'Supplication to man may diffuse itself | cial lustre. How far more truly, and how far through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in poetry -else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred passions. Dr. Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising simplicity-whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he truly says, is in religion most sublime-and why should not poetry be simple in its expression? Is it not always so -when the mood of mind it expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great emotion? But he uses-as we see-the terms "lustre" and "decoration”—as if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason sublime. more sublimely, does Milton, “that mighty orb of song," speak of his own divine gift-the gift of Poetry! "These abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and reflexions of men's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe-Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed." It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets, moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more profoundly than they-to see, as it were, into a new world. The things of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over many lands into "the huts where With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr. Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argument with this absurdity-"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are on them have been bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence and here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone one of the highest that ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been desecrated by the fic-poor men lie"-and thoughts are familiar there, tions-so to call them-of John Milton; majestic as are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St. John; and, mag-wears the aspect of poverty and distress. nificent as are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still lake or the slumbering ocean. This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr. Johnson's splendid sophistry-splendid at first sight-but on closer inspection a mere naze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artifi beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being, in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even when he Since that Religion was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime expression-The Brotherhood of Man. Yet it is just as true, that there is as much misery and suffering in Christendom-nay, far more of them all-than troubled and tore men's hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But with what dif ferent feelings is it all thought of-spoken oflooked at-alleviated - repented-expiatedatoned for-now? In the olden time, such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling:-Remorse was the privilege of Kings and Princes -and the Furies shook their scourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line. But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does "with the lofty equalize the low;" and the same deep-felt community of guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a lower degree something of the same character-has made it far more profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed, darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life. curb of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in illusion-hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half ashamed-and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians, without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose scorn, even in this enlightened age, has-the more is the pity-even by men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than death? No: let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion. Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more unpublishable-but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish, but will have everlasting life. Your books-humble and unpretending though they We may affirm, then, that as human nature be-yet here and there a page, not uninspired has been so greatly purified and elevated by by the spirit of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with and Charity-that is, by Religion-will be held human nature in all its dearest and most inti- up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of mate concerns, must have partaken of that the pious patriarch, sitting with his children's purity and that elevation-and that it may children round his knees-nor will any one now be a far holier and more sacred inspira- sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers tion, than when it was fabled to be the gift of the sacred links that bind together the brotherApollo and the Muses. We may not circum-hood of man, escape the solemn search of a scribe its sphere. To what cerulean heights | soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion? wisdom, and happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknowneven perhaps by name-who although dead yet speaketh-and, without superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household. If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be He who knows that he writes in the fear of worse than worthless. They must be, not God and in the love of man, will not arrest imperfect merely, but false, and not false the thoughts that flow from his pen, because merely, but calumnious against human nature. he knows that they may-will be-insulted The agonies of passion fling men down to the and profaned by the name of cant, and he dust on their knees, or smite them motionless himself held up as a hypocrite. In some as stone statues, sitting alone in their darken- hands, ridicule is indeed a terrible weapon. It ed chambers of despair. But sooner or later, is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, all eyes, all hearts look for comfort to God. branding the audacious forehead of falsehood The coldest metaphysical analyst could not or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either avoid that, in his sage enumeration of "each of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmparticular hair" that is twisted and untwisted less as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a by him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed impassioned and philosophical poet will not, dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradare not, for the spirit that is within him, ex-dise might float in the sunshine unharmed all clude that from his elegies, his hymns, and his its beautiful life long, although all the sportssongs, which, whether mournful or exulting, men of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the are inspired by the life-long, life-deep convic-star-like plumage during the Christmas holytion, that all the greatness of the present is but days of a thousand years. for the future-that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre, only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens. But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its very essence-how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this spirit-how shall we limit it-measure it-and accustom it to the We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is indeed, to see "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those awful sanctities before which angels vail their | before it passes away, provided it be left free to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by some severe slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by the same inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers to the doom of the dust. If faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and rings on their fingers-afterwards extending their notes into Sacred Poems for the use of the public-all the states of being that poetry illustrates penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments of Providence as they would the proceedings in a police court. CHAPTER II. do thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all high poetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language is breathing of a life" above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations, obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or imbodies, enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and he may hang up his harp. open to the most serious charges on the score of its religion. From the first line of the Lyrical Ballads to the last of the "Excursion”—it is avowedly one system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life, and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human heart-the human mind-the human soul-to use his own fine words-is" the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of our affections-using that term in its largest sense upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the representation? We think there is-and that it lies in his Religion. THE distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and credited almost universally, is to please. That they who have studied the laws of thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded by an unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more than mortifying-it perplexes and confounds-to think that poets themselves, and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same deAmong the great living poets Wordsworth grading belief of what is the scope and tenden-is the one whose poetry is to us the most inexcy, the end and aim of their own divine art-plicable-with all our reverence for his transforsooth, to please! Pleasure is no more the cendent genius, we do not fear to say the most end of poetry than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion, or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction, expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it is nothing. Is the end of Paradise Lost to please? Is the end of Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David to please? