysteries of the Editorial Closet and the PrintingOffice, that apology were insult. For the articles individually, which the First Number contains, we have no excuse to offer, nor do we think one required. We had hoped, however, to furnish greater variety at the outset, and thereby convey a more comprehensive idea of the able pens employed in our aid and service: such intention, meanwhile, is necessarily postponed. To the SUBSCRIBERS, who voluntarily and cheerfully gave substantial proof of their friendly disposition towards us, we tender our most sincere and unfeigned thanks. Theirs will be the pleasure, we trust, of seeing the tree flourish, which, but for their early and fostering care, might have perished in the germ. How shall we express our gratitude to those Ladies and Gentlemen, who have promised from time to time to transmit to our pages, 'Their thoughts that breathe and words that burn?' Here we find ourselves in a dilemma:-let silence be our spokesman, and the hearts of those who favour us our interpreters. * ** A General Index and Title-Page will be given with the last number of the Volume. THE writer of an article in the Edinburgh Review,* to which we would refer our readers, observes, "Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body; and as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which it calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction." Again,—" In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses and even of good ones-but little poetry." We have selected this passage as it embodies the substance of a doctrine that is extremely popular at present. But we really think, that it rests on a very shallow foundation. Is it possible to admit, that ignorance of things which are not beyond the bounds of our faculties is the only or the principal source of poetical inspiration?—that nature loses her hold on the heart, as soon as we have discovered her general laws? So the critic seems to maintain. But poetry flourishes, in spite of all this theorising, whatever may be the principles on which the fact is to be accounted for. But, It cannot be denied, that in the infancy of science, there are circumstances highly favourable to poetical excitement. The simplest of nature's operations are connected with a degree of mystery which even lead men in general to feel a deeper interest in them. at the same time, the superstitions which prevail in a rude age are not without some disadvantages. The mythology of the Egyptians, for instance, completely suppressed all the lighter movements of the fancy. But apart from this consideration it must be allowed, though we are better acquainted than our ancestors with many of the properties and relations of external nature, that all these stretch out into something incomprehensible, and therefore still afford * No. 84. August, 1825. VOL. I. G scope for the higher exercises of poetical invention. Science, in short, alters the course of imagination, but does not limit it. Nay, it has more than a negative effect. It places her at the right startingpost. It shews her where the greatest mystery lies. It prevents her from wasting her energies on traditions, which are principally suited to the peculiarities of certain countries and ages, and thus brings poetry nearer Aristotle's idea of it, by rendering it a subject of universal sympathy, Where is the poet who cannot feel the beauty of such lines as these? "Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. All heaven and earth are still, though not in sleep, All is concenter'd in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all creator and defence.” * It would seem that the great eminence of the English poets who flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries has led many to acquiesce in the doctrine on which we are animadverting. But, notwithstanding Mr. Wharton's assertion, we cannot even see any reason for admitting, that Shakespeare would not have introduced supernatural machinery into any of his plots, if he had written in the 18th or 19th century. This at least we may affirm, that since his time "the outlines of certainty" have not "become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct," with regard to any thing which could influence him when he produced his finest plays. What subsequent discoveries could have prevented him from writing Lear or Othello, or Richard the Third, or Cymbeline, or Romeo and Juliet? or even Hamlet and Macbeth? Have we not Faustus and Manfred, and do they not abound with as strong and poetical appeals to our superstitious feelings as any that are to be met with in the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries?-The fact is, that the appearance of such a genius, as Campbell observes, "baffles all calculation," and though it cannot be doubted, that in Shakespeare's age there were many circumstances favourable to the drama in particular, these are not connected with the doctrine in the passage which we have quoted, and his successors cannot impute their general inferiority to the progress of science. • Childe Harold, Canto III. In dwelling on the general tendencies to excitement among an uncultivated people, and the gradual disappearance of these from the surface of society in the progress of truth, we too often forget, that mystery is not the sole cause of "the fine frenzy." There is a sense of beauty as well as of wonder, and we have still enough to excite it. "The moon shines still; the sky has not ceased to be blue; the rose and the lily are fair and sweet as ever; the dove is just as loving and as gentle as when she brought the olive leaf to the sole human family; and the nightingale sings as delightfully to us as to that sweet-witted Persian who first called the rose her paramour." The poet, too, describes things as they appear to the eye of passion; and passion has a perspective of its own, resting on principles not less severe and independant, though the application of them is less easily taught than Euclid's theorems. He can think the thunder sublime, and even endue it with his own feelings, though he knows the causes of it better than the worthy lecturer in the marvellously pleasant love story, who defined it to be "a great noise;" and in spite of the most vigilant analysis, his representations possess a self-consistency, which justifies them to the heart of all those for whom they are intended. Would the knowledge of the physical properties of a cloud prevent any poetic mind from enjoying the beauty of such a personification as this? "I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be, The triumphant arch through which I march With hurricane, fire and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fires above its soft colours wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the wind and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, Cloud, by P. B. Shelley. It must be admitted, that in the early stages of society there is more uninclosed ground, so to speak, for the poet to work on. But it must be remembered at the same time, that science, at least, cannot weaken the effect of the poetry of association. Every poet, like every human being, has peculiar recollections connected with the various forms of external nature, as well as a peculiar way of viewing them. The days of childhood-the memory of "what has been and never more shall be"-the workings of hope and fear, of joy and disappointment-all these, coloured by the ruling characteristics of the poet's mind, constitute a source of poetic interest, which can never be dried up. We may also observe, by the way, what is very obvious, that, though science deals most unsparingly with superstitions which are remarkable for nothing but their absurdity, we still feel a deep interest in those which have any quality to recommend them. "The pansy is still sacred to Oberon and Titania-the misletoe is not of our generation-the mandrake is a fearful ghost of departed daysthe toad is the most ancient of reptiles, and the raven is a secular bird of ages. It may be maintained, at all events, that the su perstitions of antiquity are highly useful as subjects of illustration, even when they have lost their poetical power in other respects. But while science does not deprive the poet of any thing that is really valuable, it supplies him with additional materials. Abstract truth in some of its aspects is as sublime as nature. It may excite feelings as profound, and suggest images as beautiful as the richest scenery. Frederick Schlegel has observed in his "Studien des Classischens Alterthums," as a circumstance proving the Orphie hymns to have been posterior to Homer, that in all the Iliad and Odyssey we do not meet with the idea of the infinite. "The fulness of life rushes, as it were, through an open sense into his mind, and he throws it vividly back, like a bright mirror," but every thing is essentially definite in his heavens and in his earth. Now science can at least give us this, if it can do no more; and we certainly think, that the contemplation of this central and imperishable truth may have as poetical an effect as the figurative exhibition of nature in all the motley groups that haunted the woods and streams of Greece. The reflections at the beginning of the 8th Book of Paradise Lost, where Raphæl describes the spheres to Adam, may serve to illustrate our meaning, and we shall take the liberty to quote a part of this fine passage, and ask our readers if any of them can point out any thing to be compared with it in a heathen poet?— "To ask or search, I blame thee not; for Heaven |