Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

J >> John Wilson >> Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2




What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family--a high-born
race gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestors
of this House were famous men of war--then some no less famous
statesmen--then poets and historians--then minds still of fine, but of
less energetic mould--and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking
suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed
for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters,
undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race--the oldest on his
approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of
being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The
twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no
maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's
dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked
along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all
describe--and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all
that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the
sisters were, so were the brothers--distinguished above all their mates
conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers
could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to
veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift
from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last
three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian
of life--and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans.
Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this
cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together
with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!--One
morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her
mind, and perfectly astray--with no symptom of having been suddenly
alarmed or terrified--but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely
changed in their expression, although they knew not--but rarely--on whom
they looked. It was but a few months till she died--and Adelaide was
laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day--and asked why mourning
should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the
bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?
Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees--not walking in the free realms
of earth and heaven with thy husband--the noble youth, who loved thee
from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be
beneath the sun--shut up in some narrow cell perhaps--no one knows
where--whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land--with
those hands manacled--a demon-light in eyes once most angelical--and
ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings
and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!--Down went the ship with all
her crew in which Percy sailed;--the sabre must have been in the hand of
a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto
down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul--while he possessed it
clearly--was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was
as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time
starlike reappear--and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal
creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save
sinners.

Let us away--let us away from this overpowering place--and make our
escape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merry
May-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom of
the earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart should
be teeming--and why not ours--with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as this
May-day is--and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, we
came not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulge
ourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mourn
among the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And
therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life
is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the
cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a
life of wandering--and maybe not without sorrow--comes back to gaze on
the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of
Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still--for, praise be to Heaven!
the sense of beauty is still strong within us--and methinks we could
feel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken.




SACRED POETRY.

CHAPTER I.


We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so
pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited
understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius,
and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not
know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally
stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect,
nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his
statement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory and
sophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, and
therefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was not
often utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respecting
any subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness of
mankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievously
err; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from the
province of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut the
gates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will be
feebler and lower,--her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction of
matter,--and her voice--like that of the caged lark, so different from
its hymning when lost to sight in the sky--will fail to call forth the
deepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit.

"Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in
opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often
please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic
poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose
it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the
grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn,
the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise
his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the
disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the
description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or
the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man
admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of
his Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.

"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are
few, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they can
be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting
an idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. This
effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract,
and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religion
must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and
such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly
expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his
comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be
hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great,
desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.
Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection
cannot be improved.

"The employments of pious meditation are _faith_, _thanksgiving_,
_repentance_, and _supplication_. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful
of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed.
Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself
through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry
for mercy.

"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. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
nothing to the mind. 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."

Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit--that they
are fit--for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide
and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just
admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as
destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The
doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic
poem--and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also
expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it
were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can
possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of
religion--and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be
frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in
particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense,
a Sacred poem?

"But," says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety,
but the motives to piety." Why introduce the word "disputation," as if
it characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who ever
heard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety?
Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most
interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," well observes, that
"motives to piety must be of the _nature_ of piety, otherwise they could
never incite to it--the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might as
well be denied to be any part of the Gospel." And, for our own parts, we
scarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives--or how, so
separated, it could be expressed in words at all.

With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument it
may be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is said,
"may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the
spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the
revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader
shall lay aside." Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subject
of the description is not God, but the works of God!" Alas! what
trifling--what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God is
felt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. We
cannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without some
shadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them with
religion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effects
speak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bible
is not the only revelation--there is another--dimmer but not less
divine--for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, in
describing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetful
of the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and that
feeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Him
the Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifully
coloured by devotion, tinged by piety--in its essence it is religious.

It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which Dr
Johnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptive
sacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctions
which have no existence.

Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks,
Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement,
that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction--a
sentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock are
willing to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of these
great, but not infallible authorities." Here Mr Montgomery expresses
himself very cautiously--perhaps rather too much so--for he leaves us in
the dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, that
though there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas of
Christian theology by poetry--a wrong which must be most painful to the
whole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity of
such a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love,
may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among the
most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful
for "fiction"--but fiction is not the word here, any more than
disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and
then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the
Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities,
if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were
inspired--with them

----"the name
Of prophet and of poet was the same;"

but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest of
senses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind--inferior but in
degree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to be
so in the prose of holy men--Why not in their poetry?

If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yet
humbly"--all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is,
"that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man,
cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,
and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
poetry can confer."

There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but the
sentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are different
degrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever sought
communion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck and
speechless. That line,

"Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"

denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the line
itself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits
may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before
his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel
ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness
laid upon us--but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and
the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song--in
the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms--poetry
indeed--if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that the
spirits of just men made perfect--almost perfect, by such visitations
from heaven--will break forth--"rapt, inspired," into poetry which may
be called holy, sacred, divine?

We feel as if treading on forbidden ground--and therefore speak
reverently; but still we do not fear to say, that between that highest
state of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that lowest
state of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere human
emotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees of
emotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words--and if so
embodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too of
the most beautiful and affecting kind.

"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits
of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer."
Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state,
poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe
audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry
may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because
poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself
out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there
may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and
strong in the spirit of that word--unexistent but for the Old and the
New Testament.

We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument
amounts to this--that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between
God and the human soul, _cannot be poetical_. But here we at once ask
ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he
says, "is invention--such invention as, by producing something
unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and
sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such
invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is
of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising
in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings
as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without
much--without any aid from the imagination--except in as far as the
imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does
not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below
the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and
"very little from novelty of expression"--to use Dr Johnson's words--for
it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is
seeking--"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as the
topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known,"
they are all commensurate--nay, far more than commensurate, with the
whole power of the soul--never can they become unaffecting while it is
our lot to die;--even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow
on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and
sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall
dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to
be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and
by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were
made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no
more, be equalled in heaven?

We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the _effect_ of
poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea
more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only
because the things themselves are imperfect--more so than suits the
aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher
sphere--a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe
and reverence, made the subject of song--then it is the office--the
sacred office of poetry--not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul
that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature
glory in the "Paradise Lost?"

"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted--Infinity cannot be
amplified--Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to
prohibit all speech--all discourse--all sermons concerning the divine
attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the
attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot,
indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be
improved"--nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the
Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too
willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may
be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel,"
from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the
ether.

Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? On
the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his
doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all
animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or
improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine
contemplations--by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an
insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and
exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And
while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the
mercies of our God?

The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it
proceeds--the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is
founded becomes more and more glaring--the paradoxes, dealt out as
confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive
alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious
meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet
addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is
to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence
of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication
to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but
supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt
authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not
invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering--unquaking--to save it
from lingering or from sudden death--is the most difficult service to
which the frail spirit--frail even in its greatest strength--is called
every day--every hour--of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and
often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor,
"is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of
trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it
wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more.
It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore,
for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity
and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument
and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is
finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, what
hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings,
and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has
experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a
melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of
peace?

Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy
effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be
"confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue
speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech,
yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude--yea, the
very dumb do speak--nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has
been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high
enthusiasm.

That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be
at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but
nobody supposes that during such moments--or hours--poetry is composed;
and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind
is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the
past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly
contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether
endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry--that
is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to
clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a
swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still
bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole
being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself
in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance
will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences
and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth,
if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and
epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and
ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and
more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive
mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full
possession of powers that had for a short severe season been
overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the
feelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then
unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the
bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving
his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to
the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or
reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly
recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that
hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?

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