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry has often been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit of this creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty-which have not been either slightly touched -from the responsibility of their endowments -from the conscience that is in genius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on all sacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it—and consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in that magnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike it but to please-if their high inspirations are to be deadened and dragged down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim-they will either be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide"-unwilling to prolong and deepen them into the diapason of praise or they will deposit their lyre within the gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleeping on its strings." All arguments, or rather objections to sacred poetry, dissolve as you internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry, is mostly meant Scriptural; but there are, and always have been conceited and callous critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience; and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral state of being becomes religious In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie beyond the grave-and the many holy and awful feelings in which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever part of the character of any of the persons-male or female-old or young-brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely delineated-and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's heart during the hours of inspiration-and he often has written like a man inspired-they must have found expression in his strains; and the personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their trials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; the religion of this great Poet-in all his poetry published previous to the "Excursion"-is but the "Religion of the Woods." "That basis laid, these principles of faith In the "Excursion," his religion is brought and a very noble eulogy on the Church Esta forward-prominently and conspicuously-in blishment in England. How happened it that many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Ped- he who pronounced such eloquent panegyric lar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high re--that they who so devoutly inclined their ear ligion it often is; but is it Christianity? No to imbibe it-should have been all contented -it is not. There are glimpses given of some with of the Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion to the Christian creed. The interlocutors-eloquent as they all are-say but little on that theme; nor do they show-if we except the Priest-much interest in it—any solicitude; they may all, for any thing that appears to the contrary, be deists. Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem. Nor could it have been the case with such a man -a man privileged, by the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of the earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children of men can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all their disquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they kept journeying among the hills. "On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in Solitude!" But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it, looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by into the poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudy skies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than of Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry is bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian. and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before and after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or a Christian Church in the world? We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student of this great poet's works, must regard such omission-such inconsistency or contradiction-with more than the pain of regret; for there is no relief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we can look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof-for our delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the heavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion. Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter into further exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine ourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domestic suffering in the Excursion. In the story of Margaret, containing, we believe, more than four hundred lines Yet there is no subject too high for Words--a tolerably long poem in itself--though the worth's muse. In the preface to the "Excursion," he says daringly-we fear too daringly, "Urania, I shall need Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and mother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick," is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruel anatomy-not one quivering fibre being left unexposed-all the fluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and naked that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave -there is not-except one or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposely dropped in-one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a Christian ?-Let the answer be yes-as good a Christian as ever kneeled in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for the resurrection. If she was then the picture Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the power and province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work to which he so tri-painted of her and her agonies, is a libel not umphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? only on her character, but on the character of Nothing could have reconciled us to a burst all other poor Christian women in this Chrisof such-audacity-we use the word consider- tian land. Placed as she was, for so many ately-but the exhibition of a spirit divinely years, in the clutches of so many passionsembued with the Christian faith. For what she surely must have turned sometimes-ay, else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the often, and often, and often, else had she sooner Christian Faith, can be beyond those "person- left the clay-towards her Lord and Saviour. al forms," "beyond Jehovah," "the choirs of But of such "comfort let no man speak," shouting angels," and the "empyreal thrones ?" seems to have been the principle of Mr. WordsThis omission is felt the more deeply-worth; and the consequence is, that this, perthe more sadly-from such introduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of the "Excursion" begins with a very long, haps the most elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human heart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to very religious mind that being wanting without which the entire representation is vitiated, and necessarily false to nature-to virtue-to resignation -to life and to death. These may seem strong words-but we are ready to defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth. Her temper had been framed, as if to make Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven." This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been all-in-all-for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we regard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance-shocks far deeper feelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of hollowness and We are prepared by that character, so amply insincerity in that poetical religion, which at and beautifully drawn, to pity her to the utthe best is a sorry substitute indeed for the most demand that may be made on our pitylight that is from heaven. Above all, it flings, to judge her leniently, even if in her desertion as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity she finally give way to inordinate and incuraover the orthodox Church-of-Englandism-for ble grief. But we are not prepared to see her once to quote a not inexpressive barbarism of sinking from depth to depth of despair, in wilBentham-which every now and then breaks ful abandonment to her anguish, without oftout either in passing compliment-amounting repeated and long-continued passionate prayers to but a bow-or in eloquent laudation, during for support or deliverance from her trouble, to which the poet appears to be prostrate on his the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true that in knees. He speaks nobly of cathedrals, and our happiness our gratitude to God is too often minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning all more selfish than we think, and that in our the land; but in none-no, not one of the misery it faints or dies. So is it even with the houses of the humble, the hovels of the poor best of us-but surely not all life long-unless into which he takes us is the religion preached the heart has been utterly crushed—the brain in those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted itself distorted in its functions, by some cain prayer to the pealing organ, represented as lamity, under which nature's self gives way, the power that in peace supports the roof-tree, and falls into ruins like a rent house when the lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the last prop is withdrawn. tutelary spirit of the lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be one of the order of the High Priests of nature? "Nine tedious years From their first separation-nine long years A wife and widow. Needs must it have been ter's hand. But even were it granted that suf process and progress of such fatal relinquishment should have been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if the religion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should have been exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, in the multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for her sorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief. Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does not pretend to present a model of virtue?that there are miseries which shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their suffering, to look to that source for comfort?-that this is human nature, and the description only follows it?-that when This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, under circumstances of "in peace and comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that her much solemnity, and with affecting note of habit in that respect was only broken up by the preparation. It arises naturally from the sight stroke of her calamity, causing such a derange- of the ruined cottage near which they, by apment of her mental power as should deeply in-pointment, have met; the narrator puts his terest the sympathies ?-in short, that the poet whole heart into it, and the listener is overis an artist, and that the privation of all comcome by its pathos. No remark is made on fort from religion completes the picture of her Margaret's grief, except that desolation? Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so pathetically speak? "Of one whose stock Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof. Not speaking much-pleased rather with the joy "I turned aside in weakness, nor had power I bless'd her in the impotence of grief. Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies Of nature-'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers, And silent overgrowings, still unrevived.” |