صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Here, however, we must terminate our pilferings, or open robberies, and bring these straggling lucubrations to a close. In the extracts we have given, in the remarks made on them, and on the subject of them, we are aware that we have held the attitude of admirers and pleaders: neither is it unknown to us that the critic is, in virtue of his office, a judge, and not an advocate; sits there, not to do favour, but to dispense justice, which in most cases will involve blame as well as praise. But we are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad. This maxim is so clear to ourselves, that, in respect of poetry at least, we almost think we could make it clear to other men. In the first place, at all events, it is a much shallower and more ignoble occupation to detect faults than to discover beauties. The "critic fly," if it do but alight on any plinth or single cornice of a brave, stately building, shall be able to declare, with its half-inch vision, that here is a speck, and there an inequality; that, in fact, this and the other individual stone are Lowise as they should be; for all this the "critic fly" will be sufficient: but to take in the fair relations of the Whole, to see the building as one object, to estimate its purpose, the adjustment of its parts, and their harmonious co-operation towards that purpose, will require the eye and the mind of a Vitruvius, or a Palladio. But further, the faults of a poem, or other piece of art, as we view them at first, will by no means continue unaltered when we view them after due and final investigation. Let us consider what we mean by a fault. By the word fault, we designate something that displeases us, that contradicts us. But here the question might arise. Who are we? This fault displeases, contradicts us; so far is clear; and had we, had I, and my pleasure and confirmation, been the chief end of the poet, then doubtless he has failed in that end, and his fault remains a fault irremediably, and without defence. But who shall say whether such really was his object, whether such ought to have been his object? And if it was not, and ought not to have been, what becomes of the fault? It must hang altogether undecided; we as yet know nothing of it; perhaps it may not be the poet's but our own fault; perhaps it may be no fault whatever. To see rightly into this matter, to determine with any infallibility, whether what we call a fault is in very deed a fault, we must previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before his own eye, and how far, with such means as it afforded him, he has fulfilled it. Secondly, we must have decided whether and how far this aim, this task of his, accorded,not with us, and our individual crotchets, and the crotchets of our little senate where we give or take the law,-but with human nature, and the nature of things at large; with the universal principles of poetic beauty, not as they stand written in our text-books, but in the hearts and imaginations of all men. Does the answer in either case come out unfavourable; was there

an inconsistency between the means and the end; a discordance between the end and truth, there is a fault: was there not, there is no fault. Thus it would appear that the detection of faults, provided they be faults of any depth and consequence, leads us of itself into that region where also the higher beauties of the piece, if it have any true beauties, essentially reside. In fact, according to our view, no man can pronounce dogmatically, with even a chance of being right, on the faults of a poem, till he has seen its very last and highest beauty; the last in becoming visible to any one, which few ever look after, which indeed in most pieces it were very vain to look after; the beauty of the poem as a Whole, in the strict sense; the clear view of it as an indivisible Unity; and whether it has grown up naturally from the general soil of Thought, and stands there like a thousandyears Oak, no leaf, no bough superfluous; or is nothing but a pasteboard Tree, cobbled together out of size and waste-paper and watercolours; altogether unconnected with the soil of Thought, except by mere juxtaposition, or at best united with it by some decayed stump and dead boughs, which the more cunning Decorationist (as in your Historic Novel) may have selected for the basis and support of his agglutinations. It is true, most readers judge of a poem by pieces, they praise and blame by pieces: it is a common practice, and for most poems and most readers may be perfectly sufficient; yet we would advise no man to follow this practice, who traces in himself even the slightest capability of following a better one; and if possible, we would advise him to practise only on worthy subjects; to read few poems that will not bear being studied as well as read

That Goethe has his faults cannot be doubt ful; for we believe it was ascertained long ago that there is no man free from them. Neither are we ourselves without some glimmering of certain actual limitations and inconsistencies by which he too, as he really lives, and writes, and is, may be hemmed in; which beset him too, as they do meaner men; which show us that he too is a son of Eve. But to exhibit these before our readers, in the present state of matters, we should reckon no easy labour, were it to be adequately, to be justly done; and done any how, no profitable one. Better is it we should first study him; better "to see the great man before attempting to oversee him." We are not ignorant that certain objections against Goethe already float vaguely in the English mind, and here and there, according to occasion, have even come to utterance: thest, as the study of him proceeds, we shall hold ourselves ready, in due season, to discuss; but for the present we must beg the reader to believe, on our word, that we do not reckon them unanswerable, nay, that we reckon them in general the most answerable things in the world; and things which even a little increase of knowledge will not fail to answer without other help.

For furthering such increase of knowledge on this matter, may we beg the reader to accept two small pieces of advice, which we ourselves have found to be of use in studying Goethe. They seem applicable to the study

of men in general; that at all moments of their existence they can look upon themselves as complete; and inquire neither after the True nor the False, nor the High nor the Deep; but simply after what is proportioned to themselves."

Our second advice we shall state in a few words. It is to remember that a Foreigner is no Englishman; that in judging a foreign work, it is not enough to ask whether it is suitable to our modes, but whether it is suitable to foreign wants; above all, whether it is suitable to itself. The fairness, the necessity of this can need no demonstration: yet how often do we find it, in practice, altogether neglected! We could fancy we saw some Bond-street Tailor criticising the costume of an ancient Greek; censuring the highly improper cut of collar and lapel; lamenting, indeed, that collar and lapel were nowhere to be seen. He pronounces the costume, easily and decisively, to be a barbarous one; to know whether it is a barbarous one, and how barbarous, the judgment of a Winkelmann might be required, and he would find it hard to give a judgment. For the questions set before the two were radically different. The Fraction asked himself: How will this look in Almacks, and before Lord Mahogany? The Winklemanu asked himself: How will this look in the Universe, and before the Creator of Man?

of Foreign Literature generally; indeed to the | Terence otherwise than boys do. "Happy study of all Literature that deserves the name. contractedness of youth," adds Goethe, "nay, The first is, nowise to suppose that Poetry is a superficial, cursory business, which may be seen through to the very bottom, so soon as one inclines to cast his eye on it. We reckon it the falsest of all maxims that a true Poem can be adequately tasted; can be judged of "as men judge of a dinner," by some internal tongue, that shall decide on the matter at once and irrevocably. Of the poetry which supplies spouting-clubs, and circulates in circulating libraries, we speak not here. That is quite another species; which has circulated, and will circulate, and ought to circulate, in all times; but for the study of which no man is required to give rules, the rules being already given by the thing itself. We speak of that Poetry which Masters write, which aims not "at furnishing a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions," but at incorporating the everlasting Reason of man in forms visible to his Sense, and suitable to it: and of this we say that to know it is no slight task; but rather that being the essence of all science, it requires the purest of all study for knowing it. "What!" cries the reader, are we to study Poetry? To pore over it as we do over Fluxions?" Reader, it depends upon your object: if you want only amusement, choose your book, and you get along, without study, excellently well. "But is not Shakspeare plain, visible to the very bottom, without study?" cries he. Alas, no, gentle Reader; we cannot think so; we do not find that he is "visible to the very bottom," even to those that profess the study of him. It has been our lot to read some criticisms on Shakspeare, and to hear a great many; but for most part they amounted to no such "visibility." Volumes we have seen that were simply one huge Interjection printed over three hundred pages. Nine tenths of our critics have told us little more of Shakspeare, than what honest Franz Horn says our neighbours used to tell of him, "that he was a great spirit, and stept majestically along." Johnson's Preface, a sound and solid piece for its purpose, is a complete exception to this rule; and, so far as we remember, the only complete one. Students of poetry admire Shakspeare in their tenth year; but go on admiring him more and more, understanding him more and more, till their hreescore-and-tenth. Grotius said, he read

66

Whether these remarks of ours may do any thing to forward a right appreciation of Goethe in this country, we know not; neither do we reckon this last result to be of any vital importance. Yet must we believe that, in recommending Goethe, we are doing our part to recommend a truer study of Poetry itself: and happy were we to fancy that any efforts of ours could promote such an object. Promoted, attained it will be, as we believe, by one means and another. A deeper feeling for Art is abroad over Europe; a purer, more earnest purpose in the study, in the practice of it. In this influence we too must participate: the time will come when our own ancient noble Literature will be studied and felt, as well as talked of; when Dilettantism will give place to Criticism in respect of it; and vague wonder end in clear knowledge, in sincere reverence, and, what were best of all, in hearty emulation.

BURNS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1828.]

In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler, "ask for bread and receive a stone;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the highest excellence that men are most forward to recognise. The inventor of a spinningjenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggravation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthumous retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of nature, might yet have been living; but his short life was spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his manhood, miserable and neglected; and yet already a brave mausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one splendid monument has been reared in other places to his fame: the street where he languished in poverty is called by his name; the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and admirers, and here is the sixth narrative of his Life, that has been given to the world!

Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologize for this new attempt on such a subject: but his readers, we believe, will readily acquit him; or, at worst, will censure only the performance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or exhausted; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay, perhaps, painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbour of John a Combe's, had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his game, and written us a Life of Shakspeare! What dissertations should we not have had,-not on Hamlet and The Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws! and how the Poacher became a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities! In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the companions of his pilgrimage, the honourable Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries Aris

[ocr errors]

tocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, and the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from his juxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for literary historians; and repeated attempts will give us repeated approximations.

His former biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie and Mr. Walker, the principal of these writers, have both, we think, mistaken one essentially important thing:Their own and the world's true relation to their author, and the style in which it became such men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain patronizing, apologetic air; as if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar, and gentleman, should do such honour to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith; and regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's biographers should not have seen farther, or believed more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes, virtues, and vices, instead of à delineation of the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, is not painting a portrait; but gauging the length and breadth of the several features, and jotting down their dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, it is not so much as this: for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mind could be so measured and gauged.

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced him to be: and in delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate generalities, and rather sought for characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior biography: though, being written on the very popular and condensed scheme of an article for Constable's Miscellany, it has less depth than we could have wished and expected The Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lockhart, LL. B. from a writer of such power; and contains Edinburgh, 1828. rather more, and more multifarious, quotations,

than belong of right to an original production. | own intrinsic merits, and may now be well Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writing is gene-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears rally so good, so clear, direct, and nervous, not only as a true British poet, but as one of that we seldom wish to see it making place the most considerable British men of the for another man's. However, the spirit of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that work is throughout candid, tolerant, and anx- he did little : He did much, if we consider where iously conciliating; compliments and praises and how. If the work performed was small, are liberally distributed, on all hands, to great we must remember that he had his very maand small; and, as Mr. Morris Birkbeck ob- terials to discover; for the metal he worked serves of the society in the backwoods of in lay hid under the desert, where no eye but America, "the courtesies of polite life are his had guessed its existence; and we may alnever lost sight of for a moment." But there most say, that with his own hand he had to are better things than these in the volume; construct the tools for fashioning it. For he and we can safely testify, not only that it is found himself in deepest obscurity, without easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may help, without instruction, without model; or even be without difficulty read again. with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain for ever shut against him? His means are the commonest and rudest; the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with the pick-axe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with his arms.

Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents, though of these we are still every day receiving some fresh accession,-as to the limited and imperfect application of them to the great end of Biography. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an individual is really of consequence enough o have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion, that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did coexisting circumstances modify him from without; how did he modify these from within? With what endeavours and what efficacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and many lives will be written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, ought to be written, and read, and forgotten, which are not in this sense biographies. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good-will, and trust they may meet with acceptance from those for whom they are intended.

Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy; and was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect; till his early and most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the "nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of this clamour proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his

|

It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments: Through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his eagle eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the irrepressible movement of his inward spirit, he struggles forward into the general view, and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudging childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask if it be strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapours, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure splendour, enlightening the world: But some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colours into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears!

We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it s exposition rather than admiration that our

BURNS.

A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What, warm, all-compre hending, fellow-feeling, what trustful, bound

readers require of us here; and yet to avoid | thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of the some tendency to that side is no easy matter. wind." We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business; we are not so sure of this; but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not exclu-less love, what generous exaggeration of the sively that of critics. True and genial as his object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but The rough scenes of but as a man, that he interests and affects us. a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the He was often advised to write a tragedy: time paragons of Earth. and means were not lent him for this; but Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the the deepest. We question whether the world smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; lovely to him: Poverty is indeed his compawhether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with nion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell "amid the melancholy main," presented to the under the straw roof, are dear and venerable reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity and to his heart; and thus over the lowest profear," as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler, vinces of man's existence he pours the glory and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow and in a hopeless struggle with base entangle- sunshine, softened and brightened into a ments, which coiled closer and closer round beauty which other eyes discern not in the him, till only death opened him an outlet. highest. He has a just self-consciousness, Conquerors are a race with whom the world which too often degenerates into pride; yet it could well dispense; nor can the hard intel- is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence, The peasant Poet bears himself, lect, the unsympathizing loftiness, and high no cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and but selfish enthusiasm of such persons, inspire social one. us in general with any affection; at best it may we might say, like a King in exile: he is cast excite amazement; and their fall, like that of among the low, and feels himself equal to the a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sad-highest; yet he claims no rank, that none may But a true Poet, a man in be disputed to him. The forward he can reness and awe. whose heart resides some effluence of Wis-pel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretenEternal Melodies," is sions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail dom, some tone of the " the most precious gift that can be bestowed with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, unon a generation: we see in him a freer, purer, der which the "insolence of condescension" development of whatever is noblest in our- cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his exselves; his life is a rich lesson to us, and we treme need, he forgets not for a moment the mourn his death, as that of a benefactor who majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he Loved and taught us. Such a gift had Nature in her bounty be- wanders not apart from them, but mixes stowed on us in Robert Burns; but with queen- warmly in their interests; nay, throws himself like indifference she cast it from her hand, into their arms; and, as it were, entreats them like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced to love him. It is moving to see how, in his and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we darkest despondency, this proud being still recognised it. To the ill-starred Burns was seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himgiven the power of making man's life more self, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows was not given. Destiny, for so in our igno- only the name of friendship. And yet he was rance we must speak,-his faults, the faults "quick to learn;" a man of keen vision, before His understanding saw through the of others, proved too hard for him; and that whom common disguises afforded no concealspirit, which might have soared, could it but ment. have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glori-hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; ous faculties trodden under foot in the blos- but there was a generous credulity in his som, and died, we may almost say, without Heart. And so did our Peasant show himself ever having lived. And so kind and warm a among us; "a soul like an Eolian harp, in soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed living and lifeless things! How his heart through them, changed itself into articulate flows out in sympathy over universal nature; melody." And this was he for whom the and in her bleakest provinces discerns a world found no fitter business than quarrelling beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy" falls with smugglers and vintners, computing exnot unheeded under his ploughshare; nor the cise dues upon tallow, and gauging alebarre's! rained nest of that "wee, cowering, timorous In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowbeastie," cast forth, after all its provident fully wasted: and a hundred years may pass pains, to "thole the sleety dribble, and cran- on, before another such is given us to waste. reuch cauld." The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him: he dwells with a sad and oftreturning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for "it raises his 13

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that

I

« السابقةمتابعة